Posted on: Friday, February 18, 2005

Kids join the vigil of the imu

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Tomorrow morning, they will rise, crusty-eyed, stiff-backed and smelling vaguely savory.

Tonight, they will wait and watch, perched on coolers and folding chairs and the tailgates of pickup trucks.

And for the kids who are fortunate enough to be there the whole time, it will be an overnight vigil they will never forget.

Todd Hendricks has been making imu fund-raisers for Kailua High School for more than 10 years.

This year, he was asked to help out Kailua Elementary. The fourth-graders need money for a trip to the Big Island.

"This one's not quite as big as the Thanksgiving one we do at the high school," Hendricks says. "That's huge. We do close to 400 trays."

Hendricks and a core of volunteers dig a modern-day version of the traditional Hawaiian underground oven. It's only about 18 inches deep, and covered with burlap and thick plastic. It's a technique he learned years ago from a fireman friend. Inside, kiawe wood, banana stumps and rocks are carefully arranged before the food is put in.

The school makes money by renting space in the imu. For $10, you can bring a tray of whatever to be put in the imu overnight. Reservations for imu space are taken ahead of time. All the imu space at Kailua Elementary has been spoken for.

People will bring aluminum baking trays with pork butt for kalua pig, chicken, roasts and sweet potato.

"Someone brought a tray of Portuguese sausage and Spam and that came out really good. It gets that imu flavor," Hendricks says.

The drop-off is this afternoon. By then, the fire in the imu will have been going for at least three hours, and the rocks will be nice and hot. The kids, their parents and community volunteers will tag each tray with a number to tell whose pork is whose the next morning.

The imu is covered with plastic and the edges tamped down with dirt. The overnight crew has to watch carefully to make sure no steam escapes. The flavor is in the steam.

"It's keeping the tradition alive," Hendricks says. "The kids learn about imu in class. A lot of the kids have never seen it before, so we teach them what their kupuna used to do, and that's kind of neat."

Only a few kids will spend the night with the adults, those whose parents will stay over, too.

The cooking is finished by around 2 in the morning, so by then, the watchers can sleep while the imu sleeps. By 8 a.m. tomorrow, people will start showing up to pick up their trays.

Then it's a nap, two nights' worth of great dinners, and back on Monday morning to fill the hole and replant the grass, as promised to the school custodians.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.