The Value of Hawaii 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions

Kalihi Calls

KALIHI CALLS DAWN MAHI Let our children rest in a place where thousands of stories have been told. With the ocean and sky no longer a refuge, our loneliness eats up the walls, clings like thick flesh to our hearts, dragging us down. Our community— this constellation of unstrung stars, lost in place. THE BEGINNING I feel a visceral connection with the mountains of our home. Their cracks and crevices like folds in my heart, razor knuckles reaching for heaven; seeking taut liberation from the ocean, drawing down the sky. In the middle, we find our place between peaks and shoreline and beyond . During small-kid time, Hawai‘i was everything. Our island kingdom was all around everywhere and there wasn’t anything that wasn’t this. My parallel flat planet, our infinite oasis. When my family moved away, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. In geography class, a colonized map had been imprinted in my mind. Knowing, yet unknowing. With the death of my loving Hawaiian grandfather we were free to go. So my parents took us and they tried. But I came back. Not only because of all the things that everyone loves, but because I was called. The mountains in all their verdant, invaded glory, sometimes ominous, shifty, possessed by gods and ancestors; the mountains came in my dreams and brought me home. And I am privileged to be home, in the place where my grandparents were born. Mahi, Kalihi Calls 61 It took me a long time to return. Now that I’ve been back for six years, I work surrounded by mountains deep in a Ko‘olau valley. This homecoming has been so important to me in many ways because of what I’ve learned working in Kalihi. Kalihi has crystallized for me the significance of ‘äina, home, and stories, and what can happen in their absence. Kalihi is a reminder and a message about the importance of claiming and reclaiming our narratives to create the kind of future we want our great-grandchildren to enjoy. NEIGHBORS BEING NEIGHBORLY Kalihi is a densely populated immigrant community where challenges such as our high cost of living, colonization, assimilation, and discrimination make it hard to succeed alone. At Kökua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services , the community has worked towards “healing, reconciliation, and the alleviation of suffering in Kalihi Valley” for forty years. Yes, we have doctors and dentists, but also comprehensive elder programs, a youth bike shop, sewing program, a cultural café, a women’s shelter, a credit union, a 99-acre nature preserve—and more. The family-style motto of KKV—“neighbors being neighborly”—addresses Kalihi’s challenges and strengths through building strong relationships that honor culture and foster health and harmony. One of the most important ways this happens is by telling stories. Our stories come from all over, because Kalihi is like a reflection of the liquid nation, the Pacific Ocean. Chinese , Japanese, Portuguese, Marshallese, Chuukese, Filipino, Sämoan—and more. In Kalihi, aunties say: “Sämoan medicine for Sämoan illness, Western medicine for Western illness.” The Chuukese aunties, they say: “Angang chek aramas, aramas chek angang,” meaning “people are everything.” We are everything . We know who we are because of each other, our cultures, our ‘äina, and our relationships. This understanding influences everything we do. KKV started in donated trailers, led by a diverse handful of pastors and aunties going door to door, wanting to help their neighbors and build bridges across different cultures. Relationships. Not all of what we suffer from can be fixed with a prescription; we need the right medicine for the right illness. In that spirit, we seek to provide support for all of Kalihi’s stories. Being a small part of this work has meant so much to me, because the mission of KKV supports people where they are at and uplifts community strengths. I really believe in that. At KKV there is a host of aunties and uncles who look out for the community and take care of all of us. This happens through heartful listening and reciprocal sharing. The aunties and uncles hold our stories and weave them together; they describe how the breakdown 62 STORYTELLING AND COMMUNITY HEALTH in traditional systems and transition to economic-based relationships over generations has made us unwell. They seek to find a middle path: to succeed in this modern world, we need...