# 7 Lava Camp

Kia ora My name is Jack Karetai-Barrett, and I’m a year 10 student at Whakatane High School. Happy New Year to everyone who reads my column. 

Over the week of the New Year, I attended Lava Camp on Mt. Ruapehu for my Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. The purpose of the Duke of Edinburgh Hillary Award is to equip rangatahi for promising futures by challenging us to develop skills and tools to improve ourselves and our communities. I started Duke of Edinburgh Bronze early last year, to follow on from the William Pike Award that I completed at Whakane Intermediate School. For Duke of Edinburgh Bronze, you have to complete three months of work in learning a new skill, in volunteering, and in some kind of out of school physical activity. You also have to add an extra three months to one of those three skills - I extended my Waste Zero volunteering and started writing this monthly column. For Silver, you have to do six months in each section, and you can continue to develop your new skill from the Bronze, or chose something new. I developed my gardening skills for Bronze, and improved my te reo Maori for Silver. As well as those things, you also receive outdoor training and complete three hikes, including two overnight hikes.

The Duke of Edinburgh Award has made me fitter, smarter, better at navigation, and most of all, safer in the bush. I have learned that the bush is safe until you forget that it’s not.  I’ll be moving onto my Gold award in March this year once my Silver is completed. For Gold, you have to complete a year in each skill, including a weeklong residential service project. I hope to go back to Ruapehu for my residential. 

One of the things I really like about the D of E is how a whole lot of strangers come together to complete their training and adventurous journey for bronze, silver, and gold awards as a team. The purpose of our journeys was to get more confident with our mapping, navigation, building a good new team with strangers, and good self-care. We also had the responsibility of caring for our environment, which meant picking up rubbish. Surprisingly and sadly, there was a lot of it on Mt Ruapehu! So many people just dump their rubbish, even on the Great Walks tracks that have hundreds or even thousands going through each day! On our first eight hour hike alone, we picked up two bread bags full of rubbish. And our next two combined were five bags! People can be so lazy, and it’s sad that they don’t follow the best tramper’s rule - leave no trace. Whenever we would stop to have food, we would put our rubbish into small bags inside our packs. When we would cook, we would also do the same thing. I try to keep my waste to a minimum when on the mountain, not bringing anything that isn’t environmentally friendly in case the wind blows through and catches it and I can’t recover it. 

My Duke of Edinbudgh silver team did lots of clean-up on the tracks, picking up after people who don’t respect the planet. When we got back, we properly disposed of the waste; it was a shame that some of it couldn’t be recycled. I wish people would think before they buy something; always choose things that can be recycled, where ever it is possible. My award leader Gerry Purcel always says “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance”. Thank you for reading my article.