Rural Alaska

I left last week on the ultimate Alaskan adventure... I went into Bethel and Chefornak to visit some dear friends and students of mine: charming Dolena Fox, goofy Larissa Flynn, and sweet heart Josephine Yohak, 3 girls that I've come to know really well over the coarse of my 3 years at Mnt. Edgecumbe High School.  It really was a trip to remember forever.  The Foxes, Flynns, and Yohaks were so hospitable, and would have given me the shirts of their backs.  (They did send me home with a whole backpack full of treasures.)

 

Truly bush Alaska is like visiting another country.  In the 5 days I was there I was offered: dried seal, dried ptarmigan, agooduck (Eskimo ice cream, totally delish: tundra berries and seal oil or in my case Criso), tundra greens, tundra eggs, bird soup, reindeer stew, bulga whale and blubber.  My cell phone did not work and all the people I met spoke to me in English and everyone else in Yupik.  My church service Sunday morning was all in Yupik and my students had to do some translating into Yupik to their siblings and parents when they didn't understand something I was saying in English.  Chefornak people took Mukays (steam baths) instead of showers and used honey buckets instead of toilets. 

 

Bethel is a hub village for the surrounding 56 villages, so it was a happening place.  Chefornak was one of those 56 villages and a 45 minute bush plane ride away.  It was hard to believe, looking out of the window on the flights that there would be any room for villages seeing all the water.  Some people call Alaska the land of 10 million lakes, and I think that maybe an underestimate.  Here are some of the highlights:

 

Dolena and her mother, Pauline at break-up.

Where village expectant mothers come to stay here so the can give birth in big city Bethel.

Bethel fuel prices.

Dolena, Kake and Pauline in their Bethel home.

A view of Bethel from the air.

My arrival committee and vehicle, there was only one car that I saw in Chefornak, and only one tree!  I saw 8 trees while in Bethel.

Dried seal, it was everywhere all over the village... so was the smell.

Josephine and Larissa on the boardwalk, the only road was to the airport, there was still lots of snow in some places. While we walked the boardwalk Josephine and Larissa were able to tell me who lived in every house in town! Totally wild!

The sun only went down a few hours out of the day, here is a Chefornak sunset, probably sometime after midnight.  Notice the snowmachines in the foreground, people were using their snowmachines when I was there to haul water back to their homes.

Spring had still just barely arrived, but we were able to go egg gathering on the tundra. I was informed that if I had come a week later we would have been able to get seagull, swan, and ptarmigan eggs, everyone's favorites, these they just call brown eggs.

We walked a long way off in the tundra. 

Notice how boggy the tundra is, even with extra tuffs on by the time we returned to the house my feet were soaked.

Josephine and her family: (from left) Nelson, Martha, Jimmy and Josephine.  Josephine has an older sister who doesn't live in town. 

Tundra greens that you rake out of tundra lakes.



Larissa's family: Darcy, Larissa, Mickel, Rosie (the puppy) Veronica, Martin, Natalia, and Ben

At the airport again, notice the lack of building, and here is the first car I saw my entire trip.