[ Natural History ] [ Arts & Culture ]
[ Braddah-Nics ] [ Local Grinds ] [ Spotlight On ]

Natural History

'Awapuhi Kuahiwi, Wild Ginger
(Zingiber zerumbet)

The gingers, called 'awapuhi in Hawaiian, are part of the Zingiberaceae (ginger) family which has over 1,300 species growing in the tropics of the Old World. Along the rainy, windward side of all the islands, the wild ginger (Zingiber zerumbet) grows in warm, moist, shaded nooks along the roadsides. The plants, usually two to three feet high, have wavy-edged leaves that resemble narrow ti leaves arranged alternately along a gently curving stalk.
Among the taller leaf stalks, shorter stems, about one foot tall, peek through, topped by flower bracts that look like reddish-green closed pinecones. Tiny flowers poke out from the overlapping petal-like leaves of the bracts. These flowers may be papery white, orange or yellow.

Native to the vast area between the Himalayas southward to Sri Lanka and eastward through the Malaysian-Indonesian archipelago, the plants have naturalized eastward throughout Polynesia, distributed by migrating peoples.

The 'awapuhi has a thick, prostrate rootstock called a "rhizome" from which the stalks ascend. The roots grow so thickly that they can form a continuous groundcover in areas with a great deal of moisture.

These gingers have been called "shampoo" ginger. Native women have squeezed the viscous, aromatic liquid out of the flower heads and strained it through natural fibers for use as a natural shampoo and conditioner. The gingery liquid could be used to quench thirst and was often added to massage oils as well.

The leaves of the plants have traditionally been used to flavor meats and fish while they baked in the underground imu ovens. Fresh ginger leaves were placed in the imu to provide a layer of moist protection from the red-hot stones so the prepared pig or fish would cook without burning. The leaves were often preferred over the more readily available leaves of ti or banana.

Women sliced, dried and pulverized the roots, adding the scented powder to large calabashes filled with kapa or using the powder in medicinal preparations for a variety of ailments, including indigestion and motion sickness.

An infusion of the underground stems of shampoo ginger mixed with water was used for stomach ache. A similar infusion mixed with salt was applied when there was an injury from a bump to the head. The same infusion-salt mixturem with the addition of a small amount of urine from a child was applied to skin for ring worm. Ashes from the leaves were mixed with ashes of bamboo and the sap of young kukui fruits and applied to cuts and skin sores. Sprains were treated with a mixture of 'awapuhi and 'ili'ehe roots ground with the fruit of the noni. Biting down on a piece of heated ginger root helped to ease the ache of a lost tooth.

Stands of the plants are often found on abandoned taro terraces near old Hawaiian village sites, along with other useful plants like the kukui, breadfruit and mountain apple trees.

The old proverb goes, 'Awapuhi lau pala wala, "It is a ginger leaf; it withers quickly." Luxuriant ginger leaves with its many leaflets do turn yellow fast, but new ones are always sprouting too. They remind us of the transience and the continuity of Life itself.

[ Top ]

Arts & Culture

You Get The Rice And I'll Get The Toilet Paper....

People who have not grown up in the islands are often bemused and bewildered by the seemingly knee-jerk reactions of local folks who race through grocery stores piling up a stash of super-large bags of rice, plastic-wrapped packs of Spam, canned corned beef and Vienna sausage, and armloads of toilet paper mega-packs whenever there's even a rumor of a dock strike. Savvy locals joke about it, but, even the ones who have learned to control the urge to merge with the rest of the Spam Brigade in an orgy of strike preparations experience a visceral moment of discomfort.

Local historians and storytellers are likely to say this custom of frenzied panic-hoarding dates from the shipping strike of 1949. Of all the strikes in Hawaii's history, the ILWU's longshoreman's dock strike, which lasted for 177 days, nearly six months, is certainly the best remembered. The ILWU had gained a foothold on the docks after the National Labor Relations Act cleared the way for workers to organize in the late 1930's.

World War II slowed the efforts of union organizers, but once the war was done, there was an all-out effort to unionize the sugar plantation workers. The fledgling union had a number of small successes that built to a crescendo in 1946 with the first territory-wide, industry-wide strike by sugar workers against the sugar plantations that overturned the old paternalistic rule of the planters over their workers and changed the relationship between the workers and plantation owners forever.

Then, on May 1, 1949, the ILWU's longshoremen struck over the waterfront employers' refusal to grant a 32-cent wage increase. (At the time the longshoremen in Hawaii were earning $1.40 an hour. Longshoremen on the West Coast were earning 42 cents more per hour than their Hawaii brethren.)

Hawaii employers offered a 12-cent increase and refused to consider arbitration. The longshoremen walked out and refused to return to work, leaving ships full of cargo tied up at Kahului Harbor. In a parallel strike, employees of the merchandising department of Kahului Railroad who had been negotiating locally with the firm for much smaller wage increases also walked out and goods already delivered to the island were locked up inside the Kahului Railroad stores as the employees picketed outside.

As the strike continued, Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company, the largest sugar plantation on the island, was forced to stop work in the fields because their local warehouses were full of thousands of tons of raw sugar that could not go out on the ships to mainland refineries. The sugar cane left unharvested in the fields rotted.

On a smaller scale, the pineapple companies and other agricultural businesses were also affected by the strike. They, too, cut back on worker hours.

