Quite frankly, reading "bring your own mess kit" on the checklist for the ‘Āina Ho‘ōla o Mā‘ilikūkahi 2010 youth delegation confused me already. I mean, besides not being able to pronounce the conference name correctly, why in the world would they make us bring our own plates, forks, cups, bowls, and spoons? (In no particular order.) Turns out, this conference, affectionately termed "Hands Turned to the Soil," (An English alternate name, thank the Lord Almighty) consisted of a LOT more hardcore stuff than I had initially thought it would.
Because they wanted to minimize paper waste in the name of "conservation," they urged every youth attendee, or "delegates," as they called us, to bring our own plates and utensils to eat off of. And they made us clean our own eating materials. Quite frankly, with me and my noob wash-the-dishes skills, I think I would have been more "conservative" with throwing away a paper plate and fork, then wasting a gallon of water on a plate.
And that little detail was only a miniscule part of an exponentially larger Aina-awareness theme during the 3-day, 2-night overnighter camp.
I must admit, I was a wee bit skeptical of this conference, mainly because of the two Hawaiian chants that we had to memorize for the camp, to be used for conference opening and for blessing the food. Not only could I not memorize them, (I can only memorize things when the words make sense. Those Hawaiian words, even with the translation, made no sense whatsoever to me.) the words were giving thanks for the food, or the day, or the wisdom that we would take in. The problem? They never mentioned explicitly who or what they were thanking. (Unless they did, and they said it in Hawaiian. Me=Clueless.)
If they were thanking some obscure Hawaiian god, I would have voluntarily stayed out of the chants. However, I heard some mention of "Ke Akua" in some 'Pules afterwards, too. If that Ke Akua is the same Ke Akua that I serve, then hey! I'm good! (I still didn't memorize the chants, though. They were just too hard.)
Anyway, our first activity was a very interesting talking and listening activity. One that, I think, even proficient debaters would have had trouble with. Our leader assigned us a random, generic topic, and made us talk for about a minute, average, without stopping, to a partner who could not respond verbally. I got the topics "youth" and "Where you came from," and had to talk for about 1:30 minutes each. You would have no idea that it was massively difficult to talk for more than a minute on those topics without prep time, unless you actually tried it.
After a few minutes of that tortu... *Ahem* ACTIVITY, we went over a few ground rules and regulations, and headed to the back of the kitchen for our very first working activity of the day. Scaling and gutting Tilapia.
Yay.
After getting poked twice by their protective fins, and scaling/gutting about 10 slimy fish, (and learning that we would eat those for lunch,) we went back to our little meeting place, a rotunda called the "halau," and debriefed a little bit before lunch.
Surprisingly, that steamed and fried tilapia was quite excellent, despite my Father's conviction otherwise. (He grew up near the Ala Wai canal, you see.)
After cleaning and drying my mess kit, I hung around a bit, made some new friends, and met back up with the group an hour later. We then proceeded to do a "leadership traits" activity, in which we partnered up in pair, and discussed our individual leadership traits to post on a paper "cape" on the wall. It was basically a huge motivational poster, meant to spur us to reach higher standards.
After that little pep time, we started something a bit more challenging: planting a garden.
Now, it we weren't working with this little nice plot of brown soil, with a few weeds here and there. That dirt had to be the worst dirt I have seen in my entire LIFE.
We were working with crushed coral and stone, which tinged the ground gray. Stones lay everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. About an inch under the entire area we worked at, a huge rock impeded our digging process. The whole place was basically a massive quarry. We had no Oh-Ohs to hack away at the rock, and only one pickaxe. So, we switched to plan B: Making mounds to plant in.
After extensive iron raking and digging, (We had enough rocks to build two expansive rock barriers for the plants) we finished with all the mounds for our plants. Using compost from our earlier lunch, we fertilized our plants and watered them. That ground was so dry, that the water actually changed the color of the dirt from a light gray to a dark brown.
