Making a difference, worlds away.

Published May 24, 2016
By Senior Airman Kyle Johnson
JBER Public Affairs

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Many women grow up watching princess movies and dream about meeting their own Prince Charming who will smile at them with a jawline of steel, sweep them off their feet onto shoulders that would make a draft horse jealous, and take them into a wonderful fantasy full of fluffy dresses and perfectly executed ballroom dancing.

Few realize those dreams, but sometimes - maybe by providence, or some fickle finger of fate - fantasy can come to life.

U.S. Army Alaska National Guard Sgt. Esther Maka's story is not quite so clean as that. When she found herself in the midst of her very own Cinderella story, she got her fantasy tempered with reality.

Perhaps the healthy dose of reality makes her story all the better.

Maka said she didn't dream of being swept into a Victorian-style royal court by a dashing prince; she dreamed of being a pilot.

When flight is the only reasonable way to travel home, pilots aren't glorified taxi drivers, they're gateways to a new world full of opportunity.

Maka was born in Alaska, but her family is from Tonga, a collection of a little more than 120 islands about 40 minutes south of Fiji by plane, where the lifestyle is as much of a polar opposite from Alaska as the weather.

Because the primary income for Tongans is usually from family members who work overseas in places like New Zealand, Australia and the United States, many of them live relatively transient lifestyles. Maka's childhood is evidence of that.

Maka moved to Tonga with her parents in the second grade, where she stayed, until she moved back to Alaska for high school and secondary education. It meant she left behind childhood friends, including a boy named Inoke.

"We're used to movie theaters, [fast food], etc." she said. "When we go down there, it's much different. Here, everything is so fast, you expect things to move fast, but in Tonga, it's very island-life. We still make food in the ground. We still have our little kitchens in the backyard where we are peeling our yams and everything."

Instead of following mom around the department store, face half-buried in a tablet computer, kids in Tonga can be seen running across beaches barefoot or in flip-flops, horse-playing and making friends while the adults prepare roast pig on banana leaves.

As carefree as that may sound, Tonga isn't without ambition, Maka said. Education was the only thing her grandmother cared about. The statistics support it too, the country has a literacy rate of 98 to 99 perecent - depending on the study - and boasts the hefty claim of having the most doctorates per capita around.

Maka herself has embraced this passion for education and today, it's what drives her goals - goals that wouldn't manifest until much later in life.

After high school, Maka enlisted in what was then called the Recruitment Sustainment Program, now known as the Arctic Warrior program.

Because of the limited number of job slots for Guard members, individuals who wanted to join the military could do so up to a year before they ship to Basic Combat Training.

For a year, Maka worked as a human resources specialist while she waited for her turn to go to basic training. Unfortunately, she reached her one-year mark and had to separate, leaving her with two choices, try again, or pursue something new.

It was around this time Maka began to notice some cultural patterns for Pacific Islanders in America she wasn't comfortable with, and the roots of what would come to be her lifelong mission began to find purchase in her heart - she just didn't know it yet.

Maka would choose not to enlist again until 2009 where she finally went to basic as a private first class.

Immediately after advanced individual training, she was picked up for a recruitment job, where she would stay for the full duration of her time in service, having worked every job recruitment has to offer.

That's when Maka said she became acutely aware of a negative-feedback loop she felt was inhibiting progressive movement among Pacific Islanders in America.

"I noticed it when I went to Alaska Military Youth Academy," said Airman 1st Class Erika Maka, materiel handler for the 176th Logistics Readiness Squadron and Esther's younger sister. "Because we had a lot of Polynesians in there with us. There was about 20 of us. They all felt like they were falling behind in school, and wouldn't go anywhere. They felt like they were going to be the first ones in their family to fail school. I was falling behind because I would always travel back home with my parents. I was falling behind. I felt like we needed to do something."

Alarmed, Esther and her sisters set out to make a difference. They wanted to enable Pacific Islanders to move forward while still preserving their cultural identity.

As it turns out, there's a marketing venue that allows well-meaning organizations to deliver their message into the phones of thousands of young people on a daily basis and convinces other people to advertise for them.

So, shortly after graduating AIT, Esther and her sisters started a Facebook page. The page, for Esther, would be the first step to her new passion - empowering pacific islanders in America and at home toward a better life.

It started off small, with Esther's sister Elisiva knocking on business' doors, asking for donations and sponsorship. They invited successful people like doctors and lawyers to meet with their group on the University of Alaska, Anchorage campus.

"That's where we started getting more and more involved," Esther said. "We saw there was a need. Girls were getting empowered. It was mostly family members, Tongan females. Many of our original crowd are now graduated and going to their Master's programs."

Eventually, they got their big break in 2013, where they had their first annual large-scale event.

"We noticed it was a success." Esther said. "So we thought we'd push it out to the general public now. We started brainstorming, how are we going to get the PI community together and get our message out there?

"As islanders, we love music. So we threw the Midnight Sun Island Music Festival. We grew overnight. That music turned out to be our way in to these people."

Suddenly, Esther found herself a link between two worlds. She was a Soldier, ready to fight for the rights of the American people, but she was also a Tongan dedicated to creating a better life for her native people.

This lifestyle had her traveling back and forth between Tonga and America on an almost bi-monthly basis.

