HIKI NŌ, Hawaiʻi’s new wave of storytellers.

Aloha and welcome to this week’s episode of HIKI NŌ, Hawaiʻi’s new wave of storytellers.

I’m Taylor McCann, a junior at Waiākea High School on Hawaiʻi Island, speaking to you from my home in Hilo.

In this edition of HIKI NŌ, we’ll see how Hawaiʻi students are dealing with life in the pandemic as we navigate our way through the second semester of the 2020-2021 school year.

We’ll continue celebrating HIKI NŌ’s 10th anniversary by looking back at some of the landmark stories from the program’s early years and we’ll meet a non-profit fundraising specialist and first-time mom who began her HIKI NŌ career in one of the very first episodes.

But first, here is my Student Reflection on how COVID-19 impacted the life of someone very close to me.

I recorded it on November 4th, 2020.

I’m Taylor McCann, a junior at Waiākea High School coming to you from my home in Hilo, Hawaiʻi.

Juggling my school life and home life during the pandemic has proven to be a struggle.

Up until two months ago, I was able to keep my head afloat during all of this until my dad’s business, Volcano House, was forced to close down indefinitely.

In order to continue to provide for our family, he was temporarily transferred across the country to work at another National Park in Maine.

Coronavirus numbers are much more threatening on the Mainland, which gives me anxiety about his health and safety.

Hopping around multiple major airports puts him in contact with millions of different people.

I know he’s taking precautions during his travels, but there’s no way for me to know if those around him are taking the pandemic seriously.

Thinking about him getting sick while he’s so far from our family really stresses me out.

Thankfully, I can rely on my access to technology like Skype, email, and Zoom to stay in touch with him and how he’s holding up.

In the past few weeks, he has since been transferred again to the West Coast and ever since, I’ve been counting down the days until he is able to make it back home to me and my family safely.

This is Taylor McCann from Waiakea High School for HIKI NŌ.

Aloha, I’m Ethan Morse, a senior at Farrington High School, and I recorded the following reflection on November 1st, 2020.

My name is Ethan and I’m a senior in high school and honestly, at first, it didn’t seem too bad.

But eventually, quarantine got to me.

I soon started to experience emotional turmoil between slight depression, anxiety and lack of inspiration.

I started to lose motivation for work, whether it was for my personal stuff or for school.

Due to quarantine, I’d lost the ability to make wonderful memories with my friends and make the most out of my senior year.

I just really miss being in their presence.

They pushed me to become a better person and strive to reach my goals.

They’re one of my biggest motivators, but COVID has brought unexpected feelings of isolation.

No one was prepared for it.

No one thought it would last that long or that we would start missing seeing our friends and actually hanging out with them.

Before this pandemic, we would always hang out and goof around, talk about our future plans and just give each other moral support when we needed it.

I wish I had the chance to experience my senior year with those who not only were my friends, but in time, became family.

Those who were with me from the start and made my life bright.

Honestly, I never truly realized the importance of those little moments of joy I had until it was gone.

And now, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of HIKI NŌ coming up at the end of this month, here’s the sixth installment in a series of profiles on outstanding HIKI NŌ alumni.

I remember my teacher, Mrs. Murikami, telling us about this opportunity to host HIKI NŌ, and I remember me and my classmates telling her that, um, we would love to do it and we would love to, um, go to PBS Hawaiʻi and participate and see ourselves on TV.

Our first story takes us to the Westside of O‘ahu, where students from Wai‘anae...before we introduce our first story...respect for the environment touched on by the students at...

I remember stepping into PBS Hawaiʻi thinking that one day I want to work here.

I do remember thinking it was, like, impossible, like I just thought it was so cool, like there was no way I could ever work here.

Aloha, I’m Jenalyn Ramos.

I’m Angelica Badua.

I’m Karen Cayme.

And I’m Aaron Pudiquet.

When Waipahu High School was a home base school for HIKI NŌ, I remember thinking, man, this is hard.

This is harder than I thought.

This is not easy, but being trained by professionals, I just thought, like, we should get more credit for this in class because this is not easy.

It’s not just your usual class project, it’s for the whole community to see, my mom’s gonna see this on TV.

“From China With Love” was basically about the two teachers who are trying to adopt from China.

I interviewed the teachers.

I was a writer and editor, but it was a team effort.

