HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i’s new wave of storytellers.

Aloha, and welcome to the first new episode of HIKI NŌ in the 2020-2021 school year.

I’m Noelle Lo, a junior at Maui High School, speaking to you from my home in Wailuku.

In this edition of HIKI NŌ, we’ll find out how Hawaiʻi’s young people are managing life and school in the COVID-19 era through a series of Student Reflections.

We’ll see a video created by two schools on two different islands that shows us how we are all alone together.

We’ll begin celebrating HIKI NŌ’s 10th anniversary by looking back at some of the top stories from the program’s inaugural year, and we’ll meet a HIKI NŌ alumna who helped to set the bar for high-quality storytelling in that first year.

But first, I’d like to show you my Student Reflection on life and school in the era of distance learning.

I recorded this on October 13th, 2020.

Before the lockdown, I was as busy as can be, whether it be dance, school, club activities, work or hanging out with friends and family.

Then, COVID-19 hit and ever since then, I’ve been stuck at a computer all day doing virtual schooling.

I’m the type of person who constantly needs to do something, whether it be for school, the community, or for myself.

I tend to spread myself way too thin.

When COVID hit, I thought, wow, I’ll finally get a break.

But the pandemic was here for much longer than expected.

Since I’m on online school, you would think, wow, this is much easier since I’m at home.

But now I barely know the difference between work and rest at my own house.

I used to associate my house as a place to unwind and relax, but now I feel like there’s no place to escape.

Sometimes I get so anxious and restless because I feel like there’s more work to do or there’s something I forgot to do, and I haven’t seen my friends or heard from them, so I feel lost and trapped.

With no dance studio to go to, no friends to see, I had to pick myself up and take the initiative to do something, rather than just staying on a computer all day.

I coped through physical activity, especially outside, whether it be dance, walking, jogging.

As long as I was outside and moving, I felt a sense of freedom.

I felt refreshed.

I took the extra step to help myself from feeling so stuck.

Now, from Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School on Kauaʻi and Kealakehe Intermediate School on Hawaiʻi Island, here’s the amazing outcome of their long-distance video collaboration, Alone Together.

City officials urge everyone to take social distancing seriously, we here at KHON2 are taking precautions.

As you can see, we’re taking a little different shot tonight until this subsides.

Laura and I will remain at least six feet apart throughout this newscast.

We have a lot to cover as the coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve, topping us off tonight, Hawaiʻi now has ten cases of COVID-19, excluding [INDISTINCT].

It started slow.

They told us to wash our hands.

We kept our distance.

Then they told us to stay home.

And practice social distancing, and so we did.

We participated in online school.

Then, we woke up.

And started to think about this.

A week turned into two weeks, then into three, four, five, and now being talked about as a new way of life.

We watched school get closed indefinitely.

Clinging onto any hope that we will soon get to embrace the people that we love so far away from us.

People losing their jobs and the number of virus casualties escalating.

The pandemic has interrupted the schedules of millions of kids like me, like us, with questions we have that need to be answered.

When will all of this be over?

Will it last forever?

Does it have to be our darkest hour?

We started to assume the worst.

But we stood together.

The expectation for this year’s magical, but things fell out of order and it’s up to us to see the light.

By remembering the love that can travel any distance to find you.

We are apart, but this is a chance to be closer than ever.

Because when it comes time for us to go out, by the help of our teachers, friends and family, we will adapt.

We will overcome.

And hope will be written in stone.

All we need to do is figure out what kind of shot do we want.

I’m thinking maybe a wide, so they can get a wide at the end, but over all that seems good.

Ok, I’ll get started on that project right away, bye.

We opened our eyes to see that we should never take what we have for granted.

All right, welcome everybody.

So nice to see everybody back again together with each other and we are nearing the home stretch.

Happy Birthday... Now we know that even though it seems like we are alone.

We are in this, together.

Hi, I’m Lichen Forster, a senior at Waiākea High School on Hawaiʻi Island.

I’m recording this at my home in Mountain View on October 13th, 2020.

When the pandemic began to send students home, I was excited, like many of my peers, to have a break.

