v
Here special events can be anything as simple as encountering a rarely seen friend, which can call for blocking traffic a few minutes if one or both are in cars, to family benchmarks such as 1st birthday, graduation or marriage which call for big parties, to prime fishing times on the bay, to paddle club events like canoe races, and every weekend there are free music performances somewhere, and a drum circle down at the nude beach. There are also numerous cultural events celebrating the practices of the many cultures endemic to the Island . This weekend one of the big events was down at our community park at Hakalau, under the highway trestle that used to be a railroad for the sugar plantaions.
For the past two years I’ve been working with the crew of volunteers cleaning up the ruins of the old Hakalau Plantation sugar mill and also creating both decorative and food producing lawns and gardens. The work started six years ago when the non-profit Basic Image brokered an agreement with the County, who had received the property in lieu of back taxes but could not afford to do anything with it, so they agreed to give maintenance responsibility to Basic Image. Basic Image is manned by a very ethnically diverse group that has fun working together for the public good. I felt welcome as soon as I joined, although I still can’t understand most of the pidgin that many of them speak. Usually we work every Friday from about 8 to 10 or 11 a.m. then have lunch together. No one keeps track exactly and no one suffers any guilt trip if they don’t get there on time or not at all. Each regular volunteer has a routine job plus major improvement jobs are organized and directed by two key people. One of them also writes grants. The county comes down to collect the full trash bags and they contract for the portable toilets. So far there is no plumbed water but it is possible that the county may provide that in the future. Sometimes the county does a little road maintenance. So I guess you could say we have a public private partnership except in this case the private expects no more personal gain than the all the public.
There has been a Basic Image event at Hakalau for three years and each has featured a couple bands, a big dinner, games for the kids, a kids surfing contest and over night camping. It usually showers overnight and is even more likely to around day break, so every Ohana (family) into camping has more than one pipe frame canopy allowing one to be used for cooking, dining and lounging and the other to shelter tents so they are less likely to get soaked. On just regular good weather weekends it can look like a village of refugees in any of the county parks.
For this event our park was expected to be packed (we had nearly 300 last year without advertizing and this year it was put in the Hilo paper’s Events page so it was estimated to have about 500 this year) so we started set up on Wednesday. A stage was assembled with its own canopy; one was set for kid’s activities, one for cooking/serving, one for registration and one to cover a portion of the audience area. Just one week ago the County gifted us with an old shipping container (with fresh paint) to store our tools and lawn mowers in and we erected a canopy with two picnic tables for the work crew and their families next to it. It was interesting to see the relaxed acceptance of how we are doing this for the public, but it was fine to reserve ourselves a nice place in it.
The set up proceeded at a leisurely pace so by the event day the flower arrangements, which at least the stage has at every Hawaiian event (we had much more), and the electric generator were about all that needed to be done. The official programmed time was 10 am till 3:30 pm, it was to be an alcohol and drug free event. There was a noxious weed information booth, a light bulb exchange and the county police even had a photo I.D. booth there. There were kids activities such as hand painting a portion of the sea wall and surfing, there was a free dinner served by a youth group that we work with, Starbucks gave away coffee, banana nut bread and juice, and free malasadas were cooked for about 3 hours by a couple from our crew. And, of course, many people went swimming at least once. Myrna and I swam twice. There was less talking this year than last from the stage as we had four excellent bands during the afternoon.
We were blessed with a dry night for camping, so Myrna and I slept well on our air bed in a tent. Unlike the “Barter Fairs” common around the Northwest Mainland, the night was quiet and a comfortable 69 degrees. The night was even mostly star lit when I awoke once. In the morning we got a good look at the sunrise around the usual offshore clouds. We were expecting to drive home for breakfast as we didn’t think others would be up as early as we usually rise, but coffee was already made when we got up and by the time I took some sunrise pictures breakfast was ready!
After eating we did some packing and then left to attend another event (more geared to the elderly). We returned in the late afternoon to find many of the crew assembled with friends eating again (they may never have stopped) so we were forced to eat again too in spite of the fact that we had just had a huge potluck lunch at the other event. By this time, although the campers from the night before had mostly left, the park had re-filled and the shallow water over the gravel bar was again full of happy kids. As it had turned out our event drew over 400 people and now, the next day, there were nearly 100 and the park still looked great – clean and green! Who needs to be rich when we can have this?
