Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | May/June 2006

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJII

Learning Local

Photo: Brett Uprichard

Are you a mahimahi too?” The visitor in Waikīkī, a malihini, beamed with misguided pride as she pronounced every syllable of the Hawaiian word for dolphin fish. Like so many other newcomers, she also had learned to do the shaka sign, the emphatic wave of the fist with thumb and pinkie jauntily raised. The shaka is one of Hawai‘i’s most prominent emblems, wielded every day on the streets of Hawai‘i and even, occasionally, on national television. When Emmy, Grammy, American Idol and Miss America contestants have come from Hawai‘i and won something, their tendency has been to flash the shaka sign.

Learning the shaka sign and the difference between mauka and makai or malihini and kama‘āina is part of every newcomer’s starter kit. And it doesn’t take long to learn that you remove your shoes before entering an Island home, and that potluck means more than chips or crackers, especially if you don’t include the dip. But this information, however useful, merely skims the surface of a complex, nuanced world of local custom, a world that baffles malihini and kama‘āina alike.

“It isn’t simple,” reflects an artist friend. “Even a lot of local kids who have lived away belong to this category: the ones who take just crackers to the party, not even the dip, and then see this incredible table groaning under the weight of the communal food, and then do the same thing for the next potluck—well, it just means that they’re not even trying to fit in. If you are so attached to your previous culture, you have to wonder, how much do you want to fit in, or how much do you want people to accept you as you are?”

In an ideal world, the two goals would coalesce: We could be who we are, attract those of like interests and fit into a world without boundaries. But Hawai‘i is a multiethnic universe with boundaries as powerful as the sense of welcome, where the feeling of belonging and the sense of outsider-ness may occur simultaneously.

We live in a time and place in which gated communities and second homes pepper a landscape that is too costly for many locals. Our social lives are multilayered, from the kids’ soccer games (the nexus of the potluck picnic) and pro-fessional lunches to baby showers and birthday parties for cousins twice removed. We are busy at work, so store-bought food has become acceptable at some social functions, even while taking our business to Costco, instead of a mom-and-pop store, always elicits pangs of guilt. When friends visit from the Mainland, we welcome them with lei and a road mapto our favorite attractions, and if they move here, we share what we know about local customs and hope they will ease in painlessly.

That means respecting the environment and the Hawaiian culture, and knowing about things like the calabash, the bowl of plenty that appears at funerals, baby lū‘au, weddings, graduations and retirement parties. Like the large bowl of poi that Hawaiians traditionally dipped into communally, the modern-day calabash is a symbol of sharing and participation. Although non-Islanders may be baffled, even insulted, by the exchange of money at these functions, a card with a monetary offering is standard practice in Hawai‘i.

Lei protocol is also difficult to parse. I know that hala lei are not to be given to anyone running for office (considered bad luck), but I once agonized over, for an entire 45-minute drive on Kaua‘i, the sequence and timing of my pikake lei presentation to the bride, mother-of-the-bride and grandmother of the bride. Deciding when to present each lei, and in which order, consumed me, even while knowing that a lei is an offering graciously received. Though I was born in Hawai‘i, I still struggle with questions of protocol and hope, always, for mercy, should my preparation fall short.

Once, at a ceremonious gathering at a prominent hula hālau, I was the only guest without a genealogy, who did not speak Hawaiian and could not chant herself into the hall. When I blubbered, in English, the closest thing I could muster to a genealogy—“My father was born in Pāhala, Ka‘ū, my mother was born in Kukuihaele, I was born on Kaua‘i and I live on O‘ahu”—I was received with such grace, humor and generosity that I was moved to tears. In that one experience, I learned how it feels to be a “mahimahi” and kama‘āina all at once. With that one experience, I received enough aloha to last many lifetimes.

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