The majority of the affected workers lived from paycheck to paycheck and with no paycheck coming in, there was no money for the goods that were still available. In any case, the shelves of the stores and warehouses were running out of staples, foodstuffs and other necessities of life.
By mid-June many of the smaller businesses were in trouble. A June 18, 1949, Maui News survey of 42 Maui businesses showed that business had dropped sharply. Decreases in sales as high as 85 percent were reported, and members of the Retail Board of the Maui County Chamber of Commerce set up a procedure to handle creditors who were not meeting their monthly bills.

Unemployment was already a problem in Hawaii before the strike. Regional ILWU director Jack Hall was pleading with the Legislature for immediate action to alleviate unemployment before the longshoremen walked out. The employment situation got steadily worse as the strike progressed.

During the months of the strike, the Maui News kept Maui residents informed about the latest developments in the strike as well as the effects of the strike on the community.

In late June, for example, the paper ran a story about the discovery by members of the Maui Women's Clubs who visited various old folks' homes around the island, that the residents of the homes had been without rice for over two weeks. The ladies set up a rice collection drive, gathering cups of rice from their own larders and from their friends for the inmates of the Piihana Chinese Old Men's Home.
A series of letters from the children of strikers who were upset about the strike's effect on their lives was published in the newspaper. One little girl whose family frequented the strike kitchen set up by the union complained that she was getting tired of eating nothing but "turtle and cabbage, cabbage and turtle."

About the strike the Maui News wrote, "Just 2,000 members of the ILWU, the great portion of whom are aliens and not citizens of the United States, have succeeded in isolating this Territory from the rest of the world."

Maui News editor Ezra Crane was particularly irate when a relief ship with nearly 1,000 tons of food aboard was left sitting at the dock for several hours on July 30, 1949, due, he said, "to the bickering of local ILWU officials" despite the fact that the unloading of the ship had already been approved by union officials. By then the two largest wholesalers on the island, MDG and Kahului Store, were nearly empty and hours were being cut at Maui Dry Goods. The strike was affecting everybody adversely.

At the urging of the ILWU, a meeting of the Maui County Democratic Party central committee was called on the pretext of planning the 1950 election campaign. However, the meeting turned out to be for the purpose of "forcing through" a motion asking the Territorial legislature, which was called to a special session in July, to pass a law requiring settlement of the waterfront strike by arbitration.

Instead, the legislature passed the Dock Seizure Bill. Though the ILWU called the law unconstitutional and ordered its men not to work for the Territory and sent word to the West Coast not to unload the ships from Hawaii, the Territory went ahead. Unemployed workers lined up to become stevedores on docks now run by the Territory of Hawaii. In Kahului, men began to unload the SS Steel Architect and then filled it with pineapple for the East Coast.

Dock operations by the Territory did not succeed in busting the strike. Ultimately, the strike was settled on the bargaining table. While companies and individuals struggled to pay their bills, the union leaders and employers continued to negotiate. Finally, in October, a settlement was reached. The workers would receive 14 cents on return to work and 7 cents payable on March 1, 1950.
It was not exactly an unadulterated victory for the union, but the strike that showed the very real power of united action by a relatively small group of workers ended on October 23, 1949. By then millions of dollars had been lost, many businesses had gone belly-up and the entire Territory suffered through a long spell of "making do."

[ Top ]

Braddah-Nics Lexicon

STANDARD: Hmmm. Is it a mid-life crisis, do you think?
BRADDAH-NICS: Whatchufiggah? Da buggah stay feelin' makule or what?

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: As long as the quality is acceptable, it should be fine.
BRADDAH-NICS: So long you fin' good kine, 'nuff.

* * * * * * * *

STANDARD: I know this may be a hardship for you, so I understand if it can't happen. Still, it would be a good thing if it did.
BRADDAH-NICS: If no can, ne' min', but SOME GOOD if can!
 

[ Top ]

Local Grinds

Baked Fish In Corn Husks

Ingredients:

Procedure:

Salt corn husks thoroughly inside and out. Wrap individual fish in salted husks, and place in roasting pan.
Add 2-3 cups water to bottom of pan. Bake in pre-heated oven at 500 degrees for 15-20 minute. Baste occasionally to keep fish moist.

 [ Top ]

Spotlight On…

Lanai

Nine miles across 'Au'au Channel from west Maui, sits the oyster-shell shape of tiny Lanai. Formed by a single volcano rising to 3,370 feet, it is Hawaii's sixth largest island. Steep, eroded valleys fall away to the east from a central rolling tableland, where the island's only town perches, and to the west, high cliffs drop away to the sea.

The island is all orange-red dirt, and ancient lava, with traces of the remote Hawaiian past -- a large field of petroglyphs (pictographs etched in stone) as well as several smaller ones, temple sites, an awesome cliff once used as a testing ground for warriors who jumped off the edge into the sea, and the ruins of an old Hawaiian village -- still visible throughout the island.

The island is 13 miles wide and 18 miles long and most of its nearly 140 square miles is owned by Castle and Cook, the company that owns Dole Pineapple.

There is a lookout at Lanaihale summit above Lanai City, where you can see five of Hawaii's other islands -- every island except Kauai and Niihau. Along the Munro Trail, a jeep road and hiking trail that winds up through Norfolk pine forests planted by New Zealand naturalist George C. Munro, there is an overlook above Hauola Gulch, Lanai's deepest gorge, which drops 2,000 feet down to sea level on the island's east coast.

[ Top ]