I was excited to watch movies, listen to music, and sleep in on weekdays.

Those were the anticipated joys, but I didn’t realize the joy I’d find in simply being home.

I finally began to experience the property that my parents had been working on for five years, and I finally learned how to milk our goats.

I’ve had so much fun getting to know their personalities and just getting to spend time with them.

These little guys were born in mid-March and I was actually there to witness it.

The biggest thing I found in this time is the ability to be gracious.

I finally realized how lucky I am to have the things I do.

I have food.

I’m healthy.

And I have a stable connection to the things around me.

Even in this confusing time, my family is really lucky to have the things that we do, and I’m finally starting to understand that.

And now, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of HIKI NŌ, coming up in February 2021, here is the first in a series of profiles on outstanding HIKI NŌ alumni.

When HIKI NŌ launched in February of 2011, I was a seventh grader at Wai‘anae Intermediate School under, uh, under media teacher Luane Higuchi.

When I think back to Crystal Cebedo as a seventh grader, I just remember her being very quiet and unsure of herself, but very eager to learn.

So you know, she picked up really quickly.

We were telling the story about, um, a teacher at Wai‘anae High School who was struggling with a really rare condition called trichotillomania, um, which is a disease that causes you to pull out your hair as an adverse reaction to stress.

I was about eight years old and actually started pulling out my eyelashes first, because I thought, you know, there’s like that legend that if you pull out your eyelash...or, if an eyelash falls out, you can make a wish on it.

And if you make a wish, hopefully it comes true.

But when eyelashes led to eyebrows, something was clearly wrong.

Trichotillomania is an impulse control disorder that causes me to pull out my hair as an adverse reaction to stress.

For my second HIKI NŌ story, which I did in the eighth grade, this was actually a story about me and my struggle to remain in control while things were happening outside of my control, such as my mother’s cancer.

And this story was really personal to me, obviously, because I was in it, and also because these were things I had never really talked about with anybody before.

Thirteen-year-old Crystal Cebedo has a list for everything.

And I still have to [INDISTINCT].

For a media producer and color-guard captain with a 4.0 GPA, everything must be neat, organized and in control.

Hey, I’m freaking Crystal Cebedo, nothing’s going to go wrong for me.

While many teenagers worry about who their next date will be, Crystal worries about who will remember to buy food for her family.

However, there are some things that lists can’t control.

My greatest concern is, you know, when I’m, I don’t know how many more years I have, you know, I have a stage four cancer.

She’s never going to see me in a graduation cap, she’s never going to see me walk across the stage, I don’t even care about how high school is anymore.

With control, I think what helped Crystal was being able to remove herself personally from the story, even though the story was about herself, you know.

I think she just focused on the job that had to be done, which is kind of phenomenal, considering what she was going through personally at home.

It was a really weird mix of feelings of just kind of sadness, you know, telling a story about such a strange time in my life and having to be super vulnerable as like a 13 year old in front of the camera.

But, also just feeling incredibly, incredibly proud because I was, because I really felt like I had a grasp on storytelling and I knew exactly how I wanted to shoot the story once I had kind of, um, gotten into the groove of it.

And then, um, shortly after its broadcasting, my mother having passed away, I think it meant that, you know, the timing of it all, meant that, after my story was told, something that I would’ve normally kept to myself, actually turned into something kind of amazing because other...my classmates who had seen the story, because it was also broadcasted at my school, and other people who had reached out to me via letters who had seen the story on HIKI NŌ, I was just met with so much, uh, so much compassion on behalf of my classmates and everyone else who had seen the story.

Even though I’d dealt with it pretty awkwardly as a teenager, I’m very grateful for it now.

When I graduated high school, I went to Menlo College which is in Atherton, California, um, and then I majored in marketing and human resources.

I just graduated this past May in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and now I actually started a photography business, which is something I never thought that I would do.

I think the biggest reason why I decided to start a photography business was kind of the freedom that it gave me and it reminds me a lot of, um, of a lot of the creative freedom that I had back in high school, actually, to just have the space to create and tell something with your own voice.

