Akata Ane Hodgkinson was
born on the small and very remote tropical island of
Rotuma in the Equatorial winter of July 29. She is the
seventh of ten children. Rotuma is a volcanic island
just three hundred miles from its nearest neighbor Viti
Levu, the main island of Fiji. Despite that Rotuma is a
territory of Fiji, the people of Rotuma are Polynesian,
not Fijian. Their roots can be traced primarily to the
Cook Islands, people who are directly related to the
Tahitians. Akata's youth with her five brothers (two now
deceased) and two sisters, not to mention the later
addition of two half brothers and half sister, could be
described as an idyllic one, with the exception of her
mother dying when she was around eight. Akata has little
memory of her mother, except that she was a very popular
lady and loved to cook and host company at their house.
You cannot talk about Akata without talking about her
island, because the island and the islander are one in
the same. Because of its highly rich volcanic soil,
Rotuma with its three thousand foot high jungle carpeted
mountain range that runs the length of the island is
entirely self-sustaining for its inhabitants with its
cornucopia of everything from a wide range of tropical
fruit, vegetables and nuts easy for the picking and even
wild boars not so easy for the hunting. The frequent
rains in this self-contained paradise translate to
subterranean mineral springs that bubble out of the
ground all around the island. And with a lagoon that
rings the island which is teeming with marine life, fish
are so easy to catch that even today islanders simply
walk out into the reef and collect dinner for the
evening meal from the dozens of varies of huge fish with
a simple elastic band triggered spear. And, knowing
about the islander and her island would not be complete
without knowing about how the subsistence provided by
that bountiful garden spot in the sea is prepared for
meals. Being so close to the equator, growing season for
most anything that might be seasonal in non-equatorial
regions, in Rotuma is often year round. And as the
entire eight mile long, four mile wide island is a
tropical forest, so meals never have to be repetitious
or mundane. Since electricity didn’t even exist on
Rotuma when Akata was a child, everyone had a cook house
in the backyard where they prepared their meals. Fish
and taro were (and still are) the most commonly cooked
staple. The fish is fried in coconut oil and the taro (’a’ana)
is boiled. Another way of cooking taro on Rotuma is to
prepare a koua (a pit in the ground) where tapioca,
fish, chicken and pork are also cooked in using this
simple cooking method of digging a pit where logs are
burned to heat boulders, the rocks becoming
the red hot source of heat for this underground stove.
Rotuma has not changed
much for the times since British seafarers stumbled onto
its welcome shores right around the time Columbus
stumbled upon another shore that he had mistaken for
India. The 24 gun frigate HMS Pandora was the first
known ship from the Western world to make note in its
captain’s log of the existence of this lush Polynesian
island. And their discovery was only by chance, as that
ship was not on a journey of discovery. Their mission in
1790 was one of a manhunt in search of the HMS Bounty
after the infamous mutiny led by the infamous Fletcher
Christian, where Captain Bligh and a handful of his men
were set adrift in a life raft. Rotuma’s first time
encounter with the outside world was brief, as HMS
Pandora set port in Rotuma and stocked up on food and
water and promptly headed eastward in search of the
mutineers. Many ships from around the world have made
port in Rotuma since, not to mention the frequent visits
of island hopper aircraft, but this has done little to
change the Rotuman way of life. Even today, Rotumans
still pretty much live off the land, with naturally
grown resources so plentiful that no one ever goes
without three sumptuous meals a day and a lot of fruit
in between. When it comes to fishing, small dugout
outrigger canoes remain the primary mode of motor free
transportation which takes fishermen the short distance
to the reef where they can make best use of their
spears. There are no hotels, restaurants or department
stores on the island. However, several co-op style shops
are in operation, the largest of these being at the
government station in Ahau where the only hospital is
located. There are also a handful of fairly Spartan
room and board facilities. As for those in need of a
dining experience, Rotuma’s already free to all, so
need I even belabor the whys and wherefores concerning
the absence of restaurants in Rotuma? For the same
token, with nearly all the necessary building materials
for shelter as close as your backyard, vastly abundant
in a place where tourism doesn’t exist and hospitality
doesn’t have a price tag, the nonexistent of hotels
need little explanation.
