2 3 Marooned on Molokai or… Coconuts can Kill You! By Kalikiano Kalei AEOLIAN FLIGHTS PUBLICATIONS Sacramento, California 4 This work is dedicated to Carlo, wherever he may now be, and his ‘Leakin’ Lena’ sloop, the Vanda. “Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.” -Arthur Rimbaud 5 Copyright © 2017 by Kalikiano Kalei All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission. Kalikiano Kalei/Aeolian Flights Press 5960 S Land Park Drive, Nr. 256 Sacramento, CA/95822-3313 USA www.webs.lanset.com/aeolusaero Publisher’s Note: This is a work of allegorical hyperbole. Names, characters, places, and fantasies are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is very possibly intentional, but who can be entirely sure? Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com Marooned on Molokai. -- 1st ed. ISBN xxxxxxxxxxxxx 6 MAROONED ON MOLOKAI or… Coconuts can kill you… Being the log (or diary) of a 30 day stay on the small Hawaiian Island of Molokai in 2005. Most names have been changed to protect the principal characters, but events and experiences are recorded more or less faithfully in hopes that this manuscript will serve both as an interesting guide and culture-shock manual to this most unique of all the islands (excluding Ni’ihau, of course, the so-called ‘forbidden island’). I would like testify that all of the attached narrative was written entirely bereft of the ancient island ETOH spirit of preference (Okolehao, a word that literally translates to ‘Iron Butt’) that is distilled from the Ti Plant, but I can’t, in all good faith. -Kalikiano Kalei, 2015 7 April 10th, 2005 (Sunday) [Foreplay (with sincere apologies to Mark Twain and the Hawaiian kanaka maoli.] History records that the first use of a journal in the Hawaiian Islands occurred when Captain James Cook and the officers of HMS Resolution set down on paper their impressions of the “discovery” of the ‘Sandwich Islands’ and their native inhabitants in 1778, after temporarily misplacing their compass and stumbling across the islands by accident (the actual credit for ‘first western discovery’ seems to go to the Spanish in 1555, who were too busy buckling their swashes to make a big deal of it). Of course, it remained for the ‘infidel’ Christian Protestants (they weren’t Islamic, you see) who followed on Cook’s coat-tails to set the wheels of literacy in motion among the Sandwich Islanders, after first taking the spoken Hawaiian language and developing a Romanised alphabet suited to that language’s unique syllables and sounds. Next, they remodeled the islands after their own unique interpretation of a liberal Scots Presbyterian’s concept of paradise. The rest is all land speculation, greedy profiteering, and real estate development. You’ve seen the obligatory tourist hula, sat through the fire-dancing at the showcase lu’au, wondered if those coconut-half bras the dancing gals all wore were as irritating to certain tender parts of the upper female body as they looked, and if you ever wasted any time wondering what a Scotsman wears under his kilt…FORGET IT!...ponder instead what a hula girl wears under her Ti-leaf skirt. Our brief hysterical recap of the islands concluded, now you are presented with a unique opportunity: to experience a very special part of what is regarded as ‘older Hawaii’ through the glazed eyes of a genuine, card- carrying, currently-Malihini-but-soon-to-be-Kama’aina-Molokaiian. If parts of this journal seem occasionally to plough precipitously to port, shear shockingly to starboard, list dangerously in heavy seas of completely unrelated trivialities, wallow willfully, and blunder unbeckoned onto dangerously shallow (minded) shoals of surreptitious sublimation, tangential trivia, effervescent effluvia, lugubriously lurid laments, etc., relax….there’s doubtless more allegorical turbidity ahead as we press enthusiastically forward, inspired initially by Cook’s voyages of discovery and later by Twain’s 1866 voyages of whimsical observation, to venture into the remotest recesses of the author’s mind, where no other man assuredly has ever gone before (or ever wants to go again, parallels to the voyages of the Starship 8 USSS Analpoop’s exploits not withstanding)….