Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Life in the YK Delta

In the past few days, I have been chastised by multiple family members and friends. Apparently, I don't blog enough. Because I only want to appease my many adoring fans, here is the story of my recent trip to Napakiak, a village of 400 people about 15 miles from Bethel. One of the attorneys, Chris, and I traveled to Napakiak to visit a client. He has a hearing coming up to regain custody of his children and we wanted to make sure his housing is adequate, see how he is engaged in the community, and talk to his support system there.
Getting to Napakiak was an adventure in and of itself. We tried to get there two times the week previous, and both times our flights were cancelled due to weather. After approximately 8 hours of waiting over the three days, I have become very well acquainted with the Grant Aviation hangar. It's actually harder to fly to places closer to Bethel in bad weather because you can't fly above the clouds - if you did you would overshoot your destination. You're probably asking yourself why it was necessary to fly to a place 15 miles away to begin with. There are no roads in and out of Bethel besides the Kuskokwim River, so unless Chris and I wanted to freeze our butts off on the river (which is what I did actually want to do - last time on the river before it freezes!) flying was our main mode of transportation. We could have hiked it across the tundra, but it would have taken us about 8 hours longer than the flight, so we exnayed that option as well. I really want to hike it on snowshoes later in the year, so perhaps that will be another post.

The plane was awesome. It was a 6 seater charter plane, and we could see everything from up in the air. On the flight back, I even got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot. AWESOME. Despite the fact that I was given explicit instructions not to touch anything, I still felt important.

Once we landed, the first thing Chris and I did was look around the "airport." It was a runway with a shed next to it. We were picked up by David, who works for Grant Aviation. I called shotgun on his 4-wheeler, meaning I got to sit on the back of the 4-wheeler while Chris had to crouch in the small trailer behind us, along with the luggage that was being transported. Chris is 6'4", so that was pretty comical.

We tooled around the village for the day, meeting with our client, his mom, his girlfriend, and the Napakiak ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act) worker. Napakiak has an ICWA office, 2 stores, a municipal building, a water and sewer building, a school, and a bingo hall. We saw it all. Our client also brought us down to the river to show us his boat, along with the other boats that are tied there.

The trip to Napakiak was wonderful. I felt very grateful to be given the opportunity to meet one of my clients face to face and be invited into his everyday life. Also, seeing Napakiak, which is a pretty standard sized village in the YK Delta, was a real gift because now I have a much better idea of what reality is like for my clients. I have seen where they live and can better understand what they are dealing with when they talk about village life. It was so interesting to see the way community works in a place that is so small and disconnected from what most would call modern society. Most people have never heard of Napakiak, AK, but life there is an example of reality for thousands of people that are forgotten about, both in Alaska and the lower 48.

(This is Newtok, a neighboring village, not Napakiak.)

(Sorry that none of these pictures are all that clear. It's difficult to take pictures from a moving plane/while walking.)

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Pictures and Politics






Here are some pictures of Sunday's frost and this morning's SNOW! Yes, write it on your calendars, folks. Thursday, Oct. 2 is the day of Bethel's first sticking snow this winter. When we woke up, the tundra was covered in a fine dusting. Everything is reeeeaally pretty.

Also, notes on how incredibly Alaskan I am:
- this weekend my roommates and I chopped wood. A lot of wood. Now, by"chopped wood,"I mean we ripped apart pallets with hammers and one blunt axe. We're definitely not done, but we made a good dent in our pile. My entire body is sore from the effort.
- last Monday, I ate moose meat for dinner. It was delicious and tasted kind of like pot roast.
-yesterday, my roommate Jon brought home a MOOSE HOOF!! No joke. It's sitting in our freezer, complete with fur. It wasn't bloody, but you can see cartilage and stuff. Ew and awesome at the same time.
-I am going to learn how to bead. Beading (making bracelets, earrings, pins, etc. out of small, multicolored beads) is really big in Yupik culture. Wassilene, our administrative assistant, is a seasoned beader and is going to come over to the JV house one of these days and teach us how to bead.
-Tomorrow I am taking a prop plane to Napakiak, a small village about 10 minutes upriver to visit a client. I will get to sit in the front seat of the plane. EEEE! Expect pictures and stories after that.
-I am now a certified Alaska state registrar. If you are reading this from Alaska and haven't registered to vote yet, come to me. If you are reading this from another state and haven't registered to vote yet, GET MOVING! Seriously, there is no excuse (short of being under the age of 18) for not voting in a presidential election. Get out there, people! And, watch the debates, presidential and vice-presidential. I will step off my soap box now.
And, one more thing. Kevin, we don't really have cars. We were lucky enough to have cars lent to us. We do, however, have a Yeti that we keep out back.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Goodbye, Fall!

Friday morning we had to scrape frost off the car windows before leaving for work.

Sunday morning the whole tundra was frosted over. (This includes my wet sneakers, which I left outside.)

Today, it snowed in Bethel. SNOWED. Yowza.

(Pictures and more life updates will show soon, I promise.)