It takes a village to sustain a village at Mauna Kea

MAUNA KEA, HAWAII >> Kaulu Adams owns an acai food truck on Oahu, but on Monday his job was to find out how to properly dispose of expired eyewash for tear gas on Mauna Kea.

The Kailua business owner is part of a legion of volunteer workers lending a hand, a truck, supplies — whatever — to help sustain the resistance movement against construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

As the group on the mountain opposed to the $1.4 billion project has grown from about 200 July 16 to 2,000 Sunday per state estimates, labor needed to support the group also has burgeoned. And it’s been met with an outpouring of volunteers.

“You got the kahea, the call, and people answer,” said Kane Olson, a teacher from Honolulu who arrived on the mountain Saturday with his wife, two children and their dog. “It’s a kakoo (support) thing.”

Olson volunteered to assist on the traffic control team that stops vehicles on Daniel K. Inouye Highway, where the speed limit is 60 mph, so that demonstrators can cross. On one side is a ceremonial area at the base of Mauna Kea Access Road where kupuna, or elders, are physically blocking any construction vehicles to the telescope site on the summit. On the other side is an area with food, supplies, most bathrooms, a medical tent and other support facilities.

Crossing guards man the intersection, using slow/stop signs and signaling lights while calling out “crosswalk open, traffic closed” or vice versa 24 hours a day.

On Monday when the crowd was estimated at 1,500, a team of 10 crossing guards was working, including Olson, who was also on the job Sunday and had a return flight to Honolulu with his family scheduled for Monday night.

“You come for a sense of belonging,” he said. “You ask, How can I contribute? How can I help?”

Among the ways: carrying deliveries of food and water, serving food, hauling away trash, cleaning portable bathrooms, refilling propane, giving lomilomi massages, providing medical care.

On Sunday someone with a spray bottle was squirting the undersides of shoes for everyone who went up or down the hillside of a forested cinder cone to prevent transmission of invasive seeds or disease. There’s also a sound system crew, mechanics and parking attendants.

“The fabric of this place is being woven as we speak,” said Kahele Dukelow, a supporter from Maui.

Keahi Tajon, steward of a farm in Umauma on Hawaii island, manages logistics for the operation. He called it a “smooth-running machine” after 11 days that began three days before Gov. David Ige declared Mauna Kea Access Road off-limits to the public and announced that TMT construction could begin.

Tajon said the smoothness is only because of the outpouring of volunteers.

“The offers to volunteer have just been mind-blowing,” he said. “I’m ready to cry.”

Honokaa resident Micah Olival said he didn’t have time to give all-day support, but before work on Monday he drove his Toyota Tacoma truck up the mountain to take a load of bagged trash away.

One minute later Kanani Lee, a Hilo resident who commutes to work on Lanai, pulled her Honda Ridgeline truck up to do the same thing after helping provide breakfast at the encampment.

“It just called to me,” she said. “We had to do something.”

Adams, the acai food truck owner from Kailua, said the moment he arrived at the site Monday morning, he started crying and offered his help.

First, he was put to work in the food tent, and then someone sent him to get hot tea for the kupuna. After the expired eyewash was discovered, his job became to figure out the proper way to dispose of it.

“We’re figuring it out one step at a time,” he said. Adams has to return home for work today but added, “I plan on coming back.”