Molokai visits Na Honua Momona October 21, 2013

At the end of our first FABULOUS month celebrating ocean, fish and the value of mālama i ke kai, we took our families to a loko i‘a here on Moloka‘i; Na Honua Momona. The families and keiki learned about fishponds, dry land taro, making of Hawaiian salt and fresh water springs. These fishponds were built over 700-800 year ago.

The pōhaku needed to build the loko i‘a were lava boulders found only on the north shore of Moloka‘i. To get these stones, cooperation was needed from all the families living in the ahupua‘a. Families lined up to make a human chain over the mountain and passed the stones one by one, from the north shore of the island, up and over the mountain one pōhaku at a time down to the south shore. With this in mind, we passed our little homemade pōhaku one by one around our circle during piko, and together we made our own fishpond.

A big mahalo to Nā Pono No Nā ‘Ohana at Blanche Pope Elementary School in Waimānalo who shared with us the brilliant idea of creating homemade pōhaku using sand, zip lock and duct tape. Our ancestors were engineering geniuses back in their days of designing loko i‘a.