As well as the kind of
fond memories you might expect one to have from growing
up in paradise, Akata remembers her favorite pastime
as a child spending hours on the beach and swimming in
the lagoon near her house, and learning traditional
dance. Other fond memories include going into the
interior of the island on Saturdays picking oranges,
mangos and ifis (a type of nut). By the time she was
ten, she had become an accomplished Tautoga dancer (a
similar dance to Tahitian). After Akata's mother died,
she was taken in by her paternal grandmother. Her
father, for whom Akata was very close, was a carpenter.
It was common for him to disappear for months at a time
as ship carpenter where he journey around the world.
With the family split up like this, in time Akata's
oldest sister Maggie secured a good paying job in Fiji
and sent for Akata and the youngest sister Faga to come
live with her. Akata was in her early teens when she
left Rotuma for this whole new life in the bustling port
city of Suva. At about that time, most of her brothers
had already moved to the main island of Fiji (Viti Levu)
for higher education and employment. Even Akata's father
took up temporary residence in Viti Levu, because this
is where he would stay between jobs shipping out of Suva
and Nadi as a shipboard carpenter. Her father eventually
remarried, and this is where the two half brothers and
half sister come into the scene.
In Suva, her sister
Maggie enrolled Akata into an East Indian girls school which is a lot like going to Catholic School except the
religion is different. No matter the religion, these
were considered among the best high schools in Fiji.
After completing her parochial school education, Akata
went on to trade college where she learned various
skills using modern office equipment. During this time,
she also worked as model for a local department store’s
line of clothing. Naturally, she found Suva to be very
different from Rotuma. It was an exhilarating place to
live with boundless opportunity, but it was also a very
competitive and thus challenging environment,
especially for someone for a small remote island like
Rotuma. And like most Pacific islands, the business
world of Fiji was heavily dominated by men. For Akata,
getting a good education was no guarantee that she would
get a good job, but as it turned out, she easily secured
employment in data processing at the Air Pacific
building in downtown Suva. By the late Eighties Akata
had blossomed into a beautiful young lady. Needless to
say, men were suddenly vying for her hand, but Akata
wasn’t anxious to jump into a serious relationship
just barely having turned twenty. On the subject of
relationships, an interesting thing happened to her one
day in November of 1981 (Summer Break for the
university). She was walking across the University
campus and saw a blond man riding a bicycle. He was one
of the few people around on campus with the students
away for break. As he began to pass her, Akata flagged
him down to ask for directions to the Laucala Bay Marina
where she told him that she had a date to go sailing.
This man on the ten speed bicycle was an English
Literature instructor (with the Peace Corps) and
for him, it was love at first sight when he saw this
attractive Polynesian girl for the first time. Akata
also felt attracted to him and after a short
conversation which didn’t include directions to the
marina, the man was asking Akata if she would like to
meet him at Rockerfeller’s, a popular disco style
nightclub in downtown Suva later that week. Akata agreed
to the date. The only problem, unbeknownst to the Peace
Corps instructor Alan Hodgkinson, she had already agreed
to another date at that very same place and time. The
date was with another university instructor whose name
was Peter. He was from England. But after meeting Alan
that day, Akata had decided simply to avoid Peter the
night of their date. Besides, Peter didn’t have a
phone so she had no way to call him to break the date.
Oh, and Peter was the man Akata was supposed to meet at
the marina that day, something she suddenly forgot
about after meeting Alan. When Alan showed up at the
agreed time at the nightclub, as soon as he walked in
the door of the dimly lighted room with the music blaring on that busy Saturday night, he heard someone making
a hissing sound from beside the door. He looked to his
left and saw Akata with another girl at a booth in an
alcove out of view of the rest of the nightclub. Akata
waved for him to come to the table. The three of them
had drinks and listened to the music. Later, Akata
confessed to Alan that she was hiding from Peter because
she had a date with him on this very same night that she
had been unable to break. The other girl with Akata was
her cousin named Fanny. Alan made himself comfortable
with the two young, attractive girls. Shortly, Peter
came into the club, looked around and didn’t see Akata
who squeezed her back to the wall at the side of the
door, and after a few minutes, he left. Akata and Alan
danced that night, and finally, around midnight she told
him she had to go home where she lived with her older
sister. In the cab, during the half hour ride, Alan
tried to kiss Akata, but she demurred. He didn’t push
himself on her, feeling happy just to be in the company
of this Polynesian beauty. The day had been a whirlwind
for him, and he expected that it had as well been for
Akata. As she directed the cab down a dirt road which
was the last stretch before her house, Alan’s mind
began to race. He wanted to ask her out for another date
and another. He even thought about asking her to get
married after they dated awhile. When the cab stopped in
front of her very nice home, Alan suddenly felt a pang
in his conscious. Who am I, he thought, to even
entertain the thought of one day plucking this beautiful
Pacific flower out of her natural setting, this island
paradise, and bring her to my breakneck paced, overly
populated, crime ridden and polluted world? I should
simply tell her goodnight and have the cab driver take
me home. I should get out of here as quickly as possible
before I change my mind. This is exactly what Alan did.
