Hawaii, the pineapple principle

As I walked from the boat to Waikiki so I could get to a bus that would get me to Hanauma Bay, I didn’t have many expectations. Well, at least not the “I can’t wait for Hawaii” types; I did have the “I can’t wait to be out of the ship” or “I can’t wait to taste some non-weird water” but then again that’s probably a general SAS ship syndrome, so I didn’t feel anything special about it. In a way, I think this lack of expectation had to do with the fact that I had way too established expectations: I imagined the colorful high buildings reaffirming that Hawaii may be in the middle of the ocean, but not in the middle of nowhere; the constant alohaing, some more genuine than others; and, of course, the aquamarine beaches dappled with a tapestry of diverse people. And I did see all of them there encarnating my conception of Hawaii, the very smiley beach paradise.
However, just after sunset, when I was about to leave, I decided to buy some snacks (yet again a symptom of the SAS syndrome). Inevitably, I went to one of the three ABC stores that were within a 5 minutes walking ratio. Once there, I was tempted to buy some Chips Ahoy! for the sake of good old times in my living room, but thought again and said: “Hey, maybe it’s better if I buy traditional stuff from Hawaii, you know, continue with the intercultural education vibe of the trip” and voila! the dry pineapples are there, colorfully screaming in plastic bags: “Hawaiian pineapple”. Immediately, I knew that I had to have them. There’s something about that phrase that seems just right, each word perfectly complements the other. We have seen Elvis Presley keenly introducing the pineapple delicatessen to foreigners in Blue Hawaii and those of more recent generations probably have encountered Johnny in the Disney Channel’s Johnny Tsunami dealing with living away from Hawaii and its pineapples. In both of them pineapples are the Thing in Hawaii; they are that incredibly fleshy fresh fruit that you could eat anywhere, but not really eaten until you get to Hawaii. So pineapples in hand I start walking towards the cashier. Yet somehow, by some weird impulse I decided to check the back of the bag to see were it actually was produced, since being from Puerto Rico I know that lots of “Porto Rican this or that” is actually made in China, and ja!, the “Hawaiian Pineapples” were not made in Hawaii, nor in China, but in Thailand. So I started looking at all things Hawaiian and found stuff from all around Asia, specially Korea, which made it feel much more like Porto Rico (that imports practically everything) than I had expected before.
I thought about Hawaii’s history and how just recently, in 1959 it became a state, just four years after Porto Rico got its current political state, defining its present relationship with the US. So I felt a personal compromise to dig into Hawaii’s intimacy even if it was only in that moment, in that chain store, via some cheap snacks. I manically scooped around all the food products determined to find something that was indeed produced in Hawaii, something whose revenue wouldn’t escape to some alternate country or even the mainland states, but stay in those islands, near those beaches I had so greedily possessed all day with my touristy activities earlier in the day. Eventually, I did find some food made in Hawaii, but they were not fruit stuff as I would have expected, but nothing more and nothing less than unassuming fried pork skins. Now allow me to translate this for you to Porto Rican because it seems almost sacrilegious to let them go by that boring English name of “fried pork skins”; I bet there’s some cool name in Hawaiian for it, but since I couldn’t find it the Porto Rican version is: CHICHARRONES... and it goes in capital letters because that’s how it feels. Because in Porto Rico chicharrones have larger than life status, well, basically anything with pork in it has larger than life status, what can I say, we are pork loving kind of people and vegetarians have a real hard time (just ask my uncle). But Chicharrones, god, it seemed like an omen or some kind of a divine sign. Especially when considering how I was determined to bring some as a gift to the Indian family I plan to stay with, but didn’t have the time to buy them before I left. I think I have never bonded so much with a country’s culinary traditions... Chicharrones. In Hawaii. Not pineapples. I got a chicharrones bag and a little something more than memories from a new land.