An old plantation house once stood above the left-hand side of Ka‘apuni Road, heading mauka, about 1/4 mile beyond the fork at Olohena and Ka‘apuni Roads. For nearly fifty years that house, one of several in the long-since torn down
An old plantation house once stood above the left-hand side of Ka‘apuni Road, heading mauka, about 1/4 mile beyond the fork at Olohena and Ka‘apuni Roads.
For nearly fifty years that house, one of several in the long-since torn down Kapa‘a Stable Camp, was the home of Rita Composo Esquirra Sadang (1902-1976).
She moved there in the early 1920s when she immigrated to Kaua‘i from Cebu, Philippines with her first husband, Bernadino Esquirra, and it was there that they were parents to eleven children.
After Bernadino’s death in 1947, she married Agapito Sadang, and they resided there until he retired from Lihu‘e Plantation in 1972.
The house had a large parlor, a kitchen, four bedrooms and a lanai with wooden benches facing a backyard, a good place for family and guests to sit quietly and talk.
Beyond the lanai, Rita cultivated about an acre as her farm. Fruit trees such as common mango, sweetsop, soursop, manzanita, avocado, Hayden mango, cigar mango, coconut, starfruit, banana, mountain apple, guava, plum and breadfruit grew there.
In her garden she raised bitter melon, eggplant, sweet potatoes, bamboo, mushrooms, okra, corn and much more. Rita also produced herbs she used to cure sicknesses in her family and in others.
From her hala trees she would weave living room mats for sale. She also fashioned lauhala baskets, while Agapito made lauhala hats.
On her farm there was a pigpen and wild chickens were for the taking.
Rita never bought fish. She caught them in the ocean and in streams, rivers and reservoirs, and a small nearby plantation reservoir and adjacent irrigation ditches provided her with frogs.
Weekends were festive. On Saturdays Agapito and his friends would prepare a pig to eat, and Sunday was cockfighting day at Kapa‘a Stable Camp.
