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May 06, 2008
“Around February in 1994 is when we started the business, I think,” Leona Nomura said with a laugh. We were sitting on a long low, weathered block of wood bolted to the wall outside the front window of Kuau Mart, a small local general store that caters to windsurfers, surfers, tourists and local people. There was a steady stream of cars parking or pulling out in front of us and customers were bustling in and out of the store, bracing against the strong trade winds blowing from the direction of the pineapple fields across the road. Nomura called greetings to each one. Almost all of them knew her well, talking story and keeping her up-to-date on what was happening in their lives. “I don’t think half of them know my name,” Nomura said of the customers she refers to as “My boys at Ho‘okipa – the windsurfers and surfers. They all call me Auntie. This is not your normal store, you know that?”
She had been talking to me for quite some time and continued, “It’s so much fun when you start a business! I was born here, at Pa‘ia Hospital, and grew up in the camps at Haliimaile. My husband and I lived on the mainland for 27 years, in California and Louisiana. He worked for Chevron and I packed cookies in a Nabisco factory – we always worked hard. We came back home in 1992 for a Gouveia family reunion and decided to move back here. We were retired, though, and started getting fat, eating avocadoes every day; I decided to get out and look for a job. We had never had a store before this, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
“When we got this store, I met so many people – you meet the world! I know people from England, Barbados, Canary Islands, countries in Russia, Sweden, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Guyana, Morocco and Tahiti. I can say ciao, arrivederci, and au revoir.
“When we opened this store, we knew nothing. We decided that we’d learn everybody’s name and listen to them, find out what they wanted.” She sold several plates of rice with “sauce” – broth from her teriyaki chicken, also for sale – for one dollar while I was there, to lean young surfers, hungry after school but with little money to spend. They all seemed right at home at Kuau Mart with “Auntie”, as if this was a daily occurrence. “They have to have the rice,” she commented.
“Auntie Kuau,” as Nomura is affectionately known, is semi-retired now, having given the business to her daughters a few years ago. “It’s still ours on paper,” she said, referring to herself and her husband of 41 years. “I was getting tired. And we never did make that much money when I worked.
“I used to have piles of IOUs written on brown bags, and didn’t pay attention to them because this is an island. I didn’t want to have to avoid people because they owed me money. The good part of life is when you realize that money isn’t everything.”
Since a large number of her clientele are surfers, she talked quite a bit about them, saying, “The surfers’ passion is like when an artist does a painting – being in that cool blue water with the clear sky above you, that’s gotta be the best therapy in life. I think water people think like the old Hawaiians.”
In discussing the advantages of owning your own store, she said, “You don’t have to take sassy people – nobody should ever make you feel less than you are.” And she tells the story of her personal objection to people buying cigarette rolling papers, which she reluctantly sells; apparently she lectures anyone who dares purchase them, and says that sometimes people will send in their unsuspecting European visitors to buy papers for them while they sit outside in the car, laughing because they know full well that the visitor is being roundly scolded by Auntie before being allowed to pay for them.
Nomura’s lease is up in about two years, and she may be selling the business, so things will be changing rapidly soon. But until then, you can always get provisions, including fresh hot rice and teriyaki chicken, at Kuau Mart.
Jan Welda
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