i'm sorry i was cutting in and out last night because i had some other shit going on, and misread your question.

i have a huge love for the planet and figured hawaii was a great place to return to after 20 years, i had had a year on the big island before that had been very intense for me spiritually, i had quit all substances and it was the beginning of my 5 years as a celibate. so i was seeking that connection again. in 20 years i had gone through a lot, and so have the islands.

my expectation was (and what i set up before i left) that i was going to a place where i could have a little home, make a hawaiian medicinal/food garden, and get my son into a good school. i thought, based off of my GLP friends' advice, that everything was set up to go to a really amazing hawaiian land trust situation and do work trade in their enormous medicinal/food gardens. i double triple checked everything. my GLP friend was not entirely honest with me.

i had a vision of the garden i was going to make, how i was going to use my skills to teach and be of service. when we got there, i was instantly slammed by prejudice and double talk. the racism was off the hook. i had not anticipated that because when i had lived on the big island 20 years before, i had seen it peripherally but had been totally accepted, did no harm, and never dealt with race issues because it never came up.

this time, was very different. so, when my son and i (who by the way learned to swim in the hanalei surf...i made sure he got everything good i could give him from the situation, in spite of how bad it sucked) ended up beach camping with this GLP person, who repeatedly told me 'you'll find a man to take care of you' and a bunch of other weird crap, and she did find a man to cater to her, move her tent, bring her food (ugh)...i didn't. i found that to be absolutely despicable as a 'fallback' plan. so i bought the van immediately and separated myself from the beach camping scene.

we still took our daily cold showers (and i have some funny stories there!) and i made good friends with the head ranger, who made sure we were left alone by the law and safe at the beach. he had homeschooled his kids (hi baby ray!) and appreciated what i was trying to do. i maintained my integrity and it made a big difference.

i continued to look for gardens to work while we lived in the van on the beach. i shelled for hours every morning as meditation, and never had problems with the local ice heads who got up at 3 AM to literally comb the beach. i staggered my shelling and had respect and honestly was not really subjected to the racism until the big island...we were on kauai first, 2 months, then maui, 2 months, and moved from there to the big island because we had a school on BI for my son. because we left maui for that school we were homeless again, and spent months in hell on big island.

i worked a couple farms on kauai. one of them

[link to www.malamakauai.org]

was amazing. i screened a farm that did ecosustainability and decided i already knew all of it (because i do) and was unwilling to work 40 hours a week in the sun while trying to homeschool my kid just to pitch a tent on the land.

now mind you, everything i went through i did with aloha. i truly held my ground and stayed positive.

let me explain something to you. food is very pricey in the islands. not only that, but the local produce has a thing called 'rat lungworm disease,' which first signs are coma, death, or a life of excruciating pain to the point that people just off themselves. so NO GREENS FOR US on the big island. go ahead and look up rat lungworm disease.

we dealt with homelessness, intensely corrupt social services, racism, extreme weather and much more. i could go into great detail about why bugging out to hawaii is a bad idea...but for the sake of brevity (which i am sorely lacking ATM) let's just say, we went through absolute fecking HELL and kept our souls intact.

my laptop is ancient and i'm on a frozen ubuntu server so i can't update my flash and share vids. but i will when i can.