Being the interviewer, I learned that, um, storytelling can be hard but it’s possible.

Um, you have to think of it as not just a project, but also an experience to understand other people and what they’re going through in life.

Revisions were probably one of the hardest parts.

I remember almost giving up, um, I remember stressing out, I remember thinking, oh, it’s never going to be good enough for PBS.

I wanted to give up, but, um, we pulled through and finished the project.

This is Karen Cayme reporting from Waipahu High School for HIKI NŌ.

During college, I found a production technician job position here at PBS Hawaiʻi, so I challenged myself to apply and take the job just to get more experience in the professional world.

The biggest skill that I learned from HIKI NŌ that I was able to transfer into becoming a production technician, um, was probably professionalism.

But trying to battle college and work wasn’t really working out for me, so, I did leave PBS for about a year, and then a year later or so, I wanted to come back to PBS Hawaiʻi but I couldn’t come back as a student production technician anymore, so, at the time, Advancement was hiring a position.

Advancement is the fundraising department and it’s not production, it’s not like HIKI NŌ or being in the studio all the time, it’s behind the scenes of all that basically.

Because of Advancement, HIKI NŌ can continue and everything else that we do here at PBS.

I love what PBS Hawaiʻi represents, um, I love what we believe in and that’s representing the community, representing the state and our cultures, and that’s one of the biggest things that I love about being here.

On August 14th, 2020, um, I gave birth to my baby girl, Alana-Belle Mason.

Um, I’m 26 years old and now I’m a mother and I’m still working at PBS Hawaiʻi.

It’s not just work that I have to focus on, but also being a mom.

It’s made me a better person.

It motivates me every single day to do my best.

If my 16-year-old self was to look at me now, I would think that, wow, she’s come a long way.

I want to be like her.

This is Cameron Culver in the 11th grade at Maui High School.

I recorded the following reflection on December 16th, 2020 at my home.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I wasn’t exactly the happiest in the world, but I was content with life.

Sometimes I’d have family events that would arise and cause me to feel stressed or overwhelmed.

However, I found joy in the little things such as drawing, reading, and writing.

I also love to hang out with my friends.

So, when I heard that we were going to have to start quarantining for a few weeks, I was feeling pretty nervous, but I was also kind of excited.

I was nervous because I felt that I wouldn’t be able to see as many people anymore, but I was happy because I really wanted a break.

I was both right and wrong.

I was right in the sense I wasn’t able to see my friends anymore, but I was wrong because quarantine was not a break, it was more of a lockdown.

I would become stressed and overwhelmed and I would find myself becoming unmotivated and lying in bed, not being able to move.

I would grow anxious over everything and angry at the smallest things, such as a bird tweeting too loud or my grandpa walking too slow.

I decided that I needed an attitude change and started by distracting my mind with things that I loved to do.

I would spend hours a day drawing, listening to music, and not giving myself enough time to focus on the bad things in the world.

And even though I’m not as great as I was before it started, I’m better than I was when it began, and that’s a beginning.

Continuing the celebration of 10 years of HIKI NŌ, here’s a story from Season One by students at Hāna School in East Maui.

It was the first of many stories on how the depletion of natural resources impacts the lives of Native Hawaiians.

According to Alan Murakami, litigation director for the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, an average of 166 million gallons of water is being diverted from East Maui every day to the more populated and developed parts of this island for their drinking and irrigating purposes.

The loss of valuable water creates a problem for the people of East Maui.

Many of them depend on the water for their livelihood.

When I was a kid, I just, I would help my mom and dad in the taro patch.

I had to go and pull the taro, cut the taro, cook it, clean it, and pound it.

Having that responsibility, um, made me feel good inside.

We would play on the banks, this banks, around the taro patches, and then we would run, and I would just jump into the taro patch, just jump into the mud, it was a lot of fun.

We think about water and what it does to the land.

It gives life to the land and that’s what Kāne does, and so if we don’t have that water, and we don’t have that reproduction, then there’s no life.

So, it’s very, very important to Hawaiian culture.

To have all that water, to have all that life in the stream, and then all of a sudden, no life, because before it was like we would catch um, goldfish or ‘o‘opu, ōpae, and then when all the water was taken and depleted from the river, um, we didn’t have anymore.

Water flow into the ocean is very important.

