Sunday, January 6, 2019

Laundry On the Cheap.

Not every home in Bethel has a washer and dryer. Mine doesn't. They're costly, not only transporting them here but also installing the hook-ups, preventing waterline freeze, and increased water and power usage. There are laundromats but they're costly too: $12/load and $16 for cab fare. To save money I bought an EcoWash tumbler.


I had zero appreciation for the labor-savings of a washing machine until now. I should have, because growing up we used a combination of washer, wringer/mangler, clothesline, and dryer to clean the clothes of seven people. It was hard but I was young and all work was hard. Laundry takes labor at any age, it turns out.  
The EcoWash is actually fairly simple; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND7_9aQ5HdM. It was about $60 on Amazon and it's paid for itself a hundred times over. It does take time; one load, from wash fill, crank, drain, rinse fill, crank, drain, hang, takes about thirty minutes. The loads are small so I do around three/week. It takes 24-36 hours for the clothes to dry on a folding rack standing in my bathtub with a fan blowing on them. I estimate the clothes are about 60% as clean as they would be in a conventional machine and there tends to be some annoying soap residue on dark clothing. I use Dropps mini detergent pacs (dissolvable organic pods). 
While I enjoy the moral superiority of environmentally-friendly laundry, if my landlord said he was installing a washer/dryer I wouldn't argue. I have tremendous respect for people who did laundry by hand for most of the history of clothed humanity.   

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Groceries, Through the Looking Glass.