But three or for days later, he could not get Akata out
of his mind. She in fact occupied his every thought.
During their day of sailing, she had told him she worked
as a saleslady at a fabrics store downtown Suva. Since
this was summer break at the university, Alan had extra
time on his hands, and he set out to find her. The main
fabric store in town was called Martin’s Fabrics. He
tried this place first. Sure enough, the manager of the
store told him that Akata had worked there as recently
as the day before, but she had just quit her job and he
couldn’t give out any personal information about her,
such as her address. Alan felt suddenly let down. The
trip to her house in the cab after the nightclub date
had been down unfamiliar roads on the outside of town,
in the dark. He hadn’t even thought to get her last
name. He went home after his visit to the fabrics store
and admitted to himself with a pang of resignation
that he was out of options to continue his search. About
a week later, Alan’s Fijian housekeeper hosted a kava
party at his bungalow on the university campus, as he
often did over the weekends. About a half a dozen
friends and Alan were sitting on the floor around the
kava bowl with the large louvered windows of his
apartment all opened to the ocean breeze from the east.
About an hour into their party, from the lawn area just
outside the window appeared someone’s shadow in the
darkness. A young lady’s voice called out, “Hello.
Hello.” Everyone looked out the window at once. The
girl stepped closer into the light from the living room
so that her face became clearly visible. Alan suddenly
recognized her. It was the Polynesian beauty he had been
looking for. It was Akata. She had come to visit him
after getting directions from several people on campus.
Akata dated Alan for the remaining year that he worked
in Fiji.
Akata came to the United
States in early 1982. three months after Alan had
returned home to Northern California after completing
his Peace Corps contract. Akata traveled on a Fiancé
visa (a temporary visa that expires in three month
unless you get married). Alan felt certain that he
wanted to marry Akata, and she felt just as certain
about marrying him, but she had never traveled out of
the South Pacific in her life, and she wanted to have a
good look at this faraway, decidedly un-island like
place that she had only read about in books, saw in
movies and heard about from Alan. And she had already
been forewarned that there were parts of the United
States that if you wore your flip flops around town in
the winter that your feet would turn blue. As it turned
out, with only one day left before the expiration of her
temporary visa, her and Alan tied the knot at a small
chapel in the Sierra Mountains of California. Soon after
their marriage, Alan took a job with the federal
government. Meanwhile, Akata decided to pursue her
passion and began teaching Polynesian dance. The first
place they settled with Alan’s new job was Stockton,
California. She taught dance at Parks and Recreation
there, but her classes barely had a chance to get off
the ground before the government transferred Alan to
Corpus Christi, Texas for two years as a civil service
analyst with the Department of Army. Here was plenty of
white, sandy beach with foamy waves splashing to shore
that was lined with palm trees, much like at her home
island of Rotuma. Unfortunately, with Corpus Christi
came offshore oil rigs that left “tar babies” all
over the beach, and if you sit on them on the sand, oil
splatters and stain your bathing suit. If you’re into
swimming, more times than not, the millions of jellyfish
in the warm Gulf Inter-Coastal Waterway will leave your
body pocked with large areas of rashes that will burn
painfully for hours. Since South Texas wasn’t the most
desirable place for those reasons and a host of others,
Akata spent much of the two years of his assignment in
Corpus Christi traveling with Alan across the United
States on his lengthy business trips. In that two short
years, she had the opportunity to visit most of the
states in the Union, staying in nice hotels and eating
out in style at nice restaurants much of the time. Alan
was transferred to Susanville, California to a small
Department of Defense installation in the desert of
Eastern California in 1985. They both loved the area
that came with this assignment in the scenic Eastern
Sierra’s of the northern part of the state where they
bought their first house. Akata enrolled in classes at
the community college nearby, and discovered to her
surprise that Lassen College had a fairly large
international exchange program where most of the
exchange students came from the Micronesian Islands of
Ponape and Palau. So, as it turned out, there were
dozens of other South Pacific Islanders attending
classes there when she arrived. And this quickly
translated into Akata forming a dance troupe with some
of the girls. Akata had a lot of fun there dancing with
the Micronesian girls and making new friends, but as
Alan’s career came with wheels on it, in just eighteen
months they were on their way to Monterey, California.
