Day 5 - Learning Yup'ik and describing "home"

I just made myself dinner. So I thought I'd describe where I'm living in more detail, because it truly is foreign and fascinating to me. I don't think I could live like this my whole life but it might be an educational adventure for a few years. Its somewhere between camping and rural America outside of Alaska. It's what I imagine many rural towns were like right on the advent of electricity but with better technology. Basically anybody that says we need to go back to the old ways for whatever reason... needs to spend a year living like this first then talk to me again, and yet this is also exciting and there's that romantic adventure, journey, exploration, fantasy-esque, camping-esque, hunter-gather (because it is a subsistence hunting-gathering village) feel to it. Basically, I love it, it scares me, it makes me appreciate the comforts of home, it instructs me, it makes me grow up, it makes me ask questions, makes me want to go home, and makes me want to stay forever. I hope that's helpful. So dinner...

I made a Hot pocket but the microwave only works for about 30 seconds before there is a power surge and shuts down, so I plug in the microwave cook for 30 seconds and repeat. The I made brussel spouts which cook for 7 minutes. Yep. My hot pocket was cool by the time I got it cooked. There is no oven or stove. But there is one of those hot pad things so using that I boil water for tea. Ah water, so the tap water has chlorine in it, so don't drink it. We drink rain water collected in big trash bins and when I need water I dip a pitcher in and fill my cup. Its fresh and tastes good and sometimes there’s dirt but no complaints really, just observation. I am scared of drinking to much water and leaving them with nothing though. There's several bins and I imagine you refill them with snow in the winter so its just worry. The hot water is turned off by default so you have to turn on the boiler and wait 20 minutes to take a shower. But there are houses in the village that do not have tap water, plumbing, showers, toilets, et cetra, at all so comparatively this is actually a very nice place. Perhaps the church and school are all that have it better? The house is two and a half floors, so the main floor has an enclosed entryway, then there's one room with bed, TV, kitchen, dinning room, cold storage, and water basins, and then the bathroom is another tiny room. There's a steep, STEEP staircase in the corner which takes you up a hole in the ceiling into a loft with 1 flat wall and the sloped roof. This is partitioned into two with a wall, but no door and there is a bed with maybe 2 spare feet, on each side of the wall as that's all there is room for. And then there's stuff stored everywhere. I sleep upstairs in the back on a piece of plywood lifted of the ground with a 1 inch foam pad and my host sleeps on the floor downstairs, and the hostess is staying elsewhere (but not because of me). Once upon a time this place played home to a couple who moved here so their 16 kids could attend the newly built BIA school. Its painted blue, its about 10 feet from the Yukon (this offshoot is called the little Kotlik) river. Its quaint, cute, I like it, if it had better and more reliable utilities I could make it my home for longer than just a few weeks during fieldwork. I don't want to overstay my welcome though and I'm going to try moving elsewhere at the end of next week because I feel like I might be a burden.

Well, apparently there is a blizzard back home and I missed it :( It was 40 degrees here today and sunny, I was kinda hoping to see snow and a frozen river. So I started off my day by heading over to the school and I sat in on the second, third, and fifth grade classes Yup'ik class. Each class was 20 minutes long and the cycled through the room very quickly. The class began by reciting an oath in Yup'ik, then telling the date and the weather and then counting to 20 or so. After that the teacher introduced next weeks lessons, fish, and taught the class the names of a bunch of fish and asked how each was used and prepared, these kids have been fishing for awhile so only the Yup'ik part was novel. Then they played a targeting game, kind of like that one where you try to catch a ball on a stick when its tied to the stick... but here they competed to see who could get rings onto the stick. And then the next class came in. The middle and high school students get 50 minute lessons each day, but the Yup'ik teacher says by the time they graduate no one really knows anything. Its not a question as to why when the parents don't know or speak the native language at home and the school teaches it like a second language. I never learned Spanish in high school either. The program was designed differently in the 1970's but it didn't work and this is what they ended up with. The kids on the Kuskokwim river continue the language because they have this 1 hour or less in school and the parents speak at home. The Yup'ik teacher was great though, she is a native speaker of Kotlik dialect and moved here when she was young to attend school, basically why everybody moved to Kotlik in the 1960's. Maybe I'll talk about that another day. I talked about what I was doing and asked if she would be willing to work with me. But again, this trip I keep finding new people who could work with me but they keep saying oh no, no I'm too busy. I get that we all have lives but an hour of working with me a week isn't going to kill you, not even up here, it's just one day a week of TV time and I pay you. A bit frustrating. Even more so because she said her guess would be 40 speakers of the dialect left, all here in Kotlik and she would have a better guess than my old information of 70. so yea. Its only the end of the first week, if I can work for 1 hour next week I will be happy.

After wards, I had moose stew for lunch. I took some business cards over to the health clinic and the post office and asked if they could hand them out to the elders and Yup'ik speakers and tell them what I'm doing here. I bought a phone because apparently running into me on the boardwalk in this town of 800 people is too difficult and everybody I've talked to says “sure I'll think about it, what's your phone number?” so da-Da! I now have an Alaskan phone number.

I went on a long hike along the river and played around with the video camera to make sure I knew how to use it and made some cool videos of the area and the village, maybe you'll be lucky enough to see them one day. Then I went to the school and the internet and Talked to J, hooray, its been awhile! And then came back to make dinner.

To be truthful, not like I'm not usually, but its been a great first week, its been productive, fun, insightful, busy, and educational, and I'm looking forward to the next 7 weeks! I'm still on edge about the housing situation but there's nothing I can do about that for now. So here's to hopeful thoughts about doing language work next week!

Happy long weekend, and if you're in Canada Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Piurra!