26May11 S09Deg32min W141Deg 20min "Live Waka"
/ 27 May 2011
Soggy chocolate with a little salt anyone?
A plateful of slightly mushy nuts and raisins chocolate that had been sitting in seawater got us all excited for a while today. Nobody minded a bit that you had to push the bits together and eat them like you were eating mashed potato with your fingers.
Funny how life changes and we adapt. I hope we can do it on a larger scale, there hasn't been a whole lot of talk of the environmental kaupapa yet.
It's part of our daily life on the waka of course, we have the environmentally friendly cleaning products and bodywash from the EcoStore that are doing their thing wonderfully and we separate our waste for recycling. The amount of unrecyclable plastic from packaging is a concern. Even tho we have worked at reducing plastic on board many, many products come in plastic that is just made to be dumped.
It's economics that keep companies using it, but the longer term economic reality is that we are screwing ourselves royally in a way that we/our planet will not recover from quickly.
My parents never had plastic bags. France a couple of years ago banned them in supermarkets, a simple change in lifestyle like taking our own bags to the supermarkets and shops would make a difference.
It sounds far removed from what we are doing, but it's a simple way you can support us in our mission.
As we head north we'll be approaching the 7th continent. I get a strange sick feeling in my stomach and my heart breaks when I think of it. For those that don't know, we have shed like a toxic snake skin such a huge volume of plastics that in the converging currents of the mid Pacific there are two areas twice the size of Texas, or as big as France that are nothing but plastic waste. This is our home and we are killing it.
Truly we have a lot to learn from our ancestors, and even our older generations still alive. The things we need to do to live in harmony with the Earth will not create hardship. Any sacrifices we have to make will only bring us face to face with reality.
A young Hawai'ian, Keli'i, was talking the other day. He said we have to "Live Waka". This was a quote from one of his mentors. On the waka we have limited resources, we have to manage our food and water and control our waste. It's easy and necessary and a matter of doing things individually for the better of the whole group. Join our voyage; for yourself, for your tamariki(children) and mokopuna(grandchildren) make the simple changes you can. We survive because we adapt.
Live Waka; salty chocolate still tasted good.
Arohanui,
Dunc and Haunui tuatahi
he moku he va'a, he va'a he moku. the canoe is an island, the island a canoe.
