This term our class went to our local marae for camp. The days we were at the marae were the 1st -2nd of May. Some of the people that were there was Robyn who is Charlie’s mum. There was also our teacher Miss Ireland. The groups that went there were the teachers, the parents and the kids. We were going to our local marae called the Arahura Marae. The reason we were going to the marae was to learn more about the Māori culture.
One of my favourite things that we did was looking for pounamu with room 5. We had a pounamu expert with us called Jerri and his cousin Tangi. When we were there quite a few people were going up to Jerri with rocks they thought were pounamu. Not a lot of people found pounamu. My friend Charlie found a big rock which was the younger version of pounamu. While I was searching, I didn’t end up finding any pounamu but I ended up spotting a cool looking grey rock with a black water symbol on it. I enjoyed going looking for pounamu because you had to have special permission which means it is quite sacred to the Māori people. After we finished looking for pounamu we had a sculpture building contest. In our team was Flynn, Charlie and Me, and we made a big Waka, but about three other teams did the same thing. Since three other teams “copied us,” we didn’t win D:
After we made our way back to the marae, Jerri taught us about some of the carvings. Two of the carvings were linked to a battle/semi war where some people from East Coast sent a boat with people in it to try and attack the West Coast Tribe because they wanted pounamu. A shaman from the West Coast foresaw the attack and summoned big waves which tipped over the boat of his enemies. Most of the people inside the boat drowned. Anyone who made it to shore got immediately killed by the people waiting outside. One of the warriors on the side where people had been killed waited a couple of days for his enemies to leave. He went back to get his men that were killed but he wasn’t able to carry all of the people’s bodies, so he cut their heads off and took them back for a proper burial. Some of the carvings had little decorated stones on their carvings which meant that they owned some land.
For the evening rotation, before we went to the marae we got to choose what we wanted to do for the evening rotation. I chose to do a technology challenge with Miss Ireland and I also signed up for weaving with Ms Kemp. For the technology challenge we had to make a taniwha costume on one of our people. One of the groups (a.k.a the girl group) ended up making waitaiki. So there were only two groups left (a.k.a 2 boy groups), in our team was James, Jack, Joe and me. The girl group ended up winning their challenge because they were the only ones doing it. So the girls won the Waitaiki challenge and our group ended up winning the taniwha challenge and we then did the weaving. For the weaving we had to try and make a flower with flax after quite a lot of flops and A LOT of help WE HAD SUCCESS. We had finally made a flower!
Then Came the FOOD. For tea we had fish, chips, chicken and salad. I got some of everything. Then we were allowed SECONDS so I got fish, chips, salad and a big chunk of chicken. BUT THEN the DESSERT came out so I wolfed down my food and went up. Somehow I was the first one up and the only one who noticed the dessert. BUT….. Ms Barrow ended up giving me a tiny bit of pavlova and I ended up eating it in about 6 seconds. I ate it so fast that Miss Island didn’t even notice that she already sent me up. SO, she sent me up again but I told her that she had already sent me up once.
The next day, on the way to Lake Mahinapua I noticed that I had put my pillow case in the back seat. So I grabbed it and put it on my head and whenever a car started coming I made sure I had it on and then I started tapping on the window and people outside could hear me saying, “Help I have been kidnapped.” And when we had gone to the lake and we were coming back we started doing it again. But then we saw a POLICE car so I quickly took the pillow case off and acted normal!
PERSONAL COMMENT
I think if you ever get the chance to go to Arahura Marae or any other Marae you should take it with gratitude and do it because then you will actually understand what it is like to meet another culture.