[the actual chances of anyone reading this through to the end are remote to slim (more likely: death from boredom half-way), and hopefully well after my own death from a severe case of being “too full of it”]… April 11th, 2005 (Monday) Flight out from mainland on Hawaiian airlines (9th, the day before) was smooth and uneventful. Arrived in Honolulu after an unremarkable flight on Boeing 767-570 (latest & greatest version) and caught the local (Island Air) connection (DeHavilland Dash-8 twin turbo) flight from the Honolulu Inter- Island terminal to Ho’olehua Airport on Moloka’i. Budget Rent-a-Car was waiting for me with a bright (screaming) yellow, late model Chevy Cavalier— so much for my idea of remaining low-profile (non-touristy). Normally I like bright yellow as a color, but this time did not want to advertise myself as a newly arrived Haole (Royal Hawaiian Ali’i yellow or not!). While waiting in line for my car, I had a momentary contact with a Haole Kama’aina (an older white haired Caucasian man, resident on the island for 20 years). He was leaving on the plane I had just arrived in for the return flight to Honolulu and had to turn in his rental quickly; since the plane was already warming up, he asked me if he could go ahead of me in the line. When I told him we had just bought some property on the island and planned to build a house, the response accompanying his stark look of pity had a brief but chilling impact: “Good luck in finding someone to build it!” Uh-oh! Cicada was waiting for me at the airport, so I followed her in my car to the place where she had made arrangements for me to stay, a room in the Ranch Camp (a small subdivision of Kaunakakai, formerly plantation housing) house owned by her friend, Mrs. Inocencia Baitan. The ‘room’ turned out to be a large detached room measuring about 10 x 15, with an adjacent detached shower and toilet. The amenities included a two-element hotplate, microwave and fridge, along with a toaster, portable fan and vertical heater. The bed (large double) was quite comfortable (firm-ish) and there was a roomy closet as well. Louvered windows on two sides assured a good breeze to keep things cool. After meeting Mrs. Baitan, aged 65, and her husband Selix (90 years old and looking only 70!), Cicada and I went to look at our new 9 property, which lies directly next to hers. Regardless of what I was expecting, the first sight of the property was a bit of a shock, since it is basically a recently cleared strip of land sloping down to the Kaloko’eli Fishpond, measuring 50 feet across at the Kamehameha V roadhead and extending 160 feet back towards the shore. Cicada said she had whacked the weeds recently and sprayed ‘Round-up’ weed killer on the plot. The sea side end of the property (Makai) ends in a thick tangle of Mangroves (an imported tree and now a nuisance growth in many shore areas on Molokai) and the property has a sloping plane that drops off a bit more sharply at the fishpond end. Mindful of the two types of indigenous termites that infest Molokai, my plan for building a house suddenly loomed in my mind as infinitely costly and complex—concrete pilings would be absolutely mandatory for the home’s ground floor. At any rate, Cicada pulled out two chairs and we sat in the shade, chugging no-caffeine Sprite and ‘taking story’ (chatting about nothing in particular and everything in general). I gave her some background on myself and Suki, and she told me about herself and Ferdie (her husband). Turns out Cicada is a Molokai native, having been born on the island (she’s about 59), and a teacher by profession. Her mother was a resident from the early 30s and passed away in 1950, leaving some property in the K’kai area to her survivors. Cicada told me that she had inherited two parcels of land, her brother one, and her nephew another (the one Suki and I bought). The brother married a Hong Kong woman whom Cicada apparently doesn’t get along with, so she informed me she doesn’t speak to her brother and his wife much these days. Apparently, the mother’s property was contested by her brother, so that created a lot of intra-sib bad feelings (from what I infer). Interestingly, brother runs the island’s only gun shop and his wife (the Hong Kong dragon lady) operates one of three ladies’ beauty salons. After a while, having enjoyed the cool tropical trade winds blowing the coconut palm tops for about an hour, we drove down to the K’kai downtown area and I bought some groceries from ‘The Friendly Market’ and a loaf of bread from the Kanemitsu Bakery (just a few basic things like 2 pounds of Molokai Espresso coffee beans, Instant Quaker Oats, some Spam, a sack of rice, some utensils, a gallon of water, and a few sacks of dried fruit…really) for $91.00. Then, after a loop to K’kai wharf to see the Maui Ferry arrive (The Molokai Princess), we stopped at the relatively new “Paddler’s Inn”, a pub and restaurant owned by the former operators of the Molokai Hotel (which is 10 now operated by an off-island hotel chain).