Hurricane Iniki, Aunty P. and Sausages

Looking out over Honolulu from Punchbowl Cemetary.
Diamond Head is in the background.

On September 11th, 1992 a category 4 hurricane swept through the islands of Hawai'i - striking Kaui'i the hardest.  Hurricane Iniki took 6 lives and was the costliest hurricane to ever have hit the Hawaiian Islands.

My Mother and I arrived in Hawai'i just 5 days later from American Samoa. My mother sold some of her silver coins to purchase the plane tickets to get us there.  It broke our hearts to have to leave the rest of our family in Samoa -  my 7 younger siblings and my father.  But, we couldn't afford to purchase everyone a ticket.

The plan was that my mother and I would get jobs in Hawai'i and save up the money we earned to buy plane tickets for the rest of the family.  When we first landed in the Honolulu Airport, I quickly discovered that if I returned baggage carts to their docking stations, I could get a $0.50 refund.  I spent an hour collecting those carts as we waited for a family friend to pick us up at the airport.  I think I made a whopping $5.00. 

At first, all we could find was temporary jobs that paid very little.  On September 30th, my mother got a job with FEMA as a loan officer, processing emergency loans for victims of Hurricane Iniki and a few days later I was hired on as a credit checker. The hours were horrible.  We worked 7 days a week - 12 hours a day for nearly a month.



Charo came to the FEMA offices seeking an emergency loan to restore her restaurant on Kaui'i. 
I think they turned her down - she wasn't very happy about that.

 We stayed with our family friend, a woman we called Aunty P.  I thought she was very beautiful and noble.  My Dad said she was descended from Hawaiian Royalty - but she certainly didn't live like a princess.  She lived near Punchbowl Cemetery, at the bottom of a dead end street.  Part of her house rested on top of a hillside, the other part was supported by a dozen or so twenty foot long 6" x 6" posts.  Our house in Amouli was much nicer. 


Aunty P.


Half of Aunty P.'s house was boarded up because the floor was falling, or it was infested with bees and other vermin.  She gave us a warning about the bathroom, "don't sit on the toilet" because it was only supported by a couple of two by fours and the pipes were rusting, about to give way.  I remember peering down the holes on either side of the toilet at the concrete foundation twenty feet below and chuckling at the image that came to mind of me falling through the floor while using the bathroom.  I was deliriously tired and the idea seemed so funny to me. 

We slept beneath mosquito nets, sweating and miserable under the heavy humid air.  The air didn't seem to move at all beneath the canopy of mango trees that surrounded Aunty P.'s house.  The neighbors that lived slightly down the hill from us played Bob Marley music all night long and the scent of marijuana drifted occasionally into our room on the rare breeze that made it up the hillside.

Mom and I would wake at 5:00 am to take turns using the bathroom to shower and dress for the day.  We skipped breakfast since we didn't want to wake the rats and roaches that infested the kitchen and caught a bus into downtown Honolulu.  We'd grab a breakfast sandwich at McD's, eat cup of  Ramen noodles for lunch and then at the end of a 12 hour work day, ride the bus home at night to Aunty P.'s house.

Aunty P.'s neighborhood was old and run down.  You could hardly see the houses along the pot-hole covered street for all the trees, vines, bushes and shrubs that seemed to cover everything, including the light poles.  There wasn't much light along the street to Aunty P.'s house - so mom and I would always walk down the middle - avoiding the dark rusted cars that were abandoned alongside it. 

When we walked into the kitchen (using the side kitchen door since the living room had been boarded up), we discovered Aunty P. had left us dinner.  A rice pot bubbled away emitting a very delicious smell.  Mom removed the lid and inside we found two fat sausages laying on a bed of pristine white rice.  I have no idea what kind of sausages they were, except that it was the best tasting food I had eaten in a long time.  Everyday, I looked forward to coming home and eating those sausages at Aunty P.'s kitchen table. 

Our work schedules didn't allow us time to see much of Aunty P.  But after a long day, I would sit down at her kitchen table, which was wrapped in pink and blue floral print sticky contact paper and have a bowl of rice and a sausage, thinking life was getting better and better every day because my belly was full at the end of the day and I was happy. 

Until next time, eat well, be well and be happy.