What Craig said about the air guitar kanikapila made me laugh but made me think back to summers when I was in college and would go home to Oahu. I played rugby in college with a bunch of guys from home, one of which also lived on Oahu and for a couple of summers we would go play with one of the teams on Oahu. The team we played for was made up of locals from Oahu, some Fijians, Tongans, Samoans, New Zealanders and a few Haoles from the mainland. Real mixed plate and they would take us in like we played with them all year long and keep an eye on us on and off the field. If anyone has seen two pacific island teams play rugby, you know what I mean. It was off season so we would play “touch style” for practice, mostly bare foot and play friendly games with other teams on the island.
After games at Kapiolani park, we would fire up the 50 gallon drum barbeque, throw on about 20# of chicken thighs marinated in soy sauce and pick up a few cases of beer (ok, it was more than a few). After we ate and drank and the sun started to go down, we would all sit in a circle and someone would take the lead and start singing and then the group would follow. People would take turns as the leader and we sat there for hours singing. The music was beautiful with the falsetto voices, the wind and the waves. It took us a little while but we picked up the songs even though we didn’t know what we were singing most of the time. Each leader would use their own native language and the first time we experienced this we asked how everyone seemed to know the songs and we found out that most of the songs were Christian church hymns. People would stop to listen, smile and move on, and even the cops patrolling would drive up on their ATVs and listen for a few minutes before asking us to clean up the beer cans as they rode off. I can’t remember their names, but will never forget their faces and voices.
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Posted - 03/20/2003 : 7:55:36 PM