I would like to think if I met my 13-year-old self, right now, in 2020, my 13-year-old self would think I’m pretty cool.

Um, I think she’d be really proud of who I am right now.

This is Aubrey Bechard, a freshman at Kauaʻi High School in Līhu‘e, Kauaʻi.

I recorded the following reflection in my home on September 3rd, 2020.

I begin my day with a morning routine.

In short, I wake up, I get ready for the day.

I get my school supplies ready.

I take my dog on a walk, get a nice glass of water ready for myself.

After that, the last thing I do before I head to my Zoom and Google Meet classes, I like to play with my kittens.

One thing that is working well for me is being in the comfort of my own home.

One thing that’s not working well for me is being in the comfort of my own home.

With a family and with younger siblings, you get interrupted frequently.

Sometimes you have to help out your younger siblings because they’re on their own Zoom calls and they don’t know how to write the letter “H”, so that’s something that’s disrupting.

As far as teachers, I feel like our relationship has become more direct and that’s because we’re communicating and learning between a computer screen, so we’re not having the same conversations or the same moments in the classroom like we did before.

Although we are having a few glitches along the way, I feel like we’re all just learning together and that’s OK.

Continuing our celebration of ten years of HIKI NŌ, here’s a standout story by Konawaena High School on Hawaiʻi Island from Season One, dating all the way back to April of 2012.

Every Thursday, volunteers from the Kona Historical Society wake up bright and early to heat up an old-fashioned stone oven to bake Portuguese bread.

It may appear like another bread baking business, but the Kona Historical Society’s mission is to provide the community with a wealth of information preserving Kona stories.

The tradition really is how did Kona get settled and what was happening back in those days.

And most of the present-day children don’t realize or don’t know what has happened before.

And most of the people who lived in that period of time have not...passing away and we don’t have the documented traditions alive here to let people know how Kona was settled, how it was, uh, how it grew and how, what it was like in the early periods.

Recreating an authentic Portuguese stone oven proved to be a challenging but worthwhile endeavor.

It was trying to build it more like a...as close as it could be as what the Portuguese people did here back in the 1800, 1870s.

And it’s been here for five years and it’s got, uh, well, the foundation and then the brick bed for the hearth of the oven.

And there’s got two layers of lava rock, one dome of lava and then they did the second one and we pull out all the coals when the time is ready to get the oven equalizing temperature, and there’s no fire, there’s no nothing heating up the oven more than what the wood heat up during the four hours, yeah.

Aside from the usual ingredients of flour, water and eggs to make bread, the unique baking process using the stone oven gives the bread a taste that cannot be reproduced in conventional ovens.

Time, smell, how it feels, how it sounds when you tap on it, how it looks, experience, all of them.

Some people go, just, this is how long it’s gonna be in there and they leave it in there for, say, 20 minutes.

I look at it more and I might take it out at 14 minutes if it looks done because I’d rather not burn it.

And bread will continue to bake for up to half an hour after it comes out of the oven.

Its still got so much heat trapped in it that it still bakes.

So, I don’t worry too much if it’s not fully cooked the second it comes out, it does end up cooking over.

Seven dollars will buy you a loaf of one of the best breads you’ll ever taste.

If you’re ever in the Kona area, be sure to stop by the Kona Historical Society, your guide to Kona’s living history.

This is Gunner Nagata from Konawaena High School, reporting to you for HIKI NŌ.

Hi, this is Capriana Nozaki, a sixth grader at Maui Waena Intermediate School on the island of Maui.

I’m recording this at my home in Waiehu, on October 9th, 2020.

When school started again in August, Maui had more cases.

My parents and I were nervous about sending me to in-person learning, so we decided to do 100 percent online school.

The online program at my school is Acellus and had no social interaction.

All the lessons are given on the computer by video.

There are no people to talk to at all.

Plus, the lessons were getting way too easy.

I didn’t even need to listen to the video because I already knew the answers, it was also getting really lonely.

I started reading my assignments in a British accent speaking to my computer and became a talking machine, driving my dad nuts.

