Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 1, 1 January 2000 — Food fit for the gods [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Food fit for the gods

By Claire K. Hughes, Dr.PH, Dept. of H e o I t h

AMO OLELO about Wākea and Papa talks about how Papa saved her husband from destruction and describes the foods that sustained them. High in the Ko'olau mountains, above Kalihi Valley, is a peak called Kilohana that is dark with mist. It is there that the ancestral kūpua chiefs of Hawai'i lived. They built a house for themselves to pass the hot days of summer and the days of the rainy season. Papa was a mortal woman, a kūpua, known by many names: Haumea, Kameha'ikana and Papa. Wākea was also a mortal and was the husband of Papa when she was called Haumea. They

had left Kahiki a long time ago and became the parents of the Hawaiian People. Kilohana, the hill high above Kalihi Valley was their home where they gathered bananas from the uplands, yams from the soil and wild kalo that made delicious poi. They ate fresh-water 'o'opu ('o'opu moe wai) and spineless shrimp ('ōpae kala 'ole), fern root, (lau ho'i'o) of the forest, black crab ('alamihi) from the Ko'olau side, fragrant seaweed from He'eia and crab (pāpa'i). One day, Haumea looked down towards the oeean at Mōkapu and the waters of He'eia. She longed for crab and limu ffom these places and went to get some. She set out through the hala groves of Kekele. Meanwhile, Wākea went after wild bananas to eat with the seafood his wife would bring home. The chief's men from the area had noticed that fruit had been taken and pōpolo plants

broken and they were looking for the thief. These men watched as Wākea cut the bananas down. They seized and bound him and took him to the pool of Waikahalulu, where they tied him to a big tree on the north side of the pool. At that very moment, Haumea felt a sudden wave of longing for her husband and hurried home. He was nowhere to be found. She looked down the hill and saw him with his hands tied behind his back being led away. In her haste, she left behind her container of crab and limu and went after her husband. The crabs crawled into the underbrush and the seaweed crept up the trees, where both ean be found to this day. She followed along the route that her husband had been taken. Haumea was a stunning looking woman in her skirt of yellow banana leaves and wreaths of kī leaves around her head and neek.

When she reached the plaee where her husband was tied up, waiting to be burned to death, she asked permission to give him a last embrace. As soon as she did, the tree opened up, his ropes fell away, and the two disappeared into the tree. In an instant, the tree returned to its former shape. When the chief found out what had happened, he ordered his men to cut down the tree. The first to attempt it fell dead. A second man was killed in the same fashion. And so it went until they consulted a kahuna. He told them that this woman was no other than Haumea, the mysterious one who had eome from Kahiki, the woman of many bodies and of the hneage of the gods. The chief ordered that ceremonies be performed to appease the gods and the mountain dwellers returned to their home in the hills. The foods that sustained these ancestral kūpua chiefs are the same foods that our ancestors ate. They contain the mana

Waikahalulu in lush Nu'uanu, where the akua Haumea rescued her husband, is the site of the Lili'uokalani Botanical Garden. of the gods who cared for our ancestors and gave them health and strength. These are the foods that we want Hawaiians to rediscover. ■

|| | I ola nō ke kino i ka maona o ka 'ōpū. The baby enjoys bealth when the stomach is well filled.

PHOTO: SEBASTIAN ALOOT