Log 3, Alaska

Continued from Log 2...
8/18/02

Quaint is not the right word. The town for the most part is a ghetto. Everyone seems poor. There is no running water in any of the homes and the water supplied to the school is yellow and must be distilled. White clothes look dingy after washing. The housing in the old part of the village is nothing but plywood shacks it seems. There are newer homes a little sturdier and are painted bright colors.

Went to church this morning. Part of the mass was in English, part in Yupick.

Our food and TV still have not arrived. We are thankful for the generosity of the staff for letting us buy or borrow needed items.

Called Mom today to have her send some things.

8/21/02

Called Dad, left a message. First day of school, no problems. The kids seem no different than kids the same age anywhere.

8/25/02

Talked to each one of the kids today, except for Shannon. I left a message. Last night we had two couples over for dinner, nice people, will probably become friends with them.  George and Sandy, Katy and Jodie, and their son Andy.

I have been walking around the village and have taken a few pictures. TV got here and is up and running.

Kids keep stopping by to visit. I don't let them in, am polite but don't want to get it started or it will never end.

Still haven't gotten Paula to the beach yet, have walked around village. Food is expansive here and all the stuff we ordered from Anchorage has not arrived yet.

8/27/02

Three kids knocked on the door tonight and offered me some dried fish. They said it was Chum, which I think is part of the salmon family. I tasted it after making them taste it first. They gave me the whole fish, said it was for my wife too. I thanked them, closed the door and through it away. So much for the taste of the local food.

Note to reader: After reviewing what I wrote back then it seems callas, but I was in not the best state of mind as you will tell in subsequent logs. I did start letting the kids visit and they came by a lot, and I even developed a taste for Chum.  In fact I even started feeling affection for the kids.

Log 2, Alaska

Continued from Log 1.

Later the same evening. 8/15/02

I have tried reading a book and magazine, listened to the radio, and tried a crossword puzzle. I am already bored and the evening has just begun. I have thought I would do a character sketch on the people I have met so far but I really don't know them well enough to be accurate. So I have decided to write down what has happened so far since we left Tucson but only hit the high points.

Mom dropped Paula and I off at the airport. Mom did pretty good saying good bye, didn't even cry, at least not in front of me. The plane left on time at 6 A.M. The two and half hour flight to Seattle was uneventful as was the hour and half lay over. The three and half hour flight to Anchorage left a lot to be desired because it was over cast and Paula could not see the mountains below. She was disappointed.

We went from the Ted Stevens International Airport to the Sheraton Anchorage. Got settled in the room then walked around town, had a drink at a bar named Humpys, went to a School District reception, met a couple named Kroll, went to bed, got up the next morning and went to some meetings, then to Sam's to buy supplies, went back to Humpys for dinner, bed, meetings in the morning,caught a flight at 6 P.M. which didn't leave until 6:40. While waiting we met a guy from Kansas City who was going to Bethel also to fix some sort of medical machine and also an Albanian who had once lived in Dixon.

We landed in Bethel and got the last room in town at a place called the Long House. Bethel is a poor excuse for a town. It has no central business district and what shops there are are stretched out along the roads more or less hidden from view.

We asked a cab driver, all cabby's seemed to be Korean, about a restaurant and he suggested the Depries. Sounded exotic, but it turned out to be no more than a cafe, food wasn't bad however

The next morning our flight was supposed to leave at 9 A.M. ended up departing at 1:30 P.M. It was an hour flight to Hooper Bay in a nine passenger bush plane. The bags were in the same fusel lodge as we were.

We flew over the tundra and it looked like flying over the great planes, but flatter. The area was very green and there seemed to be ponds of water everywhere.

We circled Hooper Bay once and from the air the village looked very quaint. We were met at the landing strip by the school principal and taken to what would be our home for the next nine months. More Specifics later.  (un edited)

Log 1, Alaska

I look back on my time in Alaska with smiles, happiness, and humor.  Today I came across a log I wrote at the time I was experiencing all the wonders of Alaska.  Realities and memories don't match up sometimes it seems.

8-15-02.  Hooper Bay, Alaska

We arrived yesterday.  This is the most dismal looking place I have ever been in.  It is dirty, the houses are little more than plywood shacks and the teacher housing, at least for us, is some where next to the type you would find in the ghetto.

There are fly's all over the place, our food has not arrived, we have no phone or TV yet and we only get one station on the radio.  We are very remote here, you can feel it, we feel forlorn and even with both of us here we cannot help feeling alone and isolated.  A silence has fallen between us but it isn't out of anger.  I think I might have made a mistake.

Women are the ones who are the real pioneers and are the back bone.  They make a house a home.  Paula is doing all the right things but I can tell her heart is not in it.  It pains me to see her unhappy.