Now that’s when you know, you’ve reached rock bottom.

To replace my loneliness, I joined the afterschool STEM club.

It’s online, too, but we learn how to use After Effects and Final Cut Pro.

And instead of bothering my dad, I can bother my mentors and teacher.

In fact, I’m the last student to leave.

I really am desperate to have a face-to-face conversation, but for now, screen to screen will have to do.

This is Giulia Quinsaat, an eighth grader at Montessori School of Maui, on Maui.

I’m recording this at my home on October 3rd, 2020.

I dance for Hālau Kekuaokalāʻauʻalaʻiliahi under the direction of Nā Kumu Hula Haunani and ʻIliahi Paredes.

‘Īao school in Wailuku is where we have practiced for years.

During the COVID-19 Spring quarantine, the schools shut their doors.

It was a huge, difficult change from seeing my hula brothers and sisters three times a week to not seeing them at all.

I’m really close with all of the Merrie Monarch and Keiki Hula participants.

They’re like my real family.

After about a month in quarantine, we started Zoom hula.

Dancing over Zoom can be difficult for our kumus because of the lag.

It is not easy to tell if we’re doing the correct motions at the right timing, because everyone’s WiFi is at different speeds.

The music is not always in sync.

I went to every practice we had and never wanted to leave.

It was really exciting to see everyone.

Our kumu gave us time after practice to talk with each other.

We talked about what was happening in our lives at home and new things we learned at school or about our community.

We are still on Zoom hula but our hālau is hopeful that we may be able to start in-person soon.

Now, as a part of our celebration of the upcoming tenth anniversary of HIKI NŌ, let’s take a look at a feature from Maui High School about a beloved mom-and-pop business.

This story first aired on February 28th, 2011, in the very first episode of HIKI NŌ.

Since 1945, Takamiya Market in Happy Valley, just north of Wailuku, has been serving fresh meats, fish, prepared foods and smiles from this same spot.

We’re not a regular grocery store or supermarket, you know, which carries, you know, all the canned goods and you know, frozen pizzas, whatever.

We, I think, survive because of our niche and our niche is, you know, our marinated meats, our seafood, the poke area, and then the prepared foods.

These convenience items have helped Takamiya establish a loyalty among customers.

This constant flow of regulars has helped Takamiya maintain profits while other mom-and-pop stores around Hawaiʻi are closing.

Sometimes the prices are more expensive but, um, it’s OK, because the food is really good, you know.

So I know locals like quality, so if you pay a lot, you know, you’re gonna expect good quality, so that’s OK. At Takamiya, they serve quality and quantity.

They sell between four to five hundred pounds of poke every week.

They’re so successful, Takamiya is looking to expand.

Across the street, the property is about ten thousand square feet and then under the roof is about seven thousand square feet.

It gives the opportunity, you know, to grow.

Takamiya’s goal is to move the entire store into the Valley Isle Hardware building in the next few years.

He is confident he will be able to grow as a company because Takamiya understands and appreciates the local market.

His respect for the community earned Takamiya the 2010 Maui Retail Merchants of Hawai‘i, Hoʻokela Award.

Uh, Project Grad, I get the mental health, Wailuku Union.

I try not to turn away anybody asking for donations, you know, sports teams, churches, so I think that was one of the big criteria, you know, um, successful businesses that give back to the community.

Another criteria for success might be how Takamiya views competition.

While other businesses fear the intrusion of the big-box retailer, Takamiya welcomes it.

I welcome you know, uh, KMart, well, Safeway, anybody to, you know, come this neighborhood.

I think...I don’t want to be the only business in this Happy Valley area.

I mean, I wish it had more businesses you know, um, because you know, it’s not competition but then at least bring people back to Happy Valley.

This is Jasmine Feliciano for Maui High School for HIKI NŌ.

Thanks for watching the premiere episode of HIKI NŌ in the 2020-2021 school year.

Be sure to join us next week for more Student Reflections on school and life in the new normal, and more fond memories from ten years of HIKI NŌ.

Until then, here’s to good health of you and your loved ones.

A hui hou.

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