If I learned one thing in high school, it was to live off the land. I was born and raised on the island of O'ahu and I have always had a profound interest in the Hawaiian language and culture. I began learning the language in Kindergarten and followed through with language courses up until last semester when I completed Fourth-Level-Hawaiian. Each year, the Hawaiian department at my high school would load up the buses and venture to Maunawili Falls for a two-and-a-half day adventure. We were banned from electronics of any kind and were challenged with living as the natives do.
On the first night,we would normally play some sort of game or would be asked to write a short play to be performed in the company of several teachers, parents, and a few other students. The purpose of doing so was to acquaint the students of upper and lower divisions with each other, not to mention, establish that we wouldn't be able to speak any English throughout our stay. Initially, that frightened me. It's not that I'm a quiet person by any means but, hyper shy in the classroom environment. It is also not that I didn't grasp the material. I was at the top class. I just choke. Being the only white girl in the entire department, let alone the entire school, I felt obligated to be the most proficient speaker of the language, the best hula dancer, and the individual most tied to the land--just to make a name for myself. I wasn't the most proficient speaker by any means. I'm still not. However, my reading, writing, and comprehension levels are through the roof. As a Sophomore, we played Charades using the terms on the vocabulary lists we had recently gotten on first night. My team killed the competition because I'm a walking dictionary of Hawaiian words and idioms, always have been.
On the second night, the group would venture into the greenery to collect foodstuffs that we would make as a whole. We always ate real well on the second night. Most of us had never worked so hard in our lives. We had done back breaking work for almost ten hours each day in the baking hot sun so, it was no surprise we were all starving and exhausted.
My favorite part of the trip was learning about the ancient Hawaiian usages of plants and foodstuffs as the group cultivated taro. One year, one of the men that reside on Maunawili Falls, gave me and a few other girls a plant that he said that the natives used as a depilatory cream. With this plant came, not having to shave for several months at a time. The thing about Maunawili is... everything one needs to survive is present. It's one of the two, I believe, fully sustainable areas on the island, alongside Ka'ala farms. With that said, you don't want to bring nice clothes, nice shoes, or nice anything really, because saying it's muddy is an understatement. The entire class would be drenched in three feet of mud for nearly three days but, I can't say that it wasn't all worth it in the end. Aside from having mud caked inside you fingernails and toenails for a few days, the experience was possibly one of the most enriching adventures one could go on, to learn how to survive on only that which the earth provides us with. For someone like myself who has been immersed in the culture pretty much all his or her life, it was the gift that just kept giving. Not only did I get to begin to see people I had spent my entire high school career with in a new light but, learned how to dettach myself from worldly possessions and live better.
Over the years, I've been drenched, eaten alive by mosquitos, used the bathroom and taken showers outdoors, cooked all three meals of the day from nuts and berries etc. I had gathered, pounded fresh poi, moss slided down a waterfall, fallen off a cliff, blazed new trails, and ultimately found myself one with nature.
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