Huriata: April 2015

Malama Honua Voyage :D

Hello, this is Huriata and I will be your guidance to my experience while I was at Point England Beach doing the haka for the Malama Honua Voyage, I will also give you a seat to feel like you're actually apart of the Manaiakalani schools, enjoy !

On Wednesday the 25th of March my school, Tamaki Primary, was to attend a ceremony at Point England beach to welcome the Malama Honua Voyage,people who bring nations together, so lets begin the day.

Right when I just arrived at school, one, two, three, one hundred people were telling me the same thing over and over again and man was it annoying “we’re going to room three!” I nod then get bumped twice “Hey, room eight is in Mr Nepia’s class!” “ uh-huh, yep I already know” and you just keep getting hit by the same questions so you have to hit them back with the same ‘ answer!’ and another ‘ answer!’. I got to room Three and there were only like me ,Lovey and eight other kids sitting quietly on the tiny tables and there little side kicks called chairs, well I used two chairs to hold me up in place. When Mr Nepia got there he was being a funny guy,joking around and all so while Mr Nepia was calling the roll me, Ricky and Lovey were talking, we were being silly and doing jokes that we thought of might happen in the time. ( Bwa hahaha! )

(sorry but the conversation may concern younger audience, If you have any complaints please email ‘huriata8d23nk9@tamakiprimary.school.nz’ or dial something something something. Thank you) Finally Mr Minton, my teacher, arrived and was all ready and suited up with his jacket and cool T-shirt ( I wish I could come in those kind of clothings. ) Then table by table we started getting up and finding our buddies, oh I haven’t told you about them did I, well we are the seniors ,room 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , something , we are all the seniors and all the seniors have to have a junior buddy.

We… well we like the juniors , not lying but you gotta be strict and you have to be fun, to me it’s like hell,imposible, stuff… what I mean by stuff is like smiling and trying to be funny, you turn around and smile at a kid they scream and start crying for there mom. Sure I like to buddy up(sometimes) and be funny but you have to find the right jokes and say em to the right people,any way let me continue our last conversation um where were we,yes we were trying to find our buddies and apparently mine wasn’t there so I had to take a buddy that didn’t have a buddy and in situations like this you start to panic and you're getting nervous so you start to panic even more till the teacher comes around the corner then tells them they have to buddy up with you, sweet relief! I had to buddy up with a little boy named Te Koha and he was very mature about having me as his buddy so I was like ‘oh okay’ we lined up and started walking towards the carpark, as soon as we got to the green gates we paused then stopped and as soon as knew there was an amazing line of classes. You then start to hear the moans of both the juniors and the seniors, I was fine because I was entertained by counting down from 100 or more but I had to also keep an eyeball on Te Koha but it was no… problemo. Three four minutes later

“ The buses are here!” sigh … (groaning noises you hear from behind you) it was beautiful, the colours were so familiar and the signs at the back says ‘SCHOOL’ me and my buddy ran right on through and got some good seats but I sat on the edge of the seats so you usually feel uncomfortable, like falling off the seat then rolling down the walking space.

( thats just embarrassing ) As soon as we got to our stop we jumped up, walked off the bus

“Thank you bus driver!” and lined up in a very wonky looking line then we shot off down to the beach. When we arrived down there we had to sit on a little steep hill with twelve other schools “Tamaki ! Sit here, yep over there!” I sat down and I told Te Koha to sit down , then after a while it started to get uncomfortable as the person next to me was afraid of bugs;etg - beatles, long looking bugs and spiders. ( he he he ) “eww, get away! ahh, it’s coming closer!” I had to brush the beatle away so that he could be quiet and thats when you see all the boys grabbing bugs.

“ aww, isn’t it adorable?” “Ahhhhhh !” so thats what I was doing while waiting for a WAKA to appear. In the distance I saw a boat “ I can see the waka !” and I was like, really? Thats the waka? ( It looks like a boat, you’ll understand when you see the image!)

“ E tu!” we all stood up and then as you look to the side of you, St Patricks, Point England and the other schools, we all stood up. ‘Thump, thump, thump’ and did our haka loud and clear.

In the background you hear the speakers pumping up the voices from down below on the beach and then it went silent to loud, but it feels like you're whispering. Then like we had to stay standing for thirty minutes as we heard a horn or something “whoooooo !’ it would go loud than quiet and loud then quiet. After that we sat down and listened to a speech from an old man with a big nose who spoke a lot of maori, thats when I noticed it was a person I knew “ hey, I know that guy!” “Shhhhhhhh!” okey donkey, fine just saying ( thats what I was thinking anyways )

We sat down then listened to the rest of the speech and I was able to understand some of it as he only spoke of maori which is easier to translate, then we to stand up and do the haka two times then we sang the waita which is very jumpy but since I changed the words in the remaining time that we had till the day we were doing the haka for the ‘Malama Honua Voyage’

I didn’t practice the song so I had to smile and move my lips. We , the twelve schools, sat down in silence as we listened to the stories of the Hawaiian people/Malama Honua people and how Aotearoa/New Zealand and Hawaii are connected, as Manaiakalani means ‘ The Hook To Heavens ’

( you know on the old netbooks there’s a maori guy with a hook that goes around heaven, it looks like earth though, also means the same to us as well)

After that they sang three/two songs, afterwards school by school they stood up and ran to the Malama people to give them high fives and Tamaki Primary school went last “Te koha! come in front so that I could see you!” as soon as we did that we ran off near the buses then did the thing that we did before we got here. five minutes later the buses arrived and we sat in the spot we were when we got there and thats all I remember !

Thank you for reading :D

LJ checked my work ( it’s hard to remember though! )