A Few Answers, More Questions

The days have been lazily drifting by here on Kauai. Lots of sun shine and often very high surf which has made for some dramatic scenery. However at Anahola Beach the other day, things were placid and  we were able to be beach bums, each in our own way, Bruce in a chair reading and Gail and I paddling in the warm, healing ocean.

We returned to a favourite place, the grotto at the old stone dam on the Wai Koa trail one late afternoon. A pleasant time to walk, the angle of the setting sun highlighting the gnarled, thick bark of the trees and  the ginger and hibiscus blooms.

We love this spot...so serene and contemplative, although this time we shared the place with three nubile young maidens and their families. The girls knew exactly where they were headed...up above the dam to a rope swing from which they plunged into the pond. I almost stripped down to join them but as with many things fanciful, I needed to be sensible. My hip and knee have been very sore. The giant knee brace you can see poking through my trousers has helped.

Sister Rosemary in Kenora, Ontario has found the name of the hedge that I pictured on my last blog. Clever woman found it on the Honolulu Zoo-Botanical Gardens website, which is really well done.

http://www.honoluluzoo.org/gardens.html

RED LEAF HAU
Hibiscus tiliaceus
Hau has a nutritious leaf and flower. It makes excellent mulch and was favored for old Hawaiian Lo‘i kalo (taro patches) The Hawaiians had many many uses for hau: buds are medicinal and were taken as an aid to childbirth, as well as a laxative. The leaves make great desert plates at an elegant luau (and you can compost them into the garden when the feast is pau). The wood is soft lightweight and easily carved. Net floats, ama or canoe outriggers, puppets and various fishing tools were made from hau. The bark is stringy and fibrous and was used for lashing and cordage. Hau flowers can tell you what time of day it is: The yellow, hibiscus like flowers of hau open clear yellow in the morning. By midday they turn orange and at the end of the day they are red. The red flowers drop to the ground in a beautiful display the next morning.

So lovely to know the name of this flowering beauty.


Today's conversation in the grocery store.

I waited at the "service" counter to pay for Bruce's newspaper. As the man in front of me paid and was moving off, a local Hawaiian man leaned over the divider next to the clerk and said,

"Dis what you wan?" He held a piece of fiber in his hand.

The clerk, rather dismayed replied, "You wait, I busy wid dis customer heeah"

"Oh no", said I, "I am really interested. Is that coconut fiber"

"Ya, dats it", said the native holding the rough looking swatch, sort of like this.

"What is it used for?", I asked

"We gonna make hula costumes for the keiki (kids), big festival comin' up," answered Mrs Cashier who wore a plumeria blossom behind one ear.

"Looks rather scratchy", I said, "What part of the costume is made of this fiber"

"I dunno, neva done this beefoah....big job"

"How many keiki?", butted in the man. "we gonna ruin a lotta trees doin' this and the Hawaiians will not like dat"

"I dunno" chimed in the cashier, "lotta kids mebbe a hunnert"

I was loving this exchange and did not want it to finish! 

"How big dose kids?" asked the gentleman clutching the fabric.

"Well, some as old as 12 years", replied the clerk.

"Oh,oh, dem kids get pretty big by 12 years old, we gunna need to harm a lotta trees...not good"

This was so much fun, watching these two try to figure out how they were going to get enough coconut finer to clothe 100 children in costumes of an as yet unknown design.

I bid them both my "Aloha" and scurried home to look up; coconut finer, keiki hula, coconut fibre hula costumes to see what they were up against. After plowing through hundreds of pictures ( mostly of young women with coconuts brassieres and articles about hula traditions), I am no further ahead on what the scratchy bits of fiber are going to be used for. My two friends are in for a lot of work, because I think the fibers need to be treated, carded etc. And the kids below are wearing what we would call grass skirts.

In the past we have been lucky enough to catch the kids at their hula lessons. They are sweet.

And so the sun sets on another delicious Kauai day. We did have to give the cockroach a decent burial, as his little glass cage seemed to deny him enough oxygen.

Next chapter will probably be after our arrival in Hoi An, Vietnam.