A weekend with the Protect Kaho'olawe Ohana

entry one

Here's my account of our wonderful trip to the island of Koho’olawe. I was honoured to be included in this access and I am extremely grateful for the generosity shown by the Protect Koho’olawe Ohana (PKO), and for the many new friends I’ve made. This web-log entry is the most difficult one I’ve written so far; I will struggle for words to describe how I felt and what I saw, and I haven’t the ability to bring it to life for you properly. I hope the pictures and the diary excerpts will help to illustrate the journey. I am extremely happy to be able to share this with you!

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We are waiting on the Southern edge of Maui for our ride with the PKO – waiting to meet the Kua who will be guiding us on our trip. The weather is dark and stormy and so tomorrow’s boat ride will be choppy, if not cancelled.

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Awake at 4am on Uncle Bobby’s front lawn. Much anticipation in the party as the first boat leaves at 5am with the Kua and all the supplies. We wait and watch the sun come up on Kaho’olawe across the water; our bags are packed inside two large plastic bags sealed with duct tape. No one knows what to expect and we are anxious to be underway. We share jokes, we are watching turtles and eels swim by in the clear water at the end of Uncle Bobby’s garden. Kaho’olawe is dark red and green in the daybreak

The boat arrives! All the bags are carried, floating, into the water. We swim out to the waiting boat and form a human chain, treading-water, and pass items one to another into the arms of the boatmen above us.

Kaho’olawe nestles in the waters off Maui. Look on a map and find it, you will see it there on the South of Maui, and notice how its position is central to the chain. You can see more islands from here than from any other place in the State, and the trained eye can see ocean currents called Kealakahiki, which would set a canoe on its way to Tahiti. Our crossing to the island, on a boat belonging to a local fisherman (Uncle Bobby), was fine after all:

We see a dolphin beyond our prow! We have to sing a chant to be received nonto the island and we do this urgently when the ridged inflatable boat arrives to meet the fishing boat, the job of getting ashore is at hand.

He haki nu’anu’a nei kai
'O awa ana’i uka
Pehea hiki aku ai
'O ka leo
Mai pa’a o ka leo

Here the sea is rough and crashing
Echoing into the uplands
Where shall we come to you on the shore?
Don’t lose voice
Please don’t lose the voice

We disembarked the second boat about forty metres offshore and all the bags were thrown into the water. Again we ferried them by hand to the beach; it was harder this time because of the strong surf and rocky seabed. The island is barren and after a while spent rigging the kitchen area we come together to get oriented. Somebody passes around a folder containing photographic examples of some of the unexploded ordnance still on the island.

The PKO who hosted us on this access have battled to secure access to this island since The State of Hawai’i ceded it to exclusive US military control in the Fifties. The navy proceeded to use the land as a bombing range to test the gamut of world military hardware. Brave souls occupied the island whilst bombardment continued in the seventies, and lives were lost in the struggle. Now the land is broken, the water lens cracked, meaning that serious erosion occurs constantly, and no fresh water collects in aquifers now brackish since the bombings. Hawai’ian buildings were used as targets and now lie in pieces. It is hard to overstate the insensitivity and outrageousness of the use of Kaho’olawe by Europeans and Americans.

Amazingly, after a good lunch of noodle stir fry we get up and work hard on the garden. We clear around the hale and the hula pa, extending the pathways and the edge of the camp. This is an energetic, enthusiastic, ecstatic afternoon.
John takes us on a walk to bathe in the sea. The surf is high and we play. A girl gets a Portuguese Man-o-War wrapped around her body, so some of us get out of the water.


Our visit was organised through the School of Architecture, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, with Ellen arranging for me to join the group. There were about fifty including those from other University departments, many of whom had been before, most of us were students, many were Hawai’ian, more were not. On the first evening I wandered to bed straight after dinner which meant I missed the group introduction and Ellen had to speak for me. Whatever she said, it was good, and better than anything I could have said. I struggled to find a reason why I had come here, and it was a question which came to be important, but on that first night I had a very strong feeling that I ought to be at home, looking after the rest of my own family, and not here in this land across the oceans.