Lee Cataluna: Kauai mayor orders curfew but serves up encouragement

Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami stands in the foyer of his house wearing shorts and a T-shirt and black Nikes. One arm is raised as he waits for the beat to drop. He has to do the first move precisely when the music starts. It does, and he’s off, executing 15 seconds of awkward dad-dancing, trying to re- create the TikTok video known as “Renegade.”

That video has been watched close to 47,000 times, passing from friend to friend on Facebook.

Kawakami knows people are laughing at him, but that’s the whole point.

“I don’t mind showing my vulnerability. People need to laugh right now,” Kawakami said. “And it shows that Kauai’s curfew applies to me, too. And that I’m just as bored as everyone else.”

For the last week, Kawakami, who has emerged as one of the most decisive and blunt political leaders in Hawaii during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been going home at night and making fun videos to share on his personal Facebook page. The first video showed him playing board games with his family at the dinner table. He talked about using the stay-at-home time to build family ties.

“If you got a board game, whip it out. Or else play hangman or charades,” he suggested.

He then made a video showing how to make a simple face mask with just a T-shirt and no sewing — his wide hands stiffly cutting the fabric like he had never done it before — and the result was magic: useful, encouraging, self-deprecating. It was exactly what people wanted to see. The video was shared over and over again, and the whole thing took off.

Kawakami is calling the series of videos #StayHome Kauai, as though it’s a lim­ited-run web series.

“Blame it all on my wife and my daughter,” he said. They initially came up with the idea as a way to connect with Kauai residents ordered by the mayor to stay at home and obey a nightly curfew. Kawakami’s wife, Monica, serves as videographer while daughter Haley, a high school sophomore, is the idea person, coming up with new episodes for her father. She was the one who taught him the TikTok dance.

“If you’re wondering why I’m out of breath and sweating, that’s because that was, like, take No. 1,022,” he says on the video clip after performing the dance. The reaction has been laughter, sure, but also gratitude.

“In times like these, people look to leaders for hope,” Kawakami said. “They want their leaders to be sharp, to be steadfast, but they also are looking for a friend. … A lot of people just need a hug, but the virus puts up a barrier to even that.”

That moment of compassion and encouragement is what he’s hoping to create.

“If we don’t address that need and fill that void, if we don’t lift one another’s spirits, we’ll be looking at even bigger problems,” he said.

Other videos include how to make what he calls “McGyver ice cream” and a rather long card trick that ends not with the words “abracadabra” or “presto,” but with the quintessentially Kauai phrase “booya-ka-sha!”

“I’m willing to keep doing the videos it as long as they’re contributing to the well-being of the community,” Kawakami said. “But as soon as people tell me I’m getting irritating, I’ll stop.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.