10:00 Sunday morning.  On a happy walk to Alaskan Commercial to buy groceries; I can see it just a quarter mile ahead.
                “Hey!”
                I walk a few more steps in hopes the voice isn’t directed at me but there is no one else outside within 500 yards and I realize I will have to engage.
                “Hey!”
                I stop walking and turn toward the voice, an older woman in a red shirt, who waves at me from the doorway of a ramshackle house across the street.
                “I need your help!”  
                “You need help?” I repeat.  Maybe she’ll think I’m an idiot and ask someone else.
                “Yes!” she says and retreats inside. I wait for traffic to clear, trudge across the muddy street, through a muddy yard, have a choice of walking up a wheelchair ramp (a clue to what I’ll find inside?) or snow-covered stairs.  I take the stairs.  The snow will clean my boots a little.
                The door is ajar but I knock anyway. There is no answer. I push open the door and enter a short mudroom and an overwhelming miasma of rotten food, feces, seal oil, and vomit.  The small living room is strewn with flotsam over old linoleum that has likely never been swept since it was laid.  Sunlight streams through the windows, highlighting a bucket next to the sagging couch, half full of the likely source of the smell.  The red-shirted woman is gone, but a young Yupik girl in her mid-20s stands silently centered in the doorway to the living room.  She stares at me with dark brown eyes half hidden by puffy cheeks tinged scarlet with acne. 
                “How can I help?” I ask her.  I remember to go silent.  It’s called the “3.5 second rule”: wait at least 3.5 seconds after speaking to a Yupik because their conversation pattern is slower than white people are used to. I wait.  She says nothing, just stares, unmoving.
                “Someone said they needed help?”  Nothing.  Stare. She reminds me of an animal caught in a trap.
                “I’ll help if I can.” Stare. 30 seconds pass.  I stay still on dirty cardboard in the mudroom, conscious of my filthy boots.  I stand openly, non-aggressively, my gaze directed at the space between her eyebrows so as to project eye contact without actually looking into her soul.  She seems torn between bolting and accepting my offer.
                “I think she’s having alcohol withdrawal” she says timidly “she’s seeing things and acting crazy.”
                “Hellooo!” cries a voice from another room, “who’s here?  Are they here to help?”
                I step to the end of the cardboard, peek around the corner and see the woman in red reclined on a bed in a back bedroom. I turn to the girl, who hasn’t moved.
                “How long has she been seeing things?”  I think through my OPQRST pneumonic, O stands for “Onset”.  She says nothing, stares at me as if gauging my usefulness, or gullibility.
                “Can you describe how she’s been acting crazy? Does anything set her off?”  I ask.  P stands for “palliative or provocative”.  I pause to give her the requisite time to reply.
                “It’s alcohol withdrawal” she says again, more confidently. “I’m having alcohol withdrawal.” She has decided what to do with me, how I can be useful.
                “Oh, you’re having alcohol withdrawal!”  Pause.
                “I drink a lot.”  She starts to tremble, but it looks forced.  I’ve seen plenty of alcohol withdrawal, including my own.  Tremors are different than trembles.
                “When was the last time you had something to drink?” Back to O.
                “Two hours ago.”
                “What did you drink?” Pause.
                “I… it was vodka, I think.”  She has not stopped staring.  Her eyes are lovely - and inscrutable.
                “Well, if you drank two hours ago you’re not going through withdrawals” I say matter-of-factly.  I smile to soften the truth; no one likes to hear the truth.  She stares at me then snorts a puff of laughter –or disgust - and puts a hand to her chest.
                “I’m having chest pain from the withdrawals.  I’ve had withdrawals before, I know what they’re like.  My chest hurts. I need you to call an ambulance.”  Ah, they need me for my phone.
                “You want me to call 911?”  She nods silently.  I sling my backpack off, set it down on the chest freezer that sits in every mudroom in Alaska and pull out my phone.  I dial 911 and hand it to her.
                “I don’t know your name or address so you’ll have to talk to them.”  She takes the phone, looks at it briefly, and makes a tiny, impatient grunt. I see her thumb twitch over the hang-up button.
                “Are you here to help?” the lady on the bed yells.  I look around the corner and give her my biggest smile.
                “Yes, I’ll help if I can!” I yell back.
                “Who are you?” she shouts.  “Oh, you’re the person I waved at across the street!  Are you here to help?”  I look back at the girl. She is holding my phone out to me.  It has been disconnected from 911.  I don’t take it.
                “If you want an ambulance, you’re going to have to talk to them” I say patiently. She says nothing, just holds the phone out to me. We stare at each other for 20 long seconds.  I take the phone.
                “Do you want an ambulance?”  She starts trembling again.
                “My chest hurts.”
                “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does your chest hurt?” Pause.
                “Seven.”
                “Then let’s call the ambulance.” I dial again and hold it out to her.  “I don’t know your address, you need to tell them.”  She takes it and this time she lets it connect.
                “I’m having chest pain” she says simply.  She gives her age and location then hangs up.  The 911 dispatch doesn’t ask many questions, they get these calls all the time.
                “Do you have something to drink?” the lady in red asks, weaving into the living room.
                “No, I don’t. I stopped drinking a while back.”
                “Oh, who are you?”
                “I’m John.” 
                “Come in and talk with me!”  She plops onto the couch, the definition of bedraggled.
                I remove my boots and enter the bright living room. I have to squeeze past the girl who has not moved.  Her head swivels to track me as I pass.
                “I’m a nurse, if it makes you feel any better” I tell the girl.
                “You’re a nurse?”
                “Yes.”  She mulls this over.  I choose a child’s plastic school chair to sit in; it’s clean, it’s lower than the couch which makes it non-threatening, and it leaves the other chair open for the girl if she wants to join the conversation.  I hope she will.  I hope she’ll trust me, call off this charade, and we can have a good conversation.  My foot nudges the bucket, which sloshes.  A sickening wave of fresh stench erupts.
                “I’m Mary*. Tell me about yourself!” chirps the red lady expansively, draped over the couch.
                “I’m John.  Ummm… I grew up on a farm.” Pause. Gasp. Breathe through mouth.
                “Oooohhh, I LOVE farms!  In fact, I have always wish I was on a farms!”
                “Are you from here?”
                “Yes, I’m from here.  My mother, she left me – oh, I don’t know how many plots.  I have…” she waves a hand in a general direction “sooo many plots.  Sometimes I have to… you know about the homeless people?”
                “No, I don’t know about the homeless people.”
                “You’re a nurse?” the girl asks just as the paramedic knocks on the door.  She is still standing in the same spot she was in when I arrived.  The paramedic cracks the door and pokes his head in.
                “You having chest pain?” he asks, eyes flicking between the three of us.
                “Yes” the girl says.
                “Can you walk to the ambulance?”
                “Yes.”  He withdraws his head and she follows him out without a backward glance.
                “I have had so, so much things happen in my life” says Mary thoughtfully.
                “I’m sure you have.”
                “I’m 57.  And how about you?”
                “I’m 47.”
                “Oh, I’m older - then I can boss you around!”
                “Sure.”
                “I’d boss you around until you got tired of bossing… oh!   Excuse me.  I just farted!”
                “That’s OK.  Well, I’d better get goi…”
                “No!  Stay – please stay!  I get so lonely!”
                “OK.  I’ll stay a few minutes.”
                “Do you have anything to drink?”
                “No.  I used to drink but I don’t anymore.”
                “I feel sooo sad!”
                “What makes you so sad?”
                I don’t have anything to drink!!!
                “You said you liked farms.  Have you been to a farm?”
                “One time we went to Canada, to a farms.”
                “What did they grow there?”
                “Oh, fruit trees, and, well, just everything that grows!”
                “Mary, how old were you when you went to Canada?”
                “How do you know my name?”
                “You told me, just a few minutes ago.”
                “How long have you been here?”
                “About ten minutes. You called me over, remember?  You stood in the doorway and told me you needed help.”
                “Ha! That’s right!  What were you doing?”
                “I… was just out for a walk on a glorious Sunday morning.” I almost let slip that I was headed to the grocery store. She didn’t need to know that I had money and access to alcohol.  There are no rules for the desperate drunk.
                “Do you have anything to drink?”
                “No, I quit drinking.” I add that every time as the gentlest of suggestions that not drinking was an option. She seemed to hear nothing beyond “No”. I stood up.  “I’d better go.  It was nice to meet you, Mary.”  She pouted, but shook my outstretched hand.  I grabbed my backpack, stomped into my boots, opened the door, and looked back.  Mary lounged in the sun on the beaten couch, a frown on her face, staring into the bucket of vomit.  
                The fresh air was life itself.  As I walked I wondered what game the girl was playing. Sometimes when someone is truly in alcohol withdrawal – which can be deadly – the doctor will order them a beer.  It comes wrapped in tin foil so the other drunks in the emergency department can’t see that it’s a beer but since soda cans don’t come wrapped in tinfoil really the only mystery is which brand the hospital stocks.  Maybe she faked chest pain to get a Sunday morning beer – the most expensive beer ever, if you’re a taxpayer.  She may also have gone in search of pain medicine.  I wondered if she went for herself or for her mother, if Mary was her mother – family ties are less nuclear here. Maybe she would get the beer or pain medicine and tuck it into her sock to bring home because it was too painful to see her loved one so desperate.  I do know this isn’t the first time she’s done this; she knew all the triggers.  
From talking with nurses in the E.D. I know this same story happens all day, every day in Bethel.  Being here is like stepping through Alice’s looking glass and can quickly turn a mundane walk to get groceries into an extraordinary rabbit-hole.

