Community in Wonderland: Hatsa i kanai-mu giya fiestan uchan

Hatsa i kannai-mu!

Wow! I had an interesting day.  Today was the opening day for the annual Micronesian Islands Fair.  Biba Micronesia!  Our art group has been meeting frequently to prepare for this event.  We came up with an activity to do with the many school children who attend the first day of the fair with their classes.

Kannai (hand) is what we've been calling ourselves.  We decided on this because hands can symbolize so much.  We use our hands to create, share, receive. I could go on and on.   Hatsa i kannai-mu means raise your hand.  For the fair, we decided to do a community art project with the kids.  We took a large sheet and painted a great big hand on it.  We spread that sheet out over a few tables and set up a paint and hand washing station. We talked to the kids about the many things you can do with your hands to help be active in the community and  let them choose a color and sent them to the sheet to leave their hand print.  All those little hands helped to create a mural of hand prints which in a way is Kannai's hand print.

eeee  kalakas!

We managed to cover the entire sheet and were planning to break out another sheet we had prepared, but it started raining. We decided it was a good time for a break and went to get some bbq sticks and check out some of the other booths.  It started getting extremely muddy and when we got back to the booth we were sharing with some other artists, our feet were mostly submerged.  We were all laughing and taking pictures of our sunken feet while it just kept pouring down uchan (rain) .

Before we know it, we were dancing the cha cha knee deep in flood water.  I'm serious, there was both knee deep flood water and cha cha going around.  I was wearing jeans and kept having to roll them up.  It got to the point where if I rolled it up any higher I'd cut off circulation to the lower half of my legs.  We couldn't just run for higher ground either.  We had way too much set up.  Plus, we were entertaining each other too much to be really freaked out.  It was an adventure!

Where did Dakota's knees go?!

scaled down sakman on the pond that was our beach park, earlier in the day

(L-R) car, Joey, picnic table
Joey is the only one that will be mobile today

The picnic area is nearly submerged up to the seat and if you look closely  you can see a happy carabao  keeping her owner dry and mobile.


Check out our friend, Rebecca Rae's site!  She has some beautiful art and amazing jewelry.
IslaRae.com