It is 52 degrees outside, the wind is out of the west at 17mph.

The school building is the pits.  My classroom is OK and in all fairness everyone we have met, native and teacher, have been very nice and helpful.  This is a good thing I guess given the fact that yesterday we were all strangers.

Death on the Tundra

Bright Moon and a bunch of her friends were riding their four wheelers on the beach late one night. They were playing a game the kids called ditch'm. Bright Moon was riding with three other girls when they hit a piece of driftwood and thrown in different directions. All suffered head trauma. They were evacuated to the regional hospital a couple of hundred miles away by plane. No small feat in the middle of the night in the Alaskan bush but unfortunately a common one. Bright Moon was the most severely injured so she was sent on to Anchorage. The family managed to raise enough money to be at her side the next day and eventually faced the horrendous decision of pulling the plug.

School was sort of a dismal place waiting for news about Bright Moon's condition. The vice principal spoke over the intercom to try and set the record straight about her condition and asked everyone to observe a moment of silent prayer. An hour later he came back over the intercom and informed us that Bright Moon had died. School was dismissed.

The next day some village elders, a social worker and the missionary came to Bright Moon's classroom and had everyone who wanted talk about her and more or less comfort one another. They sang songs, held hands, and prayed. No separation of church and state that day.

A day or so later her body was flown back to the village where it was laid out on the family's living room floor. The wake was like a wake anywhere else. Friends and neighbors brought food, shared hugs and memories, shed tears, and bid Bright Moon farewell.

The next day a large funeral was held in the school gym. All the stores were closed, school was put on hold, and even the post office closed down.

A few days later Bright Moon's mother came to our classroom and presented us with an 8 x 10 colored photograph of Bright Moon. I found an old rosary and draped it over the picture. The picture and rosary hung there the rest of the school year.

When I returned the next school year the picture was still hanging on the wall. Some of Bright Moon's friends came by and asked if they could take it to their new classroom. It was a procedure that would be followed until her class graduated from high school.

The year book that year will have a page dedicated to Bright Moon and her presence and at the graduation ceremony her picture will be placed on the seat where she would have sat. Her name will be read as if receiving a diploma and then a close friend or relative will carry the picture down the aisle towards the future that should have been hers.

End of the earth - Alaka

“No,” I wrote a friend once while living in Alaska, “Hooper Bay is not at the end of the earth.”  I also recommended that he pay us a visit.

“Hooper Bay,” I told him, “Is a Yup’ik Eskimo village of about 1200 Native Americans and 20 Gussicks.”  Gussick being the name given by the locals to any outsider.  The villagers say that the term is not derogatory, but the way it is used sometimes makes me wonder.

“Our village,” I continued, “Is 125 air miles and one hour northwest of Bethel and can only be reached by a propeller driven plane piloted by the last of the real flying daredevils, the Bush Pilot.  Bethel is 450 miles and a one hour flight by a modified commercial jet west of Anchorage and Anchorage is a three hour forty minute and a lot of miles from Seattle.

“When you reach Bethel be prepared to spend a night or two just in case the weather does not cooperate and flights to the bush are cancelled.  This happens more than one would like.  However once in the air, seldom does the pilot turn around and more than likely the trip will be uneventful.  Listen to the prerecorded safety instructions closely, just in case.

“About ten minutes out of Hooper Bay the pilot will call me on the local CB channel.

I will pick you up in the school truck, one of the three in the village.  If it is snowing have no fear the school owns a snow-go, one of a couple of hundred in the village, with a nice open air dog sled attached.

“We will only have to travel about a mile down the road if the snow drifts cooperate and if they don’t the snow-go will just cut across the tundra about three quarters of a mile to my place where you can thaw out.

“Don’t worry about bringing food or anything, we have plenty, buying supplies for three to nine months at a time depending on the item.  Don’t bring any alcohol however because it is against the law to drink, posses, or sell such.

“Once you have recuperated from the “trip in,” as we call it we might be able to go to the daily bingo game at the tribal council building.  Don’t plan on winning though, but if you do be prepared to make a donation back to the assembled group.  They don’t like outsiders, especially Gussicks to when ‘our money.’  “There may be a teacher’s potluck going on and later if we are real lucky we might be able to watch TV given a clear signal from an ever weakening satellite signal.

“Perhaps the next morning we can walk to the four stores in the village, via interconnecting boardwalks and let you check out the prices on some of the items.  Right after that we will have to go to the local clinic staffed by health aides and get an infusion of oxygen to help get over the price shock.  From there we can ride of walk, depending on the weather to the beach, stopping by the halibut processing plant which is temporally closed because there were no halibut caught last season.

