Lei Aloha by Meleana Estes

Author:Meleana Estes [Estes, Meleana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

“I like it because it makes people happy. You see them and they’re happy with their leis.”

—Leimoni Miyahana

It takes around 350 flowers to make a lei roughly thirty inches long. “In the olden days, every lei was thirty-six inches, but it’s so heavy,” says Histo, who likes to finish his lei with ribbon at the end so it can be gently tied around the wearer’s neck.

Around five minutes down the highway from Histo’s house is another small producer of ‘ākulikuli lei, Pohākea Country Farms. This venture is a new direction for Malia Kamaka, who only became a full-time flower grower and lei maker in retirement. Born in Kāne‘ohe, on O‘ahu, she moved to Waimea as an adult. Her job as a meter reader for the electric company meant traveling throughout the county. “I used to see the [‘ākulikuli] all around at the different houses up here, especially the Parker Ranch houses. It was so beautiful, you know?”

One of the electric company linemen she worked with had accumulated ‘ākulikuli in an array of colors and offered to plant cuttings in orange, pink, yellow, and red at her house. A neighboring lei maker, Patsy Shioji, taught her how to kui the buds together into a lei. “As she got older, she couldn’t bend so I would bring her the flowers because she’d get lei orders.”

Today Kamaka takes orders for everything from birthdays to celebrations to hula competitions. Hālau have danced with her lei in the prestigious Merrie Monarch competition. Occasionally she will send lei to O‘ahu to sell in stores.

“The yellows and the oranges will close up a little closer to early in the evening so you can pick it at night,” she explains, talking with joy about her process. “Then I usually pick the pinks in the morning, because it just gets a little tighter,” she says of the delicate buds, which she picks the second day they bloom. She stores the buds in carefully labeled containers in the lei fridge in her garage where they will last for up to two weeks.

“Everybody asks me, ‘Do you make other leis,’ and I go, ‘No, no, I do plenty.’ ” For Kamaka, ‘ākulikuli is enough.

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