Here Alan would work at Fort Ord and spend his time
there streamlining the base to help make it operate more
efficiently. Akata took a job as a receptionist at a
swank restaurant at the Hilton hotel which was walking
distance from their apartment. She also continued her
college education, transferring her records from Lassen
College to Monterey Peninsula College. While attending
classes here, she also tutored students in basic
accounting for an extra income. Once again, Akata
discovered that she wasn’t the only Pacific Islander
around. In time she found out that a family of Fijians
lived several miles away, and there were hundreds of
Hawaiian families living on the Peninsula. Akata soon
formed another troupe consisting of three girls and a
Fijian drummer. Akata’s Polynesian Dance Troupe became
a big hit in the Greater Monterey area. They were doing
shows nearly every weekend. In less than two years
though, Alan received a job offer in Washington DC where
he would get a healthy promotion in his civil service
capacity working with the Chief of Staff of Coast Guard
Headquarters. It was the perfect job for someone
seeking a professional career in federal government.
One problem though. Akata wanted to stay in Monterey.
She loved it there. Alan did as well, but his career
beckoned him on to bigger and better things, and there
was no future for him in Monterey since it was in the
cards for the base he worked at to close in the near
future. So once again, Akata would give up all her
friends, her education and her dance troupe to follow
Alan to another strange and far away part of the
country.
Within several years of
living on the outskirts of Washington DC, in addition to
working as a saleslady in several department stores,
doing data entry work for the US Post Office’s Bar
Coding Facility and going to school (Shepherd College),
Akata once again pursued her true passion and formed
another Polynesian Dance Troupe. This would become the
most successful one of all. In addition the dancers,
the troupe boasted a Hawaiian singer who also played
keyboard and ukulele. They stayed together nearly the
entire Nineties playing for special events for federal
agencies in Washington, and as well for the Fijian and
New Zealand Embassies, while Alan continued to advance
his career. Since there are many expatriate islanders
working up and down the Eastern Seaboard from the
United Nations in New York to the various embassies in
DC as well as the World Bank, the summers were nonstop
luau time, and Akata's troupe was always in demand for
whatever the nature of the party. Akata forgot about
Monterey for the time being. In 1997 Alan took an early
retirement from federal government. Their plans were to
move back to Monterey, but Alan’s folks had retired in
the little town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico,
and invited Akata and Alan to come see what they thought
of the town, before moving back to Monterey. They stayed
for a year in Truth or Consequences, but preferred the
proximity to water and finally got a house near the lake
at Elephant Butte, where they’ve been ever since.
Akata opened her Grass Shack Boutique in downtown Truth
or Consequences, and they formed a website to compliment
the shop, putting many of her products online. As it
turned out, the website became a success story for Akata.
Now Akata and Alan make occasional trips to Fiji and
stock up on supplies for her business, making the trips
there business as well as pleasure. As far as moving
back to Monterey? Well, maybe three or four years down
the road. For now Akata is having too much fun at her
home operated business by the lake in New Mexico,
practicing yoga, playing piano and making occasional
trips to Monterey and Fiji. Most of Alan’s time is
spent writing and working for Akata’s Grass Shack
Boutique as an indentured laborer designing new and more
advanced shapes and sizes of coconut bras for poor
braless hula girls from around the world who are
customers of Akata’s Grass Shack Boutique online.
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