“While standing on the almost black sand beach, I am sure you will be the first on your block to say you have seen the Bering Sea close up.  Some think the murky looking water and sand is unattractive but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the yellow foam churned up by the waves is not pollution they say.  After visiting we can walk along and between the dunes and head back stopping at the laundry mat and see how many washers and dryers are working.

“The post office is the most modern building in the village and if you want to I am sure they will let you sort packages in the backroom and if you sort and lift the big ones it will be appreciated, it usually is.(note to blog reader: now they have a new school and were preparing to build a new health clinic when I left and there could be more I am not sure.)

“We can then venture to the unkempt graveyard that is adorned by wooden crosses and again depending on the weather, we might find a casket resting above the groud because the tundra was too frozen to dig a suitable grave.  The village dump butts up to the graveyard and if we are real lucky we will see a child discard trash and human waste in black trash bags.

“To get a real feel for the village a short walking tour at this point will be in order regardless of the weather.  We will pass by clothes and fish drying on clothes lines or wooden fish racks.  There will be moose antlers and skulls lying on the ground or sitting on top of the plywood shacks the Eskimos call home.  Snotty nosed little children will follow us and want to be your friend, ask you where you are from, how long you are going to stay and if you have a dollar to give them.  There will be many inoperable snow-goes and four wheelers propped up on drift wood or sunk in the mud in front of many dwelling that you gaze upon.  You might see a half eaten walrus head next to a dog house, the remnants of a butchered seal, or a vertebra of a beluga whale resting near the boardwalk.

“We could stop by and visit the two churches, one Catholic one Protestant.  The priest is a Jesuit and pastors several other communities.  The Protestant church is served by a missionary from North Carolina whose wife comes from Mission Kansas.  He, his wife, and five children have been here seven years and don’t plan to leave soon.

“There would be more to see, the Octagon, once used as the community center and now for teen dances, the Village Police building with its one cell and dedicated men wanting to improve and protect their community, the bay where the fishing boats are tied and anchored and men go out daily to catch and then feed their families, but by then the plane will be due to land, depending on the weather of course, and we will have to hurry back to the landing strip.  Besides one day is enough for most visitors and I am sure you, like most outsiders, will be more than ready to leave and can’t wait to tell our friends back home that Hooper Bay may not be at the end of the earth "but you can see it from there.”

Lutherans - Alaska

For several years a group of laity Lutherans and a couple of ordained ministers came to our village next to the Bering Sea to teach Bible School during the month of July.  It was a mission for them and there was a large Alaskan Lutheran  mission organization that provided logistical support.  Each member of the delegation had to raise at least half the money for the trip, their local church kicked in twenty-five percent, and the rest of the money was raised by bake sales, car washes or what ever kind of event they could come up with.  

One of the pastors was named Ted.  He was about 38 years old, big, tall, and friendly.  He stopped by my lodging several times and we would chat about, television, football, baseball, and other things other than religion.  It was sort of a break for him I guess, I mean one can only be around religious people so long. 

Big Ted, as he called himself lived in Texas but grew up in Minnesota.  I think he might have been a secret Treky because he could not take his eyes of Star Trek while it was playing and sort of timed his visits when it was going to be on.  

I mentioned to him in a weak religious reflection moment that I was sort of friends with the local missionary and although he believed in the six day creation and the earth being no more than 6000 years old he was a nice person, practical in his approach to dealing with potential converts, and had done a lot for the community.  Big Ted shook his head like he was agreeing with me and then would go back to watching Captain Kirk fight off some sort of space alien. 

A couple of nights later Big Ted showed up again and we began talking about religion for some reason.  I guess I needed more weak moments.  He sort of got pleasure in telling me that he too believed in the six day creation and the 6000 year old earth.  Oh well it wasn’t the first time I had stuck my foot in my mouth but I took admonition with ease not being the embarrassed kind.  I am sure that if Ted thought I would have gotten embarrassed he would never have tweaked me that way.  Religious people do have a sense of humor now and then.

Big Ted and his group only stayed a week.  Cynics might say that they did very little but smile and think the native Eskimos were interesting and the kids were cute and thought that having 200 attendees at the events they held, they could go home and tell all the other parishioners what a great thing they had done.  But the cynics are being cynical.

I had a group come to my classroom one day and it turned out to be a very good geography lesson and I even let them witness, but there is no need to tell the ACLU, besides I am sure the statute of limitations has kicked in my now.  Besides it killed a half hour for me in the morning and afternoon classes.

As far as coming into the village and leaving thinking they did a good job, well they did.  I equate them to the story about the guy throwing the star fish back into the ocean (if you don’t know that story let me know and I will relate it one to one.)

