KALAUPAPA WAITS ALL YEAR FOR
Barge Day
It's like Christmas in July
By Mary Adamski
Star-BulletinKALAUPAPA, Molokai -- Everyone was relieved to see the 1,080 10-pound bags of rice for Kalaupapa Store. Some people sighed with envy at Mae Malakaua's new recliner. The Rev. Nobincio Fernandez wasn't there, but his outboard motorboat was observed with interest as it was towed into town.
Nellie McCarthy waited for a headstone for the grave of her husband, Fred, who died three years ago.
Kenso Seki was expecting a few cases of beer from a Honolulu friend with PX privileges. His private stash was separate from the 525 cases of beer destined for Elaine's Bar, the only public watering hole in town.
Saturday was Barge Day. It is the one time each year that heavy freight and large items, hospital supplies, nonperishable foods and bulk paper goods are brought to the remote peninsula of Molokai.An air of excitement prevailed as most of the village turned out to watch the unloading of the floating warehouse that is a Young Brothers barge. The occasion is unique to Kalaupapa, a day that people remember like Christmases through the years.
And it is a link with the dark side of the settlement's history as a place of enforced isolation.
About half of the village residents are Hansen's disease patients who remember earlier Barge Days that were a rare link with the outside. Since mandatory quarantine was abolished 30 years ago, residents are free to travel. Arriving on daily airplane flights are visitors, fresh meat, produce and small freight.
A cargo of surprises
"Everyone is kinda secretive; they don't tell what they're getting," said Randall Watanuki, state maintenance supervisor. "They like it to be a surprise when everyone else finds out."Like every able-bodied man in the settlement, he helped move and stash government and private goods.
National Park Service employee Lucy Whiting took possession of a used Dodge Charger, one of 20 vehicles new to the colony.
"You know where it came from," she said, jokingly miming dealing cards and pulling slot machine handles, good luck in Las Vegas.
No one will fail to recognize the new vehicle of carpenter Kalawai'a Goo, new to the Park Service effort to restore the settlement's historical wooden buildings. Goo had his tools shipped in, and a little red wagon to carry them from place to place.He said he had planned to ship a car and had packed boxes of clothes, entertainment electronics and "old Army stuff." After a few weeks in the job, he unpacked most of the possessions waiting on Oahu. "This place makes you look at the things you have, and the things you don't need," Goo said. He downsized his load to tools, books and a sewing machine.
"Like everyone else, I'm here to see what people are getting," said Mike McCarten, state Department of Health administrator. "We watch what the National Park Service gets and they watch us.
"We were down to a couple of utility poles. We were that close to running out of rice," McCarten said, fingers measuring a pinch.
The bulk of the freight was on checklists for the two government agencies: vehicles, piles of lumber, utility poles, mesh fencing, tools, 96 tires, 16 mattresses, one larger sterilizer for the hospital to render its waste environmentally safe.
John Arruda was just one of the patients counting the government load with a jaundiced eye. Most of the two stoves, three washers, four dryers, nine refrigerators and four chest freezers were appliances destined for staff houses."Kalaupapa isn't for the patients anymore," Arruda said. "I had to buy my stove. I have a dryer that doesn't work, but do I get a new one? I'm here watching. Now you get workers coming in, and they get everything."
McCarten responds that providing furnished quarters is necessary for recruiting workers for the settlement.
One of the most applauded improvements in Barge Day is the delivery of the year's supply of fuel. Four Diamond Head Petroleum trucks drove off the barge and pumped 30,000 gallons of gasoline and 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel into underground tanks. In the old days, dozens of 55-gallon fuel drums littered a field near the airport.
Dean Alexander, Park Service director at Kalaupapa, said the diesel supply is a lifeline for the settlement. "The water system operates off diesel pumps. If they miscalculated, this place would be uninhabitable in a hurry."Gena Sasada miscalculated another basic supply when she started as Kalaupapa store manager three years ago. "I ordered 90 bales of rice. Mistake! We had to have it flown in. The next year I ordered 180 bales (six 10-pound bags)," she recalled as she watched a forklift push towering pallets of canned goods into the warehouse.
Only one barge now
Key to the stocking problem is that until two years ago, there were two barges per year. Also a factor, the store formerly open for patients only now serves state and federal workers.Sasada and Zilpah Kahikina, head of the kitchen that feeds state workers and prepares some "meals on wheels" for patients, bemoaned the problems of dealing with vendors who cannot grasp the once-a-year logistics. Sasada points to the only mayonnaise left from last year's load; Its expiration date read June.
Kahikina and her six-member crew contributed to the festive atmosphere, serving Hawaiian food for lunch on the store's porch. About 100 people ate, not just the work crew but residents and visitors who spent the morning watching from the sidelines.Not everything was brought in bulk. Sister Dativa Padilla looked for the spray paints and paint thinner for use by craft shop artists, items not allowed on airplanes, and for six dozen one-week candles for St. Francis Church.
Nobody's cargo was handled more attentively than Elaine Remigio's supplies for her bar. It was stacked separately, in the middle of the sea-front street. Besides the beer, 1,295 cases of soda and 300 cases of canned iced tea, Remigio got three new large refrigerators.
"People are getting older, not drinking so much . . . some died," said Remigio. Her first year in business, the annual beer order was 2,000 cases.
It was tugboat Capt. Robert Shimaoka's 27th year of landing the barge at the mooring, which is tricky because of tide and current. A dozen Young Brothers employees and the two oil company drivers joined in the unloading.
Their grand finale was to haul away a palisade of junked vehicles, rusting appliances and other debris. Also bound for Oahu was what Kalaupapa Lions Club president Clarence "Boogie" Kahilihiwa estimated was 4,000 pounds of crushed aluminum cans. He said the settlement recycles almost 100 percent of its cans. The proceeds -- $800 last year -- finance the patients' annual Christmas party.By 1 p.m., five hours after unloading began, the tug headed for the horizon.
Barge Day 1997 was history.
