The weather was pretty intense on Wednesday and we sat at the airport in Bethel for about 8 hours waiting for the weather to clear so we could head out. Flight after flight was cancelled. We made it out on the last flight of the day and got into Newtok at about 6:30pm.
We were settling into the room at the clinic when a very small, very old man came in and asked us if we were there to do the surveys. We said yes, and he asked if he could do one, so we all went to his house were he had assorted families members eating and talking. We were able to complete 5 surveys in one go as everyone there had a house in our survey.
So if you've been following my blog, you will know that Newtok is suffering from extreme erosion and the village has been trying to relocate for years. Here's a webpage that deals with this problem in particular it has a slide show about what I am going to Newtok to help with. The housing survey that we will conduct will help government agencies pull together various funding sources to help keep the housing affordable for the residents. Here's another link to the Newtok Planning Group if you want to see more about the planning efforts.
So anyway, back to my visit in Newtok. We began our housing survey the next day by going from house to house with help from some of the villagers. In my case, Joanne, helped me by paving the way and taking me around to all of her close relatives as everyone in the village is related one way or another.
The community is very poor, and most of the houses were built years and years ago and are now barely holding up. Everything is made from plywood and in some of the houses 7 people live in two rooms. The village has no running water in the houses and people have to use honeybuckets. If you don't know what honeybuckets are it basically is doing your "businesss" in a bucket and hauling it to the edge of town to dump into the river. This is not the most sanitary nor healthy way to live, but this is the only way to do things as everything is soaking wet. The ground is literally sinking and water is everywhere. You have to walk on boardwalks or get your feet wet.
This is the reality of what families have to live with.
It is mind-boggling to me that people live this way in America. Meaning without basic water and sewer. And they don't want to live this way either. It's not a choice really. They are poor, they can't easily relocate and as far as moving to the larger cities it's daunting for a people that have no training, large families and prefer to live a subsistence lifestyle.
Most of the housing conditions were seriously disturbing to me. But the people were so welcoming and were so happy to have us there doing the surveys. One of the questions we asked had to do with the possibility of having families help build their own houses under the supervision of professionals. When asked if they would like to participate and for how long, many of the answers I got were: YES! and will work on them for as long as it takes!
On our second day there we were working really hard trying to get everyone surveyed and when we finally called it quits for the night I took a walk out to the Kusokwim River to see the erosion damage myself. This year alone they have lost 30ft of river bank and its not even the fall storm season yet.
Here's a photo of some kids standing on a huge piece of river bank that has been undercut and finally broken off.
Here is a view of the same piece close up.
Here's another view looking towards the village from the bank and you can see they only have maybe a few hundred feet until the first building is seriously in danger of being pulled into the river.
So as I'm walking back to the village, one of the ladies waved at me from a house and asked if I'd like to come in for tea. I accepted and headed on inside where I sat at the kitchen table and chatted with Mildred Thom. She was eating some dried fish and she asked me if I liked sushi. Of course I said yes, not knowing this was the beginning of my education in Yup'ik native foods.
She began by offering me some dried pike, which I tried first with a dip in some salt to get the juices flowing (saliva that is, cause this fish was seriously dried). Then she had me try it with some onion. Then she offered me some herring which I ate a tiny piece of cause it was very strong tasting. I seemed to pass a test with Mildred as she began to bring out the native foods more and more for me to try. Rather than give you the blow by blow of the night. Here's what I ended up eating tiny bits of:
Pike, pike skin, herring, salmon, ptarmigan, seal, seal oil (for dipping other fish in), wild boiled fertilized bird eggs (with half-formed embryos that I didn't eat but tried the creamy bits) and sourduck which is a mixture of wild spinach, crisco, sugar, cream and crowberries.
So if you ask me what seal tastes like, the only thing I can say is it tastes like seal as I've never tasted anything like it.
The evening went on and I chatted with Mildred and her various family members and ended the evening with a few cups of tea which ended up keeping me up that night. When I got back to the clinic, my co-workers were waiting up for me as they had thought I was only going for a walk and they were having visions of me having fallen into the river....I apologized profusely for making them wait up and we all turned in for the night.
The last day we were there, we scrambled all morning to finish the surveys. I visited with some really nice families and saw a few of the people I had surveyed the day before. We left on the second flight of the day and had a big layover in Bethel where we discovered a small cafe that had internet access and so we spent a bit of time checking our emails and drinking coffee.
I'm still processing the conditions in which people are living right now in Newtok. It was probably the most eye-opening experience I've had in a long time about how people can live under extreme circumstances yet still maintain a sense of dignity and community. You cannot help but be moved by the conditions which the villagers are living in daily. I know I want to help and hopefully the survey work that we did will help them.
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