Reflections on Voyaging and Home

Nainoa Thompson - from an interview with Sam Low

En route to Rapa Nui, October 1

I began to think about that. I reflected back on the history of mankind. How many people have been to this particular spot in the South Pacific? Very few, I bet. When I think about my normal life in Hawaii, I see myself going around in a circle of freeways and highways. So much time spent on narrow cement and tar paths and so little in the special places in our mountains and seas, learning to find ways to appreciate them and love them and care for them. I thought, "We are out here being literally held up and support by this canoe in this place that very few people have ever visited," and that thought provoked powerful emotions.

Think about our technology - about the Hubble telescope and those on the top of Mauna Kea. They are looking at history through a time machine because it takes light so much time to travel through space. They are now looking at events that are a billion light years away - a billion light years back in time. And yet they have found no other planet that has life as we know it. I remember asking Lacy Veach, the astronaut from Hawai'i, "What is the next planet that we are going to visit?" He said, "Oh brother, we've got some severe physical problems to solve to get to the next planet. In the space shuttle it would take 200,000 years to get there and 200,000 years to get back."

And so, if we consider Hawaii to be a very small island within this ocean, Planet Earth is a small, small island surrounded by an ocean of space. Evenings like last night give you an idea of how lucky we are to be live. And yet, at the same token, considering how rapidly our population is growing, we have some very difficult choices to make in the next generation. Are we, or are we not, going to be caring stewards of our planet? If we don't care for it, the only place that we know can hold life as we know it will be destroyed.

Look at Pitcairn Island. Some might think of it as a place where people have nothing, a place where they would never be able to live. And yet, I can't remember in recent times when I have been in a community that seemed so civilized. Civilized! They cared for each other. They cared for us. They live with very little in a material sense but they seemed so rich. There was peace in their homes. The doors were never locked. It was a place without the kind of entertainment madness that we feel we have to have in our lives to be civilized.

I am sorry that we had to leave. I could have learned a lot from those people. They didn't know we were coming and they only had an hour to prepare, but what a beautiful meal thy gave us. They were only 42 people and we were 19 and yet they could have fed 100 people. They called everyone up on the VHF radio. It cost nothing to make the call. They took food from their gardens. it cost nothing. The whole set of values that are driven by our modern economic world didn't matter there. For me, it was a great relief to be without that economic pressure. It was just so peaceful - quietly peaceful - walking in their forests along dirt roads.

At the dinner they sang for us. It wasn't a performance, - it was an opportunity to be family together. The kids sang. The grandparents sang. And it was beautiful.

Because this voyage has enriched our lives so much there is an obligation on the part of everyone on the canoe to return to the special place where we live and to try to do something to help improve the lives of those care about. Ben Tamura, our doctor, put it so clearly when he said: "I was trained in Western medicine to treat disease, but being on this canoe and with this caring group of people, I recognized that the definition of health is much more than repairing broken bones or transplanting hearts - its about self worth, self-esteem, about how you feel about yourself. Now, when I look at a patient, I'm not just looking as someone with a physical problem - I'm looking at a human being - and I want to know how they feel emotionally and spiritually and to integrate that into the process of care-giving." That to me is one indication of how the canoe can help enrich a person's life and his ability to help the community in which he lives. That's a lesson we can take home with us.

You might think that I allow myself to think about issues other than navigation that it would be a distraction, but in reality I always think about home because this voyage is a stepping stone to returning home. How we share this voyage is important because it helps us shape those programs we want to develop at home.

Look at the people on the canoe. Look at Chad. He's not just a sailor - he's not just a navigator - he's passionate about this canoe and what it represents. Take the voyaging canoe and erase it from his life and tell me who is going to be left in that skeleton. Voyaging is who he is and voyaging is defined by his participation in it. People like Chad have to be with children in the program because that's how passion is transmitted. Look at Bruce. He's key to the success of our ocean education program. It's much more than his competence as an ocean person - it's his values.

Our challenge when we get home is to take the realizations and the values that we have learned on this voyage and others to help find a new vision for taking care of each other and for caring for the special place where we live and for enriching the lives of our people. It's about asking a key question of everyone in Hawaii." Why is Hawaii so special and how can we create ways so that everyone can participate in their own way to take care of these special quantities. Can we help educate our people, especially our children, to find a way to take responsibility for each other and for our planet because it's a wonderful thing to do - because it's full of aloha and we want to be that way - and because then Hawaii will be a better place. That's the goal of a program called Malama Hawaii that we are developing.

In February of 1995 a good friend of mine, Holly Henderson, came to me and said, "We have eighteen school children and we want to put together a visioning process so they can define their future." It was the same visioning process that we use to plan a voyage - where do we want to go, how do we prepare to get there.

So the kids came down to where Hawai'iloa was being built and we went into this shed. We sat down. The kids were very standoffish: they didn't want to talk. But we started to talk about a vision for Hawaii's future. I didn't have any answers but I had questions so I asked the kids:"How many of you are born and raised in Hawaii?" Seventeen out of the eighteen were born and raised in Hawaii. I said, "How many of you are going to stay and live here in Hawaii?" They kind of slowly raised their hands. They were shy. Seventeen of the kids raised their hands; they were going to stay in Hawaii. I asked the one girl who didn't raise her hand where she was going to live. "No. no," she said, "I am going to live in Hawaii but I am going to travel and see the world first." In the end, there was consensus -- all eighteen were going to live here.

So then I asked, "Why? Why would you pick this small little place - this small speck of land - when you have all these other choices? What makes this place so special?" And they answered - "the culture" - "family" - "it's a beautiful place" - and they had a whole laundry list of things that they all agreed on. Then I asked, "How many of you want to have children?" Now they were all participating. They all raised their hands. Then I asked, "Where do you want you children to live?" Without hesitation they all told me that they wanted their children to live in Hawaii. Then I asked, "Why?". And they told me they wanted all those things that were special about Hawaii for their future children. "How do you know," I asked, "that in twenty years that those things that you consider special are still going to be here?" At first they all raised their hands but when they really disgested the question every single one of them put their hands down. In the end, there was not a single hand up. No one could answer that question.

It was the most uncomfortable moment of silence that I can remember. We all sat there, looking at each other, without an answer to a fundamental question that seemed so powerfully important to the future of our children. That was the defining moment for me. I recognized that I have to participate in answering that question otherwise I am not taking responsibility for the place I love and the people I love. That was the genesis of Malama Hawaii, recognizing that we as a society have to hold caring as a high value otherwise it is not going to happen. We will take and not give back and we will end up destroying our islands - the most important part of our lives. We will do that because we are doing it to the planet right now. Hawaii's lifestyle - that we so much enjoy - is purchased somewhere else. What happens when there is no other place left to give us these things? I do not have the answers, but I know that I must participate in trying to find them. All of these thoughts came from being with those kids, from the very uncomfortable silence that we experienced.

The genesis of our new educational program which we call Malama Hawaii is recognizing that there are values that we must hold because they give life great meaning. The values of caring for each other and our planet, of sharing our wealth with each other, of taking responsibility for our actions because if we don't do that we will end up just taking instead of giving and we will destroy the island home we hold so dear.