Waipio Valley

            Yuri, one of Bobby and Ming Wei’s first interns, took me with him to do conservation work in Waipio valley. It’s a very sacred place and less than 100 people live there. They view from the look-out is absolutely breathtaking. The ‘road’ down into the valley is treacherous and steep and you must have a four-wheel-drivel vehicle to even attempt the trip.

            Yuri is part of the Agriculture group at the University of Hawaii in Hilo, and once a month or so, they make a trip down to the valley usually to work on removing invasive species, or help in some of the residents’ gardens. Four of his fellow students and I piled into his aquamarine pick-up truck and slowly made our way into the heart of the valley.

“Is your door unlocked?” Yuri asked me as we started the decent. “Yeah…” “Well, if we were to go over the side, just open you door and jump out. Oh, wait. That door is broken…role your window down. Ok, so if we go over, jump out your window and try to grab onto some guavas or something.” I’m not kidding, and neither was he.

When we got into the heart of the valley, we hiked the rest of the way to the ‘garden’ we were going to work in for the day. It was basically a patch of Taro (A Hawaiian staple root you may have eaten in the form of chips) someone had planted in the middle of the jungle, slowly being overtaken by invasive weeds. We started pulling weeds like crazy, but our efforts felt futile because every time you stood up you would see the same weeds carpeting the entire jungle floor. Weeding a jungle is a bit like counting grains of sand on a beach.

Another group of students came and we harvested the Taro, cutting of the root and separating the leaves. The agriculture group is having a big senior dinner and will be preparing the pounds and pounds of the crop; steaming the leaves and boiling the root. A soft-spoken native woman with a new born baby on her hip showed us how to properly pick the root and how to distinguish between the different varieties. Every so often she would pass her baby off on someone so she could get down in the dirt and pull some weeds. How she managed to hike up and down through the narrow trail and over multiple rivers with a new born is a mystery to me.

The reward for this mosquito-infested work was a swim in the fresh water lagoon. So refreshing; like lake Michigan in early June.  

We also hit the black sand beach on the way out. It was incredibly windy and sand was pelting us from all sides, but it was gorgeous. Yuri cut open a few of the coconuts in the back of his truck for us to drink on the way out, and we made our way up, offering rides to several exhausted hikers on the way.