I have often thought that it was too bad that I as a teacher and was unable keep up the love and enthusiasm to my students and the villagers I came in contact with daily as did the Lutherans did for that week.  It would have been great if a Big Ted would have come by my dwelling every day or so just to pump me up.  I would have bought the entire three years worth of Star Trek on DVD just for him.

Move and the social life - Alaksa

There were and probably still is four basic reasons people move to Alaska to teach school:  The young just out of college looking for adventure; couples who want to increase their retirement portfolio; those who want to start a fresh life; and those who can’t find a job in the lower 48 and just want one.

The young are divided into two varieties – singles who crave adventure and the married who realize that with the money they make they can pay off their student loans in just one or two years.  They leave debt free and, if they are careful, have a little nest egg to buy a house back in the lower 48.  Some stay longer of course and pay cash for the house when they return which usually coincides with them wanting to start a family.

The older couples are usually retired school teachers and want to fluff their retirement nest egg.  They claim they are going to stay until vested in the Alaskan state retirement system but usually leave after three or four years.  They begin to miss the life they had near shopping centers and restaurants and their children start to have children and the grandparent things pulls them home.

The person who wants to start fresh and thinks the last frontier is just what is needed usually find that places change and people don’t.  They leave after one year or sometimes at the semester.

The last group of people, and the ones becoming more prevalent, are those just looking for a job.  They are first year teachers who can’t find employment in the lower 48 or those who have been laid off from teaching positions and any job will do.  They really don’t have the desire to go north but a recruiter paints such a rosy picture, that they think why not.  Not a good reason.  They start putting their resumes out the day they get here and as soon as a job in the lower 48 opens, they leave.

One of the bigger problems with education in bush Alaska, or at least it use to be, is the turn over rate.  We always had a huge turnover rate in every school I taught in.  My first year I saw 60% of the teachers leave, the next two years 50% left and one year I went to a school that every teacher there was new.  Try to run a business with turn over like those.

So why you may ask did I go to Alaska, and more importantly why did I stay as long as I did and would under the right circumstances go back again?  Good question, one that I have not satisfactorily been able to answer in my own mind let alone explain to anyone else.

There were days I would have gotten on the next stage out of Dodge but reality would strike and staying was the only logical thing to do.  The money was a draw but it wasn’t enough to go in the first place and not enough to keep me there longer than I was.  There were more kids that irritated me than warmed my heart and if any of my friends from back home would call and I was not at home, my answering machine said “Greetings from the land of nonsense.”  That quote always seemed to sum up about how I felt about the place day-in and day-out and all the idiotic situations that occurred in and around the villages.  Someone said I was odd to go and stay or the phrase I liked best was that I was just one dog short of a team.

The best reason I can come up with as to why I went and why I stayed and would go back was the fact that I had a dazzling social life.  I had plenty of friends back in Independence especially and I knew they would be glad to see me, but after the flurry of get togethers they would manage to ease back into the life they had with out me.  Some how they all would have managed to move fore ward while I was gone.

My social life in Alaska was much more active and stimulating than any other place I ever lived.  It was out of necessity of course to keep from going bonkers but the interaction between and among teachers kept me busy and stimulated.  Other villages were better than some but there was always something going on to keep from getting cabin fever.  Hooper Bay had the best teacher interaction and the village I liked the least. While Noatak had very little teacher to teacher contact on a social basis but the village I liked the most.  There was always something going on and the community made you feel a part of it.  Go figure.

But back to the social life.  In Hooper Bay, and this is as true as I can recall, the following was a typical week:  On Sundays we would go to the Marshall’s for coffee and pastry.  Later that same day a bunch of us would pile onto a four wheeler and sled and go to the beach to hunt clams.  On Monday, those of us who did not eat clams would go back to the beach to see what had washed up the night before, some times a whale would be there if we were lucky, or even a walrus if we were really lucky.  On Tuesdays the Gillans came over for dinner and always had pictures to show us about the previous summer they spent at a youth camp or tell us stories about the last 10 years they had spent in Hooper Bay.  Wednesday we had a Bible Study with the local missionary, which we sacrilegiously called Back to God Night.  Thursday the Krolls would come to dinner and we would watch our favorite TV show (it was such a favorite I can’t remember what it was now) but if the cable was out, which it tended to be now and then we would just gossip about everyone one else.  Which we figured was alright because it was not Wednesday.  Friday was pot luck at Marta’s or Jane’s and Saturday we would usually dine with the Neufeldts.  Life did not get a whole lot better than that. 

I realize that Tom Wolf was correct when he coined the phrase “you can’t go home again” and I don’t want to relive the past I just don’t want to forget it.