*Obviously, not her real name.

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Why Speaking Yup'ik is Hard.

I'd like to learn some Yup'ik words but they confound my English-trained tongue.  Here's an example:


The new hospital being built is called the Calricaraq Project.  Instinctively, I know this should be pronounced "Kal-rik-a-rak" - don't say it like that, you will be scorned. It is pronounced "Jala-gay-jahak" or "jalgeejagak" meaning "to come together". The "c" sounds like "j" and the "r" is..., well the "r" is a throaty "khy" sound that could be "g", "k", or "y" to my Western ears; there's no easy equivalent in the Latin alphabet. To hear them speak, native Yupiks use a great deal of this gutteral sound in their conversations, lots of hard "k" & "g", almost clicking their tonsils together - hard, but not harsh. "Kayak" is one of their easier words. Their conversation is melodic, like a mash-up of Sioux, Russian, & Chinese, with a lilting rythm that carries over into their pronunciation of English, if they speak it.  I could listen to it all day.  I just despair of ever actually learning it.

Sunday, April 1, 2018

The Elasticity of Alaskan Easter.

 There are at least 11 churches in Bethel representing Roman Catholic, Moravian, Russian Orthodox, Church of God, Covenant, Baptist, Church of Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventist, Assembly of God, Pentecostal, and (because why not, in bush Alaska) the Korean church.  Christianity is a big part of modern Yupik culture, since first contact with "Western" culture was by Russian Orthodox missionaries followed by the legendary Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson.

Sheldon Jackson: a controversial, proselytizing dynamo.

  This cemented in the native mind an inseperable connection between the benefits of Western conveniences and belief in Jesus.  They still hold on to some ancient beliefs (10,000 years of history is a lot to give up in 150 years) considered animistic: they believe the land is alive, aware of everyone living on it, and rewards good actions with good harvests & vice-versa.
 There was an intersting event last year that provides a good example:  2017 was the worst king salmon harvest in their collective history.  In July, a whale swam 30 miles up the Kuskokwim river (remarkable because it's not normally a fresh water mammal) and was killed with great ceremony and joy by the villagers just downstream from Bethel (which is about 40 miles up stream from the Bering).

