Most of my photos in Hawaii reflect the overcast skies of all four days but the sun sifts through constantly and every time you move to another part of the islands conditions can be completely and fleetingly different.

After Hilo, we expect Honolulu to be decidedly spiffy and glamorous, and it certainly is. I’d put money on the port being the nicest one we’ll see, a result of its history welcoming all those elegant Hollywood travelers and royalty on ocean liners in the twenties and thirties. We dock right alongside Pier 10 and the famous Aloha Tower.

As soon as we arrive, I join a group going to visit indigenous schools in Oahu, far up along the west coast where there is much more sun, wind and high waves, as well as some of the best surfing waves in the world. Also a lot of poverty, not to mention the continuous string of beach-side shacks where the houseless live in paradise. Most send their children to schools and work fulltime. But making $10/hour in paradise is not enough to pay for food and shelter for a family. Hawaii’s oceanside slums add a unique dimension to the situation of the working poor.

We’re supposed to join a group of student teachers from the University of Hawaii who will tour with us as a part of their training in preparation for teaching in this part of Hawaii. They are a cohort in an innovative program that provides special training to young teachers from the area so that they will stay as teachers in these particularly challenging schools and communities. Since many of the children are part Hawaiian there is also a great deal of emphasis on traditional Hawaiian mores and stories.

We’re late, of course, because of customs procedures at the port and even later because we get lost and the cell phone contact we have is apparently not answering. We finally get there and shortly afterward the bus breaks down. That turns out to be a good thing for us because it means we can’t go far away from our first stop, the Manaka Elementary School, which has an extraordinary neighboring Farm for the children and their parents in Waimaea. I’ll write more about the Farm later. It is an extraordinary thirty-year labor of love on the part of a former Roman Catholic priest.

One of the Ma’ili Elementary School murals.

The world-famous kayaking and surfing beach with a few of the remnant trees of the many coconut grove plantations that covered the valleys of Wai’anae.

The land marker on the northernmost shore of Malolo/Moana Kai.