Update | Opua School Visit

Aloha kākou, this is Kaniʻela reporting from Aotearoa, Opua. We just came from having lunch. The community center was hosting us and a handful of us crewmembers got to move away to go visit Opua school, and it was an amazing experience. There’s about 100 kids k-8^th grade and they shared with us some song and dance and we shared with them what we’re doing as well as some songs from us. And of course, we have Pōmai Bertelmann there helping us out. And it was a really beautiful exchange that we had with this school that is doing lots of great things to Mālama Honua.

Basically what they showed us some of the things they’ve been doing in their community as well as global, you know, the full “glo-cal” kind of thing. One of the things is there are gardens all over the property. They have been making things with water bottles that they have been cleaning off of the beach – their full green house is made out of plastic water bottles.  They got their own chickens, own hens, fully self-sustaining. They have their own eggs to eat. And kids can skateboard at recess, that I was really impressed with.

Also, they actually won the garden competition. In the whole nation of New Zealand, this little school’s garden was so diversified, so well taken cared of that they won the garden competition for the last three years. That was a really inspiring thing to see. So they taught us a lot, we learned a lot from them, and hopefully they learned something from us and what we are trying to do as we make our way around the world to Mālama Honua.

Mahalo nui for all of your support! Keep watching, keep telling everybody what we are doing, what we are trying to do as we make our way around the world. Your support really fills our sails. Check out hokulea.com and ask a question, ask the crew a question. Check out all the different things that are on that website and mahalo nui. Aloha!

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