Hawaiian 1

August 15, 2012

Reflection 1:

Today during class Kumu Kalani did an activity with us. We went outside and he brought some steamed Lehua kalo and began to clean it. Once the outer skin of the kalo was off, Kumu cut up the it into bitable pieces. These pieces were called “kalo pa’a.” Kumu Kalani then went around asking everybody in ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i whether or not they would like a piece. Each of us got to practice how to say, “yes, we would like a piece of kalo pa’a,” or “no, we would not like a piece of kalo pa’a,” in Hawaiian. I took Kumu Kalani’ s Hawaiian 1 class over the summer and he had done the same activity with his summer school class as well. However, this part of the activity was new to me because Kumu never made the kalo pa’a for us during the summer. Then Kumu went on to make fresh pa’i’ai by ku’i (ing) the kalo. The difference between the pa’i’ai and poi was the volume of water. The adding of wai to the pa’i’ai was symbolic because wai is also known as life. So in other words when the wai was added to the pa’i’ai, the pa’i’ai was receiving life. Once again we practiced our Ōlelo. Next, Kumu taught us about Hāloa na lau kapa lili. Hāloa, was our elder brother and we had to take care of him by mālama (ing) the ‘aina and in return he would take care of us by feeding us. I also learned that there was a significance to how long it took kalo to grow. It’s takes kalo approximately nine months to grow fully, that’s approximately how long it takes for a baby to grow and Hāloa was the unborn child. Therefore it is like Hāloa is getting the chance to fully grow.