Interest in cultures bears fruit for Nuuanu woman

Letty Geschwind moves nimbly along the overgrown brick pathway that cuts through the 100 or so plots that make up the Manoa Community Garden.

Well, as nimbly as any 75-year-old woman can move while steering a wheelbarrow full of dark, rich soil.

It’s just after 1 p.m. on a sunny, windless day in the valley, but Geschwind seems unaffected by the heat. She loves it here, loves the interactions with her garden neighbors, loves the way small talk and gardening tips are exchanged as generously as plastic bags full of papaya or green onion.

"There are a lot of nice people who come here," Geschwind says. "It’s nice to meet people from different backgrounds. I learn a lot."

It was Geschwind’s interest in other cultures that first brought her from her home in rural Sulawesi, Indonesia, to Hawaii in 1968.

She was pursuing a master’s degree in American studies at the time. While with the East-West Center, she met her future husband, Norman, and quickly scuttled her plans to return to Indonesia.

Geschwind taught in the University of Hawaii’s Indo-Pacific Languages Department. Norman taught world civilizations at UH, Hawaii Pacific University and Mid-Pacific Institute.

"We rented a house in Manoa back in the ’70s," Geschwind says, her gaze falling on the back of the valley. "But it was too expensive to buy a house here."

Today the Geschwinds live in a Nuuanu condominium. A few times a week, Geschwind racks her bicycle to the front of the No. 4 bus and heads to her garden plot in Manoa.

"Which bus stop I get off at depends on how much exercise I want to get," she says, laughing.

Geschwind has been coming here since the 1990s. The gardening skills she’s honed are evident in the bounty of fruits and vegetables brimming from her 10-by-20-foot plot.

Here grow hearty stocks of fresh tumeric and delicate bushes of lemon basil. Nearby are three varieties of chili pepper along with rosemary, Indonesian pandan and casava, as well as collard greens, lettuce and kale.

There’s even space for a Vietnamese medicinal plant (she can’t recall its name) and a few flowers to keep the bees coming.

"I grow a lot of things that you don’t find in the supermarket," Geschwind says. "And what we don’t use, we share with each other."

Geschwind has plenty in her everyday life to keep her busy. She’s a master potter. She’s active in church. She also participates in Aloha Melati, a club for Indonesian expat women. But her time in the garden is special.

"Here," she says, adjusting the fingers of her mud-caked gardening gloves, "I feel free."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.