That’s like an estuary, where the fresh water meets the ocean is where all the fish come to breed because the river brings down all the nutrients that feeds the limu, so that starts the whole cycle of life for the ocean.

So, if you take that away, you’re gonna greatly reduce your fish populations.

Now we’re not able to sustain ourselves in the natural way anymore.

What would make me happy is when I stand on the lookout and see all the taro open, the taro patches, the way it used to be.

So, right now it’s all grass, so, but I’d be really happy if somebody opened it.

The people of East Maui have hope for the future but where would they be without the most basic element of life, like their ancestors, the question is still being asked, where are the waters of Kāne?

This is Jora Tolentino-Smith from Hāna K-12 School for HIKI NŌ.

Hello, this is Isabel Leung, a seventh grader at Moanalua Middle School on Oʻahu.

I recorded the following reflection on January 15th, 2021.

My dad is in the military.

Sometimes when your parent is in the military, you have to do some things you don’t exactly want to do, like, moving, making new friends when you move, and having to deal with your parent getting deployed.

My dad has been deployed before, to Kuwait, for a year.

I remember that I got to talk to him all the time, and he came home to see us on holidays.

It was still hard for my family, though.

I went from seeing him every day to not seeing him in person for months on end.

Now he’s deployed again, but this time, it’s a little different.

Since the coronavirus hit worldwide, countries have tightened their restrictions for travel.

Where he is deployed, he can’t come home to see us at all, and I can’t talk to him as much because he’s working a lot.

It is like last time he was deployed except instead of seeing him every couple months and talking to him every other day, I talk to him maybe once a week and I may not be able to see him until he comes back for good.

However, something that has helped me is making care packages for him.

I like going shopping for him and imagining how happy he might feel by receiving what I picked out for him.

That way, for just a second, it makes me forget he is so far away.

It also helps to occupy my time during all the pandemic restrictions.

I may not be able to see him every day, but I know now that with my family at my side, I will be able to get through this.

Continuing our celebration of 10 years of HIKI NŌ, here is a story from Mid-Pacific on Oʻahu, it’s an early example of how well thought-out dramatic structure can result in a highly compelling story.

I discovered early on as a young boy that I love to paint, I love to draw, and so that was sort of like my way to lose myself into my own little world.

Wayne Gabaylo is a self-taught street artist who performs in Waikiki.

Art in Motion, as he calls it, incorporates music, dancing and audience participation to keep the crowd entertained.

A key feature of his style is that it looks like a chaotic mess of flying paint, ripped up newspaper and bottle caps.

It looks like something any child could do until the final product is revealed.

Wayne and his brother started out in entertainment as a juggling act, but as a painter, he got his idea for a show while observing a bartender flipping bottles while making drinks.

Then, right there, the lightbulb went up, oh, maybe I should do a show while I’m painting.

Wayne began performing on Kalākaua Avenue in Waikīkī, but it wasn’t a smooth journey.

Ironically, it was his success at attracting a crowd that led him to almost stop painting and start looking for another line of work.

Eventually, the crowds would get bigger and bigger and bigger.

That affected me, because the police would shut down my show.

I had to have a bodyguard watch for the crowd wouldn’t get too big, and then, eventually I did get a citation from the police.

That caused me to stop painting in Waikīkī.

A chance meeting with the chef from Tanaka of Tokyo took him to King’s Village.

The chef offered Wayne a job because he thought Wayne’s juggling ability made him a good candidate to become a teppanyaki chef.

But Wayne saw another opportunity to paint.

An idea came in my head, but this looks like a nice place to paint.

I wonder if I talk to the management, they’ll let me do my show here.

Wayne was able to convince management to give him a shot at performing at King’s Village.

So, they said, well, we can try you out for one week, and that’s all I needed, a chance.

That one week turned into months, then years.

Today, Wayne has been at King’s Village for the past 12 years and even has a gallery there.

Wayne Gabaylo believes that art can be anything that you have a passion for.

Through his art, he hopes to inspire others to find their passions.

This is Daniel Kam from Mid-Pacific Institute for HIKI NŌ.

Hi, my name is Holden Aniya, a junior at Sacred Hearts Academy on Oʻahu.

I’m recording this at my home in ʻEwa Beach on January 10th, 2021.

COVID-19 forced me to rethink my lifestyle and establish a new routine.

