Photographs TEC PETAJA @tecpetaja
Aloha
LIKE A PAIR OF FLUTTERING BIRDS, Maile Napoleon’s delicate, 78-year-old hands never stop moving. I’m sitting with her at a food court table in Waimea, an upland farming and ranching community on the Big Island, surrounded by green hills in paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) country. Maile is chatting – ‘talking story’, in the patois of the islands – while her nimble ingers continually inter-weave blossoms with strands of dried rafia to create a woman’s head lei.