Relieved Napaskiak villagers harvest a sacrificial gray whale.

There was no question in their minds that it had sacrificed itself for them due to the poor salmon run.  In a perfect example of the tension between modern culture stamped over ancient tradition, the villagers got in trouble with U.S. Fish & Game because these inland villages don't have whale hunting rights - that's reserved for the more northern, coastal tribes.  By law, they should have gone hungry.
There's a limit - perhaps measured by the level of the larder - to how far the natives will carry the yoke of  Christ and turn the other cheek. In that, I think they're not so different from most.
So there's plenty of churches here to celebrate Easter with; nearly everyone will attend and enjoy the social & emotional refreshment it provides. But in the harsh reality of their every-day survival they will always thank the caribou, moose, bear, salmon, fox, rabbit, or whale for giving themselves up, and offer some of their catch back to the earth in gratitude. They grudgingly render unto Caesar what Caesar forces them to, and willingly render unto God what is God's.  But which God depends on their perception of who met their most fundamental needs: Father God, or Mother Goddess.


Native communion of sorts - but with which deity?

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Going Native.



The natives here are fascinating, ancient customs mixed with modern technology, like blue jeans tucked into handmade sealskin mukluks - with a smartphone in the back pocket. Or a Northface down jacket with a mink-skin hat. The younger ones seem to have a haughty tolerance of Kass'aqs (white people) while the "elders" (anyone older) are genuinely friendly - although you still get the sense that it's benign tolerance, like being polite to a visitor in their home.  Plus, few elders speak English so who knows what they're really saying to you in Yupi'k.  It's strange that the grandchildren speak only English and the elders only Yupi'k so they can't even talk to their own grandkids!
Here's an example of the native teenager's attitude and also how different it is in Bethel:
I volunteered at their annual dance festival - Cama-i - this past weekend, held in the local highschool. I sat checking in dance groups at a table backstage where the dancers prepared.  Two Bethel high school students, Seth and Katrina - both locals, were volunteering with me.  A teen volunteer usher came by the table after his shift to turn in his usher vest.  He looked full-blooded Yupik and had an obvious dip of tobacco in his lip.  Katrina told him:
"The high school is a tobacco-free zone, you can't chew here." 
He looked at her with disdain and said insouciantly:
"I'm Native, who cares.  And you shouldn't be so judgemental".
As if to say "Your silly rules don't apply to us, we only just barely tolerate your existence.  You're lucky we don't take our Ulus and turn you into fish bait".
Later, when I donned his vest and took over his job as usher (which involved the sisyphean task of deflecting mischievous children away from the 'Elders Only' entrance to the gym) I stood next to a trash can that was really a spittoon: at least a third of all the teenagers swung by to spit tobacco juice into it.  So I got the impression that 1.) "Tobacco-Free Zone" is viewed as a humorous suggestion rather than a strictly-enforced rule, 2.) Native teenagers don't feel the need to hide their rule-breaking activities, 3.) Pointing out a disagreeable fact is "being judgmental", 4.) Natives distingish sharply between 'native' and 'local', and 5.) Trash bags full of spit quickly become quite heavy.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Entrenched in the Tundra

Took the 0600 Delta flight from Charlotte to Atlanta, then to Seattle.  Took Alaska Airlines from Seattle to Anchorage, then on to Bethel. 20 hour day.  Landed in a blizzard.  Hooray!!


Lodged in temporary quarters 4.5 miles from town.  It's on stilts, like everything here, to protect the permafrost from melting.  The land isn't as flat as I thought, lots of wrinkles and hillocks.


Had a couple days off before work started so I walked into town the next day to get my supplies.  I shipped six boxes averaging about 60 lbs. apiece for a total of $743.  Should be just about everything I need plus a month's worth of food.  Had to wait nearly two hours in the cold behind the post office for a cab large enough to fit everything.


On the walk in I passed the airport.  It's large, and services 3 jets from Anchorage daily (weather permitting) along with countless prop planes.  Alaska would barely be habitable in today's world without the thousands of daring pilots who fly everywhere.  Nearly every village has a short runway. I took a picture of the Yukon Aviation headquarters, one of a dozen small plane services based here.  They really are the last cowboys. 


Attended NEO (new employee orientation) and am finally ensconced in my new office as clinical nurse educator.  Everyone is so happy I'm here, it makes me nervous.  What are they so excited about?  What miracles am I supposed to perform?  Whatever, I'll do my best, with enthusiasm!