Meet the Kalaupapapa residents in these personal interviews
By Lisa Asato, Ka Wai Ola

Papakōlea native Makia Malo has traveled the world: composing and performing an oli at the opening of a photo exhibit at the United Nations, acting in a Kumu Kahua play in Scotland and becoming the first Hawaiian to serve as the Western regional representative to the National Storytelling Festival in 1994. (Visitors to the Kalaupapa bookstore will find a cassette recording of some of his stories on the shelf across the cash register.)

Malo lost his sight at age 30, earned a bachelor's degree in Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai'i when he was 37, and later earned a teaching certificate. Among other things, he tells us one of his poems – by memory – about an early encounter with a highly disfigured man in Kalaupapa, when Malo was just turning 13 years old.

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Katie's Store

I walk past Katie's Store on my way to the hospital.
The dark yawning inside of the open door intrigues me.
But I hurry past, I had no money.
Yet I know beyond the door, past the dark are my favorites: Ice cream. Soda. Candy. Suddenly I see a face, an almost featureless face.
A face whose eyes show the discoloration of one blind.
A face whose nose has been flattened, ravaged, and the skin mottled with so many sores.
I saw the scars from all those sores
Over all those years that fester, then heal.
Mouth misshapen. Lips and ears eaten away.
Then it smiled, a grotesque smile.
The tears flow because I'm afraid.
Never have I seen anything so scary.
I am but a boy of 12 and not prepared.
Pili my kid brother didn't warn me.
Becca my sister, and certainly Pū'ā my oldest brother.
They couldn't have – how could they?
They forgot what it was like the first time.
I cry more tears and yet in spite of all the tears
Somehow I sensed more than knew, the smile was not to torment.
Then I felt shame.
Mama taught me always to be kind, to respect.
No make fun, No make sassy and stare.
But all these teachings give in so easily to fear.
Through the tears I look again, and this time
A swollen fingerless hand reaches out, waves, bids me in to “Come boy.”
More tears flow, more I shake.
Startled by his ghostly voice
My eyes lock onto his disfigured hand.
He knew that I was scared.
But patiently he ho'omalimali me, his voice kind, soft.
“It's alright boy, I ugly, I stay all bus' up
I wish I can look nice so you no scared me, but no can help.
I look how I look boy, can you forgive me how I look?
You know, boy, first time I come this place I look just like you – face clean, body still young and strong.
But nowadays I just come Katie's Store, drink beer.
If I stay home I only listen radio alone – ah, too lonely that.
So I think mo' bettah I come Katie's Store.
So boy, come hea. Sit down o' hea. Drink soda, ice cream, candy.”
My legs move and soon I'm sitting at the table.
My cravings for sweets stronger than my fear.
In time I learn to respect this man.
In time I learn to love this man.
And now I am doing my damnedest to bring honor not only to him
But others like us.

On disinfecting people, belongings

When patients are going to leave, the day they're going to leave they take out the suitcase and they air 'em out. But the person also has to have the clothing they're going to use that day, put 'em on hangers and they hang 'em in this airtight box. And they would put the formaldehyde in a kind of a stiff pot and put it in a one-burner stove inside of that airtight box, and then they popped it on and they let the thing build up.

So when that was fumigated, they go into the bathroom – and this bathroom we don't get access to it, it's only for this purpose. So you go in there, they give you alcohol bottle and you alcohol the whole (body) from top to the bottom, and then you put on your clothes.

And once you dress like that you're not a patient anymore; you're a parolee. And so Henry (Nalaielua) was the first. Was so interesting, I remember. Trying to think about what it was like going out from Kalaupapa being from where we were. And Henry he went up, he made a life for himself.

On medication

When I first came they had two medications. I came on a Friday, and I think was the following Monday I had to go attend this meeting down at the hospital right across the street, and we were about 12 of us. We were to be the ones that would take the third medication that was introduced in Hawai'i. And that was Promizole. And the following years when they continued to introduce more medications they took us off the ones we were taking and introduced us to the next medication, and the next, and the next.

On snipping

I remember when I had that what they call snipping. Let's say they snip you every year. They snip to see how much of the bacteria you have. They just nicked the earlobe and they took a blood sample and then they check it. And if it's negative they continue snipping you the next month. If you're negative by the time you reach five months or six months, something like that, and you pass the biopsy as well, you become a TR, a temporary release. Before that the term was parolee, but then they changed it.

On siblings in the settlement

I had three siblings in Kalaupapa. My oldest brother Pū'ā, he just passed away about 10 months ago. He was the first to be sent here. And years later he was working with a construction group that came up here. He erected these Quonset huts – there are several you can see around the town. And they were the ones that they built. He and seven others were hired by that company, and when they left Kalaupapa, he left with them. He was parolee, too. And they went out and my sister Becca went out and my kid brother Pilipili he went out from when we went to school at Hale Mōhalu in Pearl City. He went out in '53. In '56 he came back here because he reactivated again. And in the '60s he passed away.

On hiding his blindness

I didn't want people laughing at me. That's what they did to the blind. When they see the blind stumbling. You know how our hands don't feel? And I've been here, I've heard it.

Anyway, Dr. Hathaway was my doctor and every day he would come and check on me and says, “How are you Elroy?”

“Top shape, doc, top shape.”

“Yeah, you're OK?”

“Yeah, top shape, doc.”

Every day like that, and then I finally came to the point they were giving me about 30-something pills, and I was supposed to separate them and take them four times a day. And it was put in this little dinky envelope. But I'm not only blind, my hands don't feel. I'm thinking, how the hell am I going to take the pills?

When they make the pills for the blind they put them in this little jigger, this plastic cups. So the nurse came and I say, “Mrs. Bryant, you know that cup you put the pills in for the blind, can you put my pills in that?”

There was a definite pause. And then she said, “What's a matter boy, you blind?” Ho, I was done. I just sit there, I hear her running out of the room, running through the hallways. I can hear footsteps coming back. I just didn't know I was blind – I just couldn't see. I thought it was temporary. And then the footsteps come running into the room. And Dr. Hathaway is in front of her. “Elroy when this happened? One month, last night, last week, when?”

For more vignettes from Kalaupapa residents, visit Ka Wai Ola online, www.oha.org/kawaiola

(Several more Resident interviews are awaiting approvals from Kalaupapa.
They will appear here when approval is received by Ka Wai Ola.)