#28:   Hawaii Sojourn, 1993-94

In May 1993, as we were preparing to leave Laos after more than two years, Russell received an invitation from the East-West Center in Hawaii to serve as a Centerwide Fellow. Joking that we hoped the title wasn’t a comment on his waistline, we boarded a plane in Vientiane, our arms filled with flowers from friends and graced with white cotton cords from our farewell baci [see post #21 for a description of this ceremony]. After an R&R stopover in Penang, Malaysia, we visited family on both coasts of the Mainland before taking up residence in beautiful Manoa Valley, the former seat of Hawaiian royalty.

Somehow, the only letters I could find were from our last three months there, but I have a lot of photos. So I’ll share some recollections prompted by those images before adding excerpts from the letters. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

We were both looking forward to living in Hawaii. When I’d attended the East-West Center’s introductory program for Asian Seminar 1964, I’d written in my journal that I would like to live there one day. Subsequently, Russell and I had been tourists in Hawaii. Now we were going to take up residence, pretty sure it would be different from being there as a tourist or a student.

And it was. We were fortunate to find an apartment in Manoa, so Russell could walk to work. Even luckier to be adopted into the extended family of our landlord, so that we had a broader experience of Hawaii’s gracious, multicultural way of life.

The Hawaiian word “Aloha” means “love” in English, and the Lum family was full-to-bursting with it, always ready to share. Grandfather KH and Grandmother (“Tutu”) Diane seemingly invited us to every family event. When Tutu and I discovered that she would be 60 on March 6th and I would be 50 on March 5 of 1994, that was a great excuse for another party. And they never failed to include my Dad during his several visits while we were in the Islands. KH and Diane are gone now, but they will always live in my heart.

Dad so fell in love with Hawaii that he bought a special package of air tickets so he could come again and again — at least three times during the 18 months we were there. His May ’93 visit was especially memorable. When we toured Pearl Harbor, the servicemen who escorted us were particularly respectful to this aged veteran of WWII. It didn’t matter that he was Army, and they were Navy. He’d served, and that was enough.

During that same visit, we travelled to the “Big Island” of Hawaii, seeing the decade-long eruption of Kilauea, engulfing houses, blocking highways and still in flow to the sea, where it sizzled in the surf.

Although the site of specific eruptions has shifted over the years, Kilauea is still active and likely to be so for some time.

Little did we know when we stopped by Hilo’s Information booth on the Big Island’s north shore, that this visit would save our lives. In April 1946, a tsunami hit Hilo with a wave three stories high, destroying most of the town and killing 96 people. After the first wave receded, the water in the bay disappeared, and boats were left on the sea bed along with flopping fish. Those who ran out to collect the fish were killed when the second wave struck. We toured the exhibits of this dreadful history, awed by the destruction, unaware that this knowledge would save us when a tsunami pounded Sri Lanka ten years later.

It may sound like all we did was tootle around in Hawaii, but we both devoted most of our time to professional endeavors. Russell’s fellowship at the East-West Center was founded to encourage international-development practitioners to take a sabbatical from fieldwork and record ground-level knowledge complementing the Center’s academic research. He wrote two books for developing-country governments published by the EWC: one on managing foreign investment, the other on managing foreign consultancies. He also traveled to Manila as a member of the EWC’s multidisciplinary team of experts advising the Philippine government on reforming its foreign-investment regime.

Meanwhile, I was busy with my own book. As usual, I’d tried to write mostly positive things in my family letters from Vientiane. But my life there had a dark side that I didn’t write home about. It was one of the worst periods in my life, and I observed it was also a difficult time for many dependent spouses. I resolved to turn those experiences into an account of what it’s like to be a dependent adult, sans real work in a politically and culturally restrictive setting. At first I thought of a nonfiction discussion of these challenges. But then I realized that few, if any, would be interested in such a book, and that a mystery set in Vientiane and featuring expatriate women’s lives might have a wider audience. This was the impetus for Malice on the Mekong, published decades later, after I perceived similar experiences in other settings, including how male dependent spouses found that status destructive.

I’d spent most of my life writing articles for all sorts of publications, as well as reports, workbooks, scripts and other materials for adult-learning projects. But, except for English-class exercises, I’d never written fiction. I was decidedly wary of attempting dialogue, so I thought I’d come up with a solution when I cranked out a first draft, written in a sort of Rashomon-style narrative, with each character telling the story from his/her viewpoint. Boring book! But I didn’t have a clue about how to proceed. Fortunately, a seminar at the University of Hawaii started me on a new path toward finally, after many drafts, arriving at something publishable.

As we neared the end of our sojourn in Hawaii, we were pleased to be among the small number of guests at the wedding of good friend Charles Johnson and his bride, Xiaodong Wang. I was touched to be asked to serve as Xiaodong’s matron of honor, helping first with professional make-up and coiffeur (the first ever for this Chinese citizen) and later with her train and the usual duties of the MOH. A very moving experience, as these two were building bridges across the cultural and political divide.

Transitions from one site to another are always stressful for those in the international life. But our move from the one place on earth farthest from land to the one place on earth farthest from the sea proved to be our most challenging. Here are some edited excerpts from family letters during our last three months in Hawaii.