"It felt like we'd have to pick her up every two months," Erika said, with a smile and an exasperated sigh.

Esther was on just such a trip with her sister Elisiva, when she saw a familiar face.

"Is that -" Esther said to her sister sitting next to her, then hopped up in the plane full of strangers and shouted, "Inoke!?"

The boy she knew from elementary school as a child, who was sitting ahead of her on the plane, jumped, surprised by someone shouting his name - mostly because he had grown accustomed to being called Lord Luani. One doesn't call a lord by his first name in Tongan culture.

Esther had no clue he had become a lord, to her, he was an old childhood friend and she addressed him as such.

They chatted, and as Esther would say, vibed pretty well together. Later, Inoke reached out to her cousin and got her phone number.

During her regular trips, Esther would find out he was a lord, but by then they'd already become fast friends and would visit each other frequently.

"So we just started exchanging conversations for about a year," Esther said. "When I was in Tonga, he'd take me out and we'd go to all these different places. We just talked like we never missed each other. Like we'd known each other forever."

"He was very sweet, very easy going," Esther said, voice listing off into a dreamy singsong, mind obviously elsewhere. "He was into his people. We had the same goals. We both want to continue school. He, he was just nice, and humble, always there. That's what made me fall in love with him."

As the only ruling kingdom in the South Pacific, Tonga has a full royal court - complete with queen, king, lords and ladies. As such, the different houses' leadership often marry politically with the marriages being picked out years in advance.

Because of this, someone born in line to a lordship has a wife picked for him at birth.

As it turns out, Inoke wasn't too interested in that, because a year after establishing a friendship with Esther, he showed up at her home in Alaska and proposed - to her father.

Esther was in the kitchen, making tea for the family when she heard it happen.

"Oh. No. He. Didn't." she growled through gritted teeth, emphasizing each word with a another slice of the knife. "I did not just hear that."

It's not that she wasn't happy, Esther said. She just wasn't expecting it. She didn't think she was ready. She said it felt like her life as she knew it would end.

Well it did, but she began a whole new life, one she's found purpose in.
"He was supposed to vis-it, visit," Esther said, smacking her hands on the second syllable of 'visit.' "Let me tell you how it happened. He came, proposed, we got engaged that weekend and married that Monday.

"That's how it went."

Things began to move very quickly, and not necessarily in a good way. A lord wasn't supposed to marry a single mother and Soldier.

In as little as a day, interested parties came out of the woodwork, slandering Esther on social media. They even made a page dedicated to that purpose, calling her things like 'old hag, whore and child molester.' Lord Luani was one year younger than her, but both were in their mid-twenties.

News companies got involved, pushing headlines like "Lord marries commoner sweetheart."

He proposed on Thursday, they hosted their engagement party on Saturday in Alaska, where Tongans from all over showed up - including the prince - and people began to learn more about Esther, beyond explosive and hateful Internet bullying.

As it turned out, she wasn't so common after all. Her great-great-grandfather on her mother's side was the last of the 'Last Kings,' the Tui'Tongan lineage.

While there were still some outspoken antagonists, Esther was not without her support - namely, the current Tongan royal family. They rallied behind her and supported the decision of the new Lord and Lady Luani.

In time, the people came around, and Esther didn't waste time moving her ambitions to a bigger picture.

She used the nonprofit she founded with her sisters to begin making a ground-level impact on Tongan education while she fought for it on a political level.

"We raised money for a new library," Esther said. "We had a little cookout for the Tongans up here from [Inoke's] villages. But other people from other villages came to show their support. I wrote a letter asking people to donate for one of our schools and showed them pictures of the school.

"We raised $15,000 here and went to Maui and raised another $15,000 there. Then, we met in [Los Angeles], flew down together and started building."

Esther said she believes that by investing in the education of youth in Tonga, they are better equipping them for success when they go state-side for work or family.

"I got a report just the other day from one of our estates that said the kids were actually staying in school longer because of the school supplies and outdoor activity materials we provided," Esther said. "They're seeing an increase in kids actually trying because we're watching them and supporting their needs."

In time, she hopes that an overall increase in education will begin to push the government in a progressive direction.

Tonga is a very male-dominated society; the government is largely run by men with little input from women.

Esther said she embraces her culture, and doesn't want to change what it is to be Tongan, but she does feel that women provide a different perspective and skill set to the government - creating a more balanced Tonga.

She's also modeling her proposals off what she's seen to work in America as a Soldier - particularly the Alaska Military Youth Academy.

Her country has a partnership with the National Guard in the states, a partnership she wants to use to start a military youth academy in Tonga.

"I strongly believe in military academies for kids," Esther said. "I mentored and taught classes at AMYA. There's no juvenile system in Tonga, and the kids are not scared of the cops, but they will die if they see a Soldier from His Majesty's Armed Forces pick them up. They respect the Soldiers.

"So I'm pushing for a military academy as a way of establishing a juvenile [justice] system."

Raised as an Alaskan immigrant, then as a Tongan commoner with distant ties to royalty, and refined as an American Soldier, Esther Maka now has found herself in a unique position to make a difference. She's transitioning out of the military to continue her life of service elsewhere.

"I do all this because I believe in it. I see how it has changed so many Pacific Islanders. We have that warrior mindset, and that bone is stronger than any bone in our body. I'm pushing for more [balance]."