This wasn’t the first time that I’ve been on a marae, but this time was certainly different because I went with Te Rangatahi o Raroa, our kapa haka group.

We arrived by bus on Monday at Horouta Marae, where all the girls slipped on knee length skirts as a sign of respect before we, the manuhiri (guests), were welcomed on by the tangata whenua (hosts).

The official powhiri (welcome) is where there are two female kaia (leaders), who call to each other and lead us towards the wharenui (meeting house). Across the top of the wharenui were beautiful carvings, representing our ancestors, and people that contributed to creating and opening the Marae.

Inside we continued the powhiri, which consisted of a couple of waiata (songs) and a few mihi (speeches). The procession then ended with a hongi, which is done by pressing one’s nose, and forehead at the same time as well as a handshake between the two. This is a traditional maori greeting that is done so that your breath, or soul is mingling with the others.

Inside the whare kai (eating room), we began to learn a new waiata that Matua Wetini wrote himself! It was written about our school, and talks about knowledge, dreams and aspirations. It also talks about learning and children blossoming and coming alive with the help of others.

The waiata was three pages long, and took a while to learn off by heart, but we eventually got the jist of it, and it started to sound beautiful. We did that for a huge part of the day (other than small food breaks).

For dinner we had sausages, mashed potatoes and mixed veggies, it was really good! Dessert was ice-cream and fruit salad, but there was a catch, before we got to eat it, our table had to sing a waiata that hadn’t already been sung by the other groups, and of course my table had to be last!

We know the hard work that is involved in learning a waiata so continued rehearsing after we’d eaten and even sang Raroa e (school song) a couple of times. At about nine, we headed off to bed, throats sore, voices gone and all very tired!

A brand new day! Good throats, loud voices and alive, ready for action. Ms Brown, our principal came out to visit us and we got to perform our new waiata to her which brought tears of joy to her eyes. After breakfast, we were put into four groups that we were for our rotations. The rotations were: poi making, rakau, maori hand games and haka.

My favourite was probably the hand games because we learnt two games and got to add our own actions in. We performed our new waiata to a couple of people that were visiting the marae, and I think that it went really well.

After lunch and rotations, everyone headed outside to learn the actions for Raroa e. That also went really well and most of us now know them off by heart. Then we had the poroporoaki (farewell ceremony), and sang a few more waiata. We returned to Raroa in the afternoon.

We’d like to thank Matua Wetini and Whaia Jo for teaching us the waiata, actions and for planning this event. We’d also like to thank Mr Matt Tilley, Mr Kayne Hawea and Ms Libby Morris for taking time to make this happen for our group. Ms Kelly Herbert and Ms Kelly Parsons also came out to help us out on the Monday evening.

We know this is a great stepping stone for an exciting year of Te Rangatahi performances at Raroa.