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Author Archives: Megan Stephenson

Mule Tour Offers Options

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Mule Tour Offers Options

While the Kalaupapa Pali Trail is currently closed due to a missing bridge, there are still options to visit the beautiful settlement. Molokai Mule Ride offers their options below.

Due to the heavy rains and a changing water flow from the top, the first bridge at the top of the trail was unearthed and damaged, causing disruption in our service of taking mules and hikers on the trail. We are working together with the National Park Service to assess the damage and to create a plan to put the bridge back into full use for travelling with safety. 

We realize that this situation caused by Mother Nature has caused much pain in that many of our tour patrons have come from all over the world to participate in this wonderful experience. We will do everything that we can to take action in moving forward in having the bridge repaired.

In the meantime, we have “fly down” options from the Molokai Airport and the Honolulu Airport. These are chartered flights which includes round trip air and the Historical Park Tour. Both the Molokai and Honolulu to Kalaupapa Tour Packages will have lunches included.

Molokai to Kalaupapa – Tour: $229 all inclusive; Honolulu to Kalaupapa – Tour: $398 all inclusive. Please note:  Tours will not run every day, it is based on a minimum of five that is necessary to make it work. If you book, we will put your name on the list and try to create a minimum of five with others calling in.  Again, we thank you very much for your patience and aloha.

Brothers Roy, Buzzy and the Trail Guides of the Molokai Mule Ride. 

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Aloha to the Earth

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Aloha to the Earth

Molokai Nature Conservancy News Release

April is a time to honor the earth, and there’s no better way than attending Molokai’s 18th annual Earth Day celebration. The event, organized by the Molokai Nature Conservancy, will be held at Mitchell Pauole Center on Friday April 16, from 5 to 9 p.m.

There will be ono food, door prizes, live entertainment and over 40 educational exhibits from conservation and environmental organizations. This year’s feature band is Molokai’s own Pa`akai, recent winner of Brown Bags to Stardom. The celebration’s 2010 theme is “Aloha `Aina E Ho`ola I Ka Waihona Honua!” “When we aloha the Earth, She in turn gives life to our children!”

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Ko ki`o ke`oke`o

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Ko ki`o ke`oke`o

By Bill Garnett

Hibiscus arnottianua immaculatus. This small tree is found only in lowland mesic to wet forest on Molokai’s North Shore. It is currently known from two populations and was historically recorded from within the boundary of the National Historical Park in the Waihanau drainage.

With the help of school and community volunteers, 160 hibiscus have been planted in the moist drainage at the top of the Kalaupapa trail.

Originally, the wild collected source for our plants – coming from the Botanical gardens on Kaua'i and Oahu, and represented one collection we made in1990 from the Papalaua valley population. Then, in the past year, cuttings were collected using ropes on the slopes above the cliffs just west of Wailau near the location of the last surviving population of Pua ala Brighamia rockii on Molokai.

Plantings can have difficulty due to goats, deer and insect pests: slugs, snails, hibiscus-mites, but more than 90 percent have survived in the plantings area required for planting six to 10 feet squared.

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End of Gold Bond Program

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Kualapuu Market will no longer be giving out Gold Bond stamps, due to the company’s retraction of the program. They will accept redemptions until April 24.

Gold Bond stamps can be collected into booklets and redeemed for .$40 off your grocery purchase, except liquor. Kualapu`u Market has been providing the program since the 1990s.

Sonya Yuen, manager

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A Great Letdown

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Most of us no doubt had reacted the same way when we read the front page informing that Disney World may get involved with Molokai. It was a great letdown when we got to the second page to find out that the news coverage was written as an April Fools joke. I thought, how insensitive and thoughtless that someone would concoct a joke of this kind knowing very well how devastating it was for most of us when the ranch was shut down that had actually benefited our people with one of the best putting greens in all Hawaii, our tri-plex theatre, our beautiful lodge and restaurants, our inflatable dome for musical events in Maunaloa.

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Laughs as a Teaching Tool

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Thank you, thank you for the April Fools Day articles.  I must admit you had me going with the panther, even KP2, and then I got suspicious.  My fifth grade son, Tadeu, was so captivated.  His exact words were, "Wow mom, now I like reading the newspaper." One more reader grabbed!

