Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 15, Number 4, 1 ʻApelila 1998 — Talking Story [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Talking Story

Makia Malo has long practlced a profession some elaim might be the second oldest. He is a storyteller.

By Paula Durbin NOW HE has his dream job with Pacific Resources in Education and Learning, a nonprofit corporation funded by the U.S. Department of Education, whieh serves islands stretching across some 5 million square miles of Pacific Oeean. As artist-in-resience, Malo assists PREL with its plans for distance learning and a cultural center. He also takes his art form to schools.

"Storytelling is a very powerful tool that classroom teachers don't tap enough," says Dr. John Kofel, PREL's executive director who announced plans to send Malo to train teachers in the Marshall Islands this summer. "Makia helps us excite teachers about the power of storytelling and helps them develop their skills." Blind and scarred by leprosy, Malo uses his commanding presenee along with humor and stories to educate his young audienee about choices and taking healthy risks. "You need to think of what you have to gain or lose,"

he tells the kids. "In my case, the ehoiee was whether or not to leave the hospital at Kalaupapa. Choosing to leave meant taking a risk. What did I have to lose? The security of Kalaupapa where everything was done for me. Leaving made me vulnerable. I had heard about a Kalaupapa man who returned home and his family put him out in the garage." But, as the first blind person to leave Kalaupapa, where he had spent some 30 years, Malo found his new world at the University of Hawai'i more curious than cruel. "I was scared, but I was

excited," he continues. "Yes, I looked different. People used to stop me. 'What happened to you? Fire?' One day I

faced it and told them I had had leprosy. The reactions were fabulous. "I enjoyed learning anything and everything," he continues. "With no feeling in my fingers, I can't read braille so I had to listen to cassettes over and over,

but l tound l eoula use my See, MAKIA MALO on page 9

mind." Malo completed his degree, discovered his talent and began to mesmerize. One day, through Nona Beamer, he met a soulmate who heeame his helpmate. "I wen' take one look at Ann," he describes the moment, for onee at a loss for the right words, "and I fall in love." Now the blue-blooded New England lady is part of his life

and his act. Performances have taken the eouple all over the state, to the mainland, Europe, Aotearoa and the rest of the South Pacific. In October, sponsored by PREL and Ameriean Express, Malo traveled to the United Nations to offer the opening chant at the World Health Organization's photo exhibit on leprosy. (See photo.) No one had

ever preceded the secretary general in a ceremony, and the break with traditional protocol made officials nervous. But when the issue reached his desk, Secretary General Kofi Annan's reaction was an enthusiastic, "Why not?" The exhibit opens at Honolulu Hale July 1. NO ONE told me I would be be traveling all over the world. Ididn't know what was

down the road," Malo explains to the kids. He hopes they will make the right decisions too. When he's not working for PREL or other clients - including the Department of Education, the University of Hawai'i's Statewide Cultural Extension Program and Elderhostel - Malo, using Morse Code, enters his stories on his computer. Most of them are hilarious accounts of boyhood mischief. But a poem, "Katy's Store," offers some

insight into Malo's zest for life. "It's about a man I used to see at Kalaupapa when I first arrived from Papakolea," he recalls. "He was waiting for death; that's all there was back there. A lot of others just passed away. We have to live for them." Then he quoted from " Katy's Store" "To bring honor not only to him, but to others like us." ■

Makia Malo MAKIA MALO, from page 8