Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - PCC

PCC - Polynesian Cultural Center
- One of the places you just have to visit if you don't do anything else on Oahu.
- A treasure of Polynesian culture preserved in a singular location for the visitor to enjoy and to learn from.

Tuesday finally arrived.  For me, this place was the must see location on Oahu of all locations.  I know the trip was not about me and what I wanted to do, but still ... I've wanted to come here since I was in high school in Lewiston, Idaho.   We had a traveling group called the Mele Manu Entertainment Troupe come through Lewiston to perform for the community.  It was sponsored by the church and in my memory they were from the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I can find nothing about this group anywhere, so I may easily be mistaken, but regardless, that was my first experience with the people from the islands and I knew I had to see the center one day.  The troupe came through in July of 1966 - only three years after the Center opened.

I think Dad, as a Seventy, was part of the committee responsible for advertising.  My little sister Connie was outside playing with a picture (I suspect it wasn't with permission) that was supposed to be put into the local paper about the coming show and some neighbor boys grabbed it from her and tore it up.  She was absolutely heartbroken by that mean act.

Dad asked me to make a poster to advertise it.  This was long before people had printers in their homes and poster paper came in end rolls from the local paper mill so we had to cut it to size and reshape it to get rid of the rolled curve in the paper.  I remember using green pipe cleaners to give a three-dimensional feel to the palm trees I added to the poster, and I remember that cast members wanted to keep the poster, but for some reason I didn't want to give it up.  So I held on to it.  I hauled it around with me from move to move to school to marriage.  Eventually it was so battered I said goodbye and tossed it in the garbage, and always felt bad that I had not given it to the cast members. I did learn a lesson, however, and that is that anything shared is better than anything held.

We felt so honored to have some of the cast members stay with us.  Mom and Dad consented to letting us have some teenagers be our guests but I remember later hearing Mom speculate that the adults would have been more interesting (not to me, then, but I have to agree now).  The Center is celebrating its 50th year this year.  Thinking about it, I realize that it was just in its infancy when these people came from Hawaii to perform for the people in Lewiston, Idaho. 

Brent collecting our tickets from Will Call.

Niki

We were greeted by our own tour guide Niki from Samoa with seed pod leis and instructions that nobody is to put on their own lei, but to put ours on another person because we were all family.  Brent and I exchanged ours and Leo and Edna did the same.  Sweet.  Everyone there called Edna "Grandma", and we were all called "Cousins."

First stop:  Samoa

 Where the men do the cooking.

Edna, Leo, and Brent watching the show from the shade.

Coconut tree climber

Demonstration on starting fires

What they cooked:  green bananas.  Taste a little like potatoes.

After the show we learned how to weave - no, not like above.  We were given palm fronds to weave little fish toys.  Ours were so baked by the time we got home, I had to toss them.  But it was an interesting activity. 

They said it would take 16 hours to do everything they had in the cultural center.  We thought we might get back to it, but that never happened.

Next stop - the Canoe Pageant - where canoes sailed past with dancers on them from each of the different Polynesian Islands.  Unfortunately, we made it too late to find a place to sit.  The Center was very crowded the day we were there, which didn't help matters.  But what can I say?  We were one of the ones making it that way, too.

After the Canoe Pageant, I was crossing a bridge with Leo to the Tongan section.  Niki was walking with us.  She pointed to a freshly cut stump on the shore and told the story of a coconut tree that grew up and over the river there and how it had been damaged during a storm just two weeks earlier and had to be cut down.

That broke Dad's heart.  It was "his" tree and the only reason he wanted to go to the Cultural Center was to show us that tree.  It originally grew on the Hawaiian Temple grounds.   He has this picture of three of his friends standing on it before it was moved in 1962 to the Cultural Center as they were building it.

L-R:  April Hamaguchi, Kikue Kise, and Mitsuko Kaueshige. 

At that moment Dad's entire countenance changed and he became quite somber.  It was one more thing he loved about Hawaii that was gone.  But even as we arrived at the Tongan Drum Show (where we were also too late to find seats and viewed it from this angle), I wasn't aware of it.

The drums were fun to watch, but hard to stand still for.   Brent's and my feet were tiring very rapidly.  Edna sat on her walker seat, but it was hardest on Leo.

One thing became apparent:  we were not able to keep up with the tour group and we were slowing them down, too.  We decided to just break away and do our own browsing from that point on. 

Dad had talked nonstop about wanting to go on the canoe ride since we arrived.  So we decided to do that and made our way to that venue at the upper end of the Center.   I stayed with Edna and Brent went with his father.  But suddenly he really didn't want to go after all.  Because his tree was no longer growing up and over the river. 

Brent and Leo getting ready to leave on the canoe ride.

I think we all needed a little rest, so Brent kind of forced his dad to go on the ride, anyway, and Edna and I found some shade to sit and relax while they went.  It was over a half hour before they returned and several boats came and went during that time:

One of the canoes taking tourists up and down the river of the Cultural Center.  The one Brent and Leo took was not quite as crowded as this one, fortunately for them.

After they returned, we realized that it was time to walk all the way back to near the entrance for our Luau dinner so we started that direction - Brent leading, followed by Edna who kept up a fairly good pace with her walker, then Dad and me in the rear. 

By the time we made it to where the luau took place, Leo was so exhausted he was leaning backwards to the point we worried he would hit the ground.  I don't think he realized how tired he was because every time I suggested we stop and rest he insisted he was fine and kept pushing forward.  Fortunately, at the very long entrance line everyone was gracious and allowed us to push to the front.  In fact, they found seats for us center front of the stage.

Leo and Edna sporting the live flower leis they gave all of us at the dinner.  I put mine in the fridge afterwards and froze it.  Oops.  So they didn't survive until we came home.  But they were so pretty there.

Emcee of the show

Entrance of the King (center)

After the dinner, there was just time for us to make our way to the other end of the grounds where the Ha theater was.  These are just a few of the photos I snapped along the way:

Fern spores

First LDS chapel in the islands (I think)

The one show we were not allowed to take photos in was Ha.  Here are a couple of photos I copied from the PCC website just to give an idea of what the show included.

When we ordered the tickets, we assumed there would be an elevator we could take to get Mom to the bottom row.  We assumed there would be bars down the stairs she could hold onto.  We assumed we would all be sitting together, but we assumed wrong.  We ended up leaving them on a wheelchair row at the entrance, and sitting with two empty seats at our side near center stage.  They were great seats, but if we had known we would have found seats right next to where they were sitting.  We missed having them with us.

The show was a great performance. I really enjoyed it, in spite of being really tired.  It was late when we got out and had started to rain so the drive back to Honolulu was a dark wet one, with the black expanse of ocean on the left (north) of us.  At one point, however, the full moon was able to shine through the clouds and the waves on the ocean sparkled like they were covered with snow in the night.   It was so beautiful!

We finally turned to the south and went through the tunnel.  On the north side of it, heavy rains.  On the south side as we came out, light sprinkles that turned to totally dry.  That's the difference between windward and leeward, I guess.

It had been a long day and we were all ready to just tumble into bed.  But we thought it was a good day on the most part.   I want to go back, and felt bad we never did that before we returned home so I guess we're just going to have to make another trip to Hawaii - in February next time, where we stay far from the crowded beaches of Waikiki.

(Click on "Older Post" if you missed earlier days of the trip and are interested in reading about them)