Taking Thanksgiving to the streets

Mosese Langi drove down the back roads of Kakaako and Iwilei with some 60 plates of Thanksgiving Day food with him, calling out, “Anybody home? We got some food!”

Heads popped out from under rain-soaked tarps. A few people approached tentatively, and Langi handed each a hot turkey meal with a bottle of water and bid them, “Happy Thanksgiving!”

They smiled, shook hands, nodded their thank-yous repeatedly — “Thank you bradda, mahalo!”

Langi responded, “God bless you!”

On Thanksgiving Day, Langi handed out plates until he ran out of food.

For 10 years Langi, wife Melanie and their children have cooked meals and delivered to the homeless in their version of Meals on Wheels. This year, with the help and financial backing of members of their church, St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal, they cooked 200 meals. The church members loaded the food into four vehicles and set off in different directions — toward Aala Park, Iwilei and Kakaako Waterfront Park.

People on the streets were grateful for the unexpected gift. Most of them said they weren’t planning to leave their makeshift shelters to attend the free Thanksgiving lunch served by the Salvation Army at the Neal Blaisdell Center. They were afraid that their possessions would be stolen or that the city government would sweep the area and take away their items, they said.

On a street in Iwilei, a man with bare feet and wet hair who identified himself as “Frank L.” said, “It’s very, very nice to get a nice meal. We don’t have to walk someplace, and that’s appreciated. My backpack was stolen, and when you’re homeless, about everything you own is in your backpack, all the important stuff. For me it’s been three different times over the last month.”

It’s tough to keep starting over, he added. He described the sweeps as “brutal” and said, “You’re ripping somebody out of their home, and you haven’t got much and you have no place to go.”

Many who received meals pointed to neighbors who also needed food, or asked for additional plates to share with others.

Nimarota Fagh pointed to the small tarp-covered pallet where a woman was sleeping and told Langi, “Her over there.” Fagh and others said the meal would be the only thing they’d have to eat that day.

Langi dispatched his sons Uno, 11, and Mo Jr., 16, and daughter Lele, 12, to pass out food to those coming out of their tents. Langi’s nephew David Brown helped, too. Sometimes more plates were needed. Uno took it upon himself to refill a dog’s water bowl.

At the church later, Uno said, “They came for food ’cause they’re hungry. I saw that we need to feed more people.”

He added that handing out food “makes me feel better.”

Melanie Langi said, “After all the plates went out and I knew that there were more people at Kewalo, I just felt like we didn’t make enough. It’s never enough because more and more people end up houseless.”

She said their family tradition of giving out Thanksgiving meals started almost 10 years ago when they took food to a needy family living at a beach. The family cried in gratitude, she recalled, because they hadn’t known where to get a free meal. Her 12 children (some of them adults) continued cooking Thanksgiving meals to give out every year since then.

“It’s not a burden,” she said. “We want to do this.

“Our kids have been raised not to judge (the homeless) and just to love them as (equals),” she continued. “We’re so fortunate to have these things (a home, food, clothes), and you don’t know maybe someday we might end up there and we would want someone to give a helping hand to us.

“We do this all year long. My kids will say, ’Oh Mom, go to McDonald’s and buy that guy a meal.’ … Or I will give them $5 for food if I have it in the car.”

Because St. Elizabeth’s members helped this year, “we got the plates out in record time,” she said. But the church is always helping the needy, she said, pointing out that fellow church member Fane Lino cooks breakfast at the church every Saturday morning for about 40 homeless people.