Ms. Wala’au Pepeiau

Catch up with all the news, drama’z and haps from our own Native gossip columnist’s trip to the 39th Annual Maaary Monarch Hula Festival. Manu Boyd, you have just been replaced!

Aloha everyone!

I hope that all of you have been well with your health, career, life, and lovemaking in whatever form it might be. But we actually won’t go there (I’ll save that for the nighttime XX version of UTOPIA, where I will cover such areas as lizard lovemaking and MTF dating FTM!). So anyway, let the conch shell blow and the flow of information be set upon the winds of Kona so that it may lend itself to any ear willing to accept such insidious details of what has happened over the past few months. Shall we begin our storytelling of live events, both past and present? Lets...

Well what better place to begin our story than my very own home town of Hilo, Hawai'i, where I had the chance to meet the most beautiful of faux Polynesians, none other then "The Portuguese Princess" herself, Tui Pacheco. We are brought to this special place not only for the true hospitality of the aloha spirit or the lovely landscaping adorned with such exotic greeneries or to go to that stark bareness of land mass which is in constant reinvention, but for the special event in which was deemed by our very own King David Kalakaua back in the late 1800’s to perpetuate one of our finest of arts, Ka Hula.

Well the plans to arrive in Hilo were all set for attending the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival. We were all taken care of with accommodations by Lekia’s Aunty Pua, so much mahalo’s to her. I had plans to return back to Honolulu early for "Iona" since I was booked for rehearsals, cancelling my plans to attend what would seem to be a weekend full of drama and tears and even near misses of conflict! Well as the gods so deemed, I was able to come up on that Thursday and join the halau, Keolalaulani Halau ‘Olapa o Laka, going up to Kilauea crater to offer and give respects. It was a rainy morning when I came in, but as we moved closer to the crater, the sun began to peek out from the clouds and turn into a beautiful morning. The sun soon turned into a blazing fireball which uld only rival the heat that was to follow later that evening. This was the night of the Miss Aloha Hula competition in which our girl, ’Ula Hewitt, looked oh so lovely, especially with her pa’u print that our very own Ni had designed and applied that very day, practically minutes before its debut on stage!

We arrived at the auditorium, and oh what fun we had that night! So not really knowing what was going on afterwards, I decided to stay in town with the kane at the hotel. That way it could easily lend myself to getting a taxi to the airport. As it so happened, Aunty’s house was a bit away, and I didn't want to trouble her to stay just for one night and then leave again. So I had made my choice to stay in town, but it may have been the wrong one.

Come Friday morning the halau was in an array of business so I decided to hang out with Vuni, who had also arrived here from California to live out his life dream of attending this world renown hula festival. Unfortunately, we didn't really get to meet up with the UTOPIA wahine. With no time to rest, the night was soon upon us. It was competition time for the hula kahiko—oh how the charge of energy was in the air with anticipation and the mindful maka’z waiting to see what the other halau had to offer. Sitting through 5 hours of this, no wonder the foodstand makes so much of money!

As we returned home many of us were tired and hungry, i.e. not at our best for communication! With the intent drug use of "Z’s" amongst the masses present, it made it even more edgier, and your beloved, yet bruised UTOPIA gossip columnist began to feel like I had no place here! Aue no ho’i, so I decided to stay with a friend and leave first thing in the morning since I had to work on the show that Saturday night. Well I ended up staying at the hotel anyway, and although my slight interest for what could have been a possible upset had subsided between me and that certain individual, it did not find its peace with others in that group, especially those that had to return to Aunty’s house late that night. Thus the new drama unfolds and there begins to be a separation between the two, kane vs. wahine.

It’s Saturday night and now my plans have changed once again! I decided to stay because I started to feel a certain bond between certain people, and I had a certain likeness for a certain individual in the halau (not mentioning any names, of course, in order to protect those who may be publicly thrashed by my fellow admirers, or friends as we sometimes call them). It was now hula ‘auana time, and oh how beautiful everyone looked with the sweet scent of all the different pua in the air. Each adornment was perfectly placed and had that perfect quality of complimenting what each dancer was wearing. And the kane in all their fancy modern attire with the quirkiness of comedy and their handsome smiles interlaced with the steps of the hula ’auana—that is what makes this night so fun and exciting!

Thus another night passes and everything seems to be maika’i, but little do we know that under all of this gathering of friends, family and foreigners, we should later find out at our ’Aha UTOPIA meeting that we will have to make things Pono once again and come together and really share our feelings and emotions with one another. That is what’s truly unique about our group in that we could all sit there and listen, learn, laugh and share and release, and then come back together again to what we truly are as a people of a family, as brothers and sisters here in Hawai‘i, for we are UTOPIA!!!

Aloha everyone and remember there are 3 things I love most, and that is Family, Friends and Food...