Kalo may refer to:

• a member of certain subgroups of the Romani people of Western and Northern Europe (plural Kale):
  • Calé
    Calé
    Calé refers to the Iberian Kale, or Romani people in the Iberian Peninsula .It may specifically refer to:*Romani people in Spain, known as gitanos*Romani people in Portugal, known as ciganosFor their language see:*Caló language...
    
    
  • Kale (Welsh Romanies)
    Kale (Welsh Romanies)
    The Kale are a group of Romani people who reside in Wales. Many claim to be descendant of Abram Wood, who was the first Romani to reside permanently and exclusively in Wales in the early 18th century, though Romanies have appeared in Wales since the 15th century...
    
    
  • Finnish Kale
    Finnish Kale
    The Finnish Kale "blacks") or the Finnish romanis are a group of the Romani people that live primarily in Finland and Sweden.Their main languages are Finnish and Finnish Romani. They are mostly Christian.-History:...
    
    
• the dialects of the Romani language
  Romani language
  Romani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is any of several languages of the Romani people. They are Indic, sometimes classified in the "Central" or "Northwestern" zone, and sometimes treated as a branch of their own....
  
   spoken by these groups
  • Caló (Spanish Romani)
    Caló (Spanish Romani)
    Caló is a language spoken by the Spanish and Portuguese Romani. It is a mixed language based on Romance grammar, with an adstratum of Romani lexical items through language shift by the Romani community. It is often used as an argot, a secret language for discreet communication amongst Iberian...
    
    
  • Welsh-Romany language
  • Kalo Finnish Romani language
• the Hawaiian name of the Taro
  Taro
  Taro is a common name for the corms and tubers of several plants in the family Araceae . Of these, Colocasia esculenta is the most widely cultivated, and is the subject of this article. More specifically, this article describes the 'dasheen' form of taro; another variety is called eddoe.Taro is...
  
   plant

Loi

Hawaiians were very skilled and knowledgeable in the use off all the resources they had when it came to food production. Crop production of the kalo (taro) has been transformed and given its own uniqueness in the Hawaiian Islands than that of the rest of the Pacific. Hawaiians used water irrigation systems to produce this prime crop. In Hawaiian terms the word loi refers to their wet-land kalo field, or patch. Wet-land fields produce ten to fifteen times more kalo per acre than dry land fields. The Hawaiian irrigation system that watered the lo'i was manipulated to form an opening from the main mountain line stream, to flow down through each patch, then the stream water is led back into its original stream line it came from, where it is then headed to the sea.

The loi is part of an ahupuaa, a division of land from the mountain to the sea. Ahupuaa simply means "pig altar," and was named for stone altars with pig head carvings that marked the boundaries of each Hawaiian land division. Ideally, an ahuapuaʻa would have its required necessities in its borders. From the mountains, materials such as timber is provided for thatching roofs and twining rope. The uplands would provide several crops such as sugar cane and sweet potatoes, while the lowlands produced the taro and fish from the sea. This type of environment system, using all resources in the land, would very much satisfy the large populations in each ahupuaa.

History

In the midst of Hawaiian History comes the genealogy of Hawaiians. One of many mythological versions on Hawaiian ancestry deals with the taro plant of being an ancestor to Hawaiians. Legend joins the two siblings of high and divine rank: Papahanaumoku (Papa from whom lands are born)—Earth mother, and Wakea—Sky father; together they create islands of Hawaii and a beautiful woman, Hoohokukalani (The Heavenly one who made the stars).

Wakea desired his daughter’s beauty and layed with her, and born was a stillborn child, alualu (watery or deformed). The child was named Haloanaka, for Haloa meant ‘Long Breath’ or ‘Eternal Life.’ The fetus was buried and after grieving watery tears over her son's grave, out sprang a fragile, strong, and healthy plant—Kalo (Taro):

“The stems were slender and when the wind blew they swayed and bent as though paying homage, their heart shaped leaves shivering gracefully as in hula. And in the center of each leaf water gathered, like a mother’s teardrop.”

The second child born of this incestral union was named Haloa, after his older brother. The kalo of the earth was the sustenance for the young brother and became the principal food for the generations to come. And so the kalo was forever linked through this Hawaiian Creation Story of Wakea and Hoohokukalani. As man continues to work the wetlands of this sacred crop, he remembers the ancestor that nourishes him — Haloanaka.

See also

• Calo (disambiguation)
• Kale (disambiguation)
  Kale (disambiguation)
  Kale is a kind of cabbage in which the central leaves do not form a headKale may also refer to:- Ethnography :*Kale, the Romani for "black", used as a self-designation by some groups of the Romani people:...
  
  
• Cale (disambiguation)
• Names of the Romani people
  Names of the Romani people
  The Romani people are also known by a variety of other names, in English as Roma and Gypsies, in Greek as . In Central and Eastern Europe as Tsigani , in France as gitans besides the dated bohémiens and manouches....
  
  
• Romani populations