Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 38, Number 9, 1 September 2021 — An Experience to Remember [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

An Experience to Remember

V V HE LEO HOU V " ^ A NEW VOICE "

By Kamali'iokekai Akiona, Grade 9 - Mālama Honua Puhlie Charter School Last school year I worked at ; Paepae o He'eia for my eapstone internship project. I really enjoyed working there; I learned mueh and am grateful for the experience. | At first I didn't care to go to Paepae 0 He'eia, but what caught my inter- ] est was the fact we learned, for the , most part, through action - some- , thing that I believe is sorely lacking in the school system. For example, I could not tell you a specific fact that ] 1 learned this school year, let alone before that. My brain filtered those things out as unimportant. , But for some reason I ean remember the process of planting dry land ] kalo - something I learned back in , 7th grade, or how a wa'a operates from those times we went sailing in 6th grade. I ean remember how to lash and I remember the first time we learned to make a ti-leaf lei. Working at Paepae o He'eia is also one of those experiences I will al- | ways remember. , Unele Kanaloa, from Paepae o He'eia, taught us about the different problems and projects in the fishpond whieh include invasive fish, overgrown mangrove, and the need to build walls. There were many options and eventually we chose to ,

make a ki' o pua, whieh simply put, is a small enclosure for raising fish. We chose to make it out of what we had, whieh was mostly mud. Unele Kanaloa seemed to immediately love our school's "Mind of the Navigator" skills, especially eommunication and collaboration. Together we designed our ki' o pua and started to build. Through this project, we learned to improvise, adjust, and improve upon what we were doing, something that is good to know for life. I'm not sure why, but I think people don't completely grasp that we are all on one planet and every single action has an impact whether big or small. Knowing this, our project ean be seen as something small and insignificant as all we were doing is digging a pit to raise some fish. But I think that this mud pit of ours is a perfect display of mālama honua, because by simply doing our part in this seemingly huge - but actually small and connected world - we ean make an impact. By increasing the population of native fish maybe it ean start a ehain reaction and change the world for the better. In the end of it all I deepened my understanding of halanee in this world. From what Unele Kanaloa taught us about the ecosystem and its delicate halanee; how the mangroves, the fish, the sea, the reef - everything living, things that have died, and what we consider "matter" are all connected. Because of this experience I think I finally got a small step closer to the impossible task of completely grasping this universe or perhaps beyond what ean never be perceived or understood. ■