It just so happened that these articles came out the week before my unit on "How to Write a Newspaper Article" here at Kilohana School.  I marched into class, suppressing a smirk, with multiple copies of The Molokai Dispatch under my arm.  I gave the class a teaser of each story and they couldn't wait to get to their seats to read the articles.

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Story Time Reaches Home

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Story Time Reaches Home

Neatly stacked on the child-size table were around 20 books, one for each of the Molokai Baptist Church preschool’s children. Little Golden Book series, Disney tales, and Hannah Montana were titles among them, ready to be handed out and eagerly read.

First Book, a national organization that provides books to preschools, after-school programs, tutoring programs, shelters and day care centers, usually receives the books through grants for a particular school or program, said Linda DeGraw, chair of First Book – Molokai.

This year, the State won a grant for 1,200 books, so schools and programs that didn’t qualify in the past can now get new books. Molokai Middle School, Kualapu`u School, Kaunakakai Elementary and the public library’s A+ Program also received books this year.

further,” DeGraw said.

DeGraw was on hand to read during the preschool’s story time, choosing a “classic,” She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain. The preschool’s director, Angela Calhoun, listened while her 18 students sat in rapture and shouted out responses like ‘toot, toot!’

The books aren’t really for the schools however. “These are books so children can start their own libraries,” DeGraw said. “It’s the First Book mandate.”

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Kalaupapa Pali Trail Closed

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Kalaupapa Pali Trail Closed

A heavy week of rain created a mudslide and damaged a footbridge on the Kalaupapa trail, forcing the National Park Service (NPS) to close the trail. It is the only land route to the Hansen’s disease settlement, which is also accessable by boat and air.

NSP Superintendent Steve Prokop said the repairs will take “several weeks” and cost around $150,000. The bridge is switchback bridge No. 3, a few hundred yards from the beginning of the trail.

The Kalaupapa settlement is the former home to Saint Damien, and now houses 14 patients. The settlement is administrated by NPS and the state Department of Health.

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Trip to Hale O Lono

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Trip to Hale O Lono

By Erica Anderson

I want to thank all of you who commented on my first article. I also forgot to mention I enjoy my food on the spicy side. If any of you did follow that Ginger Chicken recipe, I hope it didn’t literally “broke the mout” ‘cause usually the recipe calls for a couple of tablespoons of ginger but I like it heavy.

I’m hoping to come up with some food stories and recipes that reflect our Molokai home.  This second story might be a bit of a stretch for a food column but I think I’ll retell a story that friends told me on Easter.

Our new friends had been visiting Hawaii for years and finally made the plunge. They moved to Molokai after putting in 12-plus hours days, owning and operating a florist and dinner theater restaurant, where the husband cooked and acted and the wife prepared the pastries.  

Despite not knowing anyone on Molokai they sold their home and businesses and moved to Molokai permanently in 2008. One day while the husband was working in his yard, an adolescent boy asked if he needed a hand. Before long, the young man brought his friends over to help. They were soon enjoying picnics, tutoring, and cookouts together. Sometimes the couple even drove them to school when the boys missed the bus.

Recently they took the boys to Hale O Lono. They were all decked out with swim fins and spears for a day of diving. The boys enjoyed their dive spearing different types of fish that they later cleaned and cooked over a kiawe wood fire. The boys added a simple seasoning of Hawaiian salt and had, of course, a pot of rice. They commented that they enjoyed the most memorable meal.

Aren’t these the kinds of memories that are savored long after the meal is over? To enjoy simple fresh food in the company of our friends and family; to value helping others and to create enduring friendships.  What a better way to celebrate the day.  

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Aka`ula Invites Donors to Fly

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

By Victoria J. Newberry, Head of School

Each year Aka`ula School families raise money to fund the school’s financial aid program by hosting signature events on Moloka`i, Maui and Oahu. This year Moloka`i Calls Oahu will be held at the Pacific Aviation Museum on May 8, 2010, from 6:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. The evening will include heavy pupu, entertainment, silent auction, movies in the museum theater, a chance to try your hand at a flight simulator, and more. Above all, we promise it will be Molokai style.

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