However, we got it done. In less than 5 hours, our group had planted an entire garden of trees, plants, and herbs. And no artificial chemicals; after all, one of the conference's theme was to raise "organic awareness."
That was the last significant activity of the day, we had dinner, debriefed, set up our cots, and went to sleep. (Boys and girls slept in separate tents, although the "separation" was only about 50 feet.)
I woke up at 5:00 for some strange reason, even though the "wake up" time was 6:00. I took the opportunity to shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, and all that good stuff. Soon, everyone else woke up and followed suit; we met up in the Halau at about 7:00.
After discussing the upcoming activities, we Pule'd, and had breakfast.
After the meal, we broke up into 5 separate groups, each group going to different places on the island to learn about different things, for about 5 hours. I stayed at the campsite, to learn more about aquaponics.
My group spent about 4 hours building two full-fledged aquaponics systems, and fine-tuning them. We took that extra hour to eat some much-needed, (Need I say?) organic lunch.
After each group finished at their separate sites, we all gathered in the halau, debriefed, and had an hour or two of free time. Many of us took that time to go to the beach park right down the road. A couple of teens, myself included, played some basketball with some random guys already at the outdoor courts for about an hour.
After walking back and refreshing myself with a shower, our group convened yet again, to 'Pule and eat dinner. (Hawaiian Luau'..... MAN, that was good.)
After the meal, each group who had attended the separate activities during the afternoon were asked to define the term "food sovereignty" for ourselves, and to relate that to 4 things: Connection to the Aina, (Land) Connection to Kanaka, (Others) Connection to Information and Education, and Action.
My group gathered our thoughts, and came up with a solid definition of food sovereignty: Freedom to choose what you eat, without any external influence. We presented that idea to the entire youth delegation, and received some great feedback, which caused us to refine our definition to external DIRECT influence, rather than just external influence.
After an interesting game of broken squares, (I can't tell you what it is, you need to find out for yourself. :-P) our group watched some videos on food sovereignty, and closed for the night.
Again, I woke up at 5:00, did my daily hygiene routine, and waited for the 'Pule. We were asked to think about a commitment to present to all who would attend the conference in the afternoon, (the planning committee brought in food speakers from around the island, and had many adults attending) that related, in some way, to food sustainability. We 'Puled, and had breakfast.
Throughout breakfast, I thought about what I should commit to. Finally, I decided on a bold, daring commitment. I wrote it down, and gave it to my chaperone, Aunty Lyn.
After sitting through an hour of less-than-entertaining forum speakers on food sustainability, (no offense meant) the entire group broke into separate workshops, all at the campsite, ranging from cooking, to gardening, to GMOs. I attended a chicken raising workshop, a high-school and college gardening workshop, and an aquaponics workshop.
Between the 2nd and 3rd workshop, the convention, now made huge because of the adults in attendance, 'Puled for one last time, and had lunch.
After the final workshop, everyone met back in the halau, and listened to some closing remarks. The final speaker invited the students up on the stage to present their various commitments to food sovereignty. These promises ranged from giving up chips, to donating a pig to the next convention, to limiting fast food consumption.
In a crazy state of mind, (I don't know how I'm ever going to fulfill this thing) I committed to helping at least 5 people a month start an organic garden.
Anyways, the conference ended quite smoothly. I and a few others helped break down the tents and chairs, and transported some borrowed resources to other sites. I said my goodbyes, got some email addresses and facebook names, and left the conference.
I made some great friends at ‘Āina Ho‘ōla o Mā‘ilikūkahi 2010, including Uhi, Kawika, big and smaller Keli'i, Kaiwi, Sarah, Nikki, Ku'u, Kahala, Kala, Geri, Aunty Ilima, and tons of others!!!!
I really have only one critique about this conference: the level of morality. There were a couple of bf/gf today, ex/ex tomorrow relationships, as well as a few campers trying to sneak in their cell phones and hide them, (we were banned from having any electronics) and even some boys and girls trying to sleep together.
All in all, though, that was an excellent conference.
Will I be there next year?
Brah. Guarantee.