It was difficult but there was some bright spots, too.

During lockdown, I felt isolated from everyone and everything.

But, eventually, I learned to recognize the important blessings in disguise.

Staying at home meant I got to spend more time with my family, and when restrictions eased, I got to visit my papa and tutu in the safest way possible and I love spending time with them.

When I go to their house, they make me food and we stay up all night watching movies and playing cards.

I see them more now than ever before and I know that I can’t take these opportunities for granted.

COVID also helped rediscover my love for volleyball.

Before the pandemic, I was so burned out, so I decided to take a break.

It was a hard decision because I knew that I couldn’t return at my absolute best.

But COVID stopped everyone from playing.

While it was a sad time, I wasn’t alone, and I realized how much I missed the court.

When my teammates and I started playing again, I felt rejuvenated and confident that I could keep up.

Now, I’m once again playing the sport that I love.

Looking ahead at the rest of the school year, I’ve decided to continue remote learning while playing volleyball.

I feel like this time for myself and for my family will be so valuable and I can create memories that I will cherish forever.

As we continue our lookback at 10 years of HIKI NŌ, here is one of the most emotionally powerful stories to air during the first decade of this program.

It comes to us from ʻIolani School on Oʻahu.

Summer Kozai graduated from ʻIolani School in 2000.

After an MBA from Northeastern, she returned to Hawaiʻi to work as an auditor for the federal government.

But at age 26, after a trip to the Marshall Islands, Summer fell sick with severe flu-like symptoms.

On April 24th, 2009, I felt really sick and so, I went to Queen’s Hospital to the ER and as soon as I got there, I went into shock and after the point where I told them I couldn’t breathe, I can’t really remember anything.

Bacterial meningitis is a potentially life-threatening disease.

It can cause paralysis, gangrene, stroke, brain damage, and even death.

Mentally, having surgery was the easy part.

It was the physical part that was hard for me because it was like, major surgery.

I had, I think, not really a full idea of how major it was at the time.

Summer became a quadruple amputee as a result of complications from meningitis.

Summer’s diagnosis was the most medically severe case that I’d ever seen and that I’ve ever worked with.

She is a fighter, I mean, I’ve never seen anyone that has this tenacious spirit that she would never give up.

It wasn’t an “I can’t” attitude, it was always “I can, I will, I must.

This is how my life is going to be and I’m gonna do it.” February 19th, 2010.

The power of positive thinking has a great deal to do with success in life.

I really understood that power at the point where there was no option but to see the good in life.

It has to be a conscious choice to see what could have been and be grateful for what is.

There are times when the pain is ridiculous, but then I have to be grateful that I’m able to feel.

I need to tell my story.

Every time I share it, I get stronger.

One day soon, I’ll walk into chapel and share my story.

I’ll tell the kids that I was them and that they need to listen and learn while they can.

Peace and love, Summer.

I feel so blessed to know Summer.

You know, for years it was, “I’m gonna walk into chapel, you’ve probably heard that I’m gonna come into chapel.” She’s got a lesson for all of us, you know.

We get so, uh, caught up in things that are so manini and make them so big.

She’s a role model.

She lives bigger than most of us do.

Um, if someone could tell me when I graduated that I’d be back here doing an all-school assembly, I think I would probably freak out since I barely could get through Speech Club in ninth grade.

Um, that being said, I’ve been through... March 10th, 2010.

Being positive with regard to my situation requires a strong will to consciously focus on only happy things because it’s so easy to visually recognize reasons to be upset with my new life.

I’ll always miss what I physically lost.

I’ll never again be able to feel my toes in the sand or feel an engagement ring on my finger, but I’m not angry.

I’ll feel the ocean again and I’ll find someone who makes me so happy that a ring won’t matter.

See, there are always two sides.

To sum it up, a long time ago, I made a promise to myself to always live my life with grace and to always try to take the high road, however difficult the situation was.

I’m always, always thankful for what I have and who I am, because I know that this is nothing compared to another person who is hurting just as much but for other reasons.

Grace and the high road, that’s the way to go.

Thank you for watching this week’s episode of HIKI NŌ.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the work of Hawaiʻi’s new wave of storytellers as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing it with you.

Be sure to tune in next week for more Student Reflections on life in the new normal and for our continuing look back at the first decade of HIKI NŌ.

Can do!

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