Manokotak

As you saw in the last post, our living situation was a bit, well, less than par.  Ok, ok, a lot less than par.  It was an old run down village hall building that was used as office space.... it smelled like something was rotting inside (I wouldn't be surprised if there was), there were boxes everywhere, the floor was coated in a layer of grime, there were at least 8 leaks that required buckets and there were no good places to set up a bed.  On top of our living accommodation, the church we were to have camp at was quite run down too. And by run down, I mean there was a leak in the ceiling so bad that the floor was all damp and there were mushrooms growing INSIDE. No, I'm not kidding.

 This is what I came up with for a bed... it worked surprisingly well.

 And this was Kirsten's bed- right on top of the table as if ready for operation or something.  We were joking with the kids about where we sleep, telling them it was with the salmon in the ocean or that we curled up with the bears in their caves, but the girls didn't buy it and joked about how funny it would be if we slept on the tables at the village office....little did they know.

 This is where we hosted camp- it actually looks kind of nice in this photo- it wasn't.

 Yep, mushrooms growing indoors.

This was across the street from where we were staying.  That dump truck was an unofficial community playground for the village.  

Now, I've been making this village sound terrible by my description so far, and it was bad it regards to those things, but despite those few things (that are easy to deal with for a few days), this village had some serious awesomeness happening too.  

For example:

 I met an ivory carver (it was the husband of the lady who invited us over for moose soup) and got to see his 'workshop'.  I bought some whale tale earrings from him that are pretty stellar.  

 Another perk- berries were in season and it just so happens our berry picking day had WONDERFUL weather.  In the high 60's with the sun shining.  The best berry picking hill had an awesome view.
What kind of berries you ask?  Crow berries (black berries) and some early blueberries.

My staff partner Kirsten with one of our campers puppies.  This little guy wandered off and we spend a good 45 min looking for him instead of berries.

I wish I could post pictures of the kiddos- they are all so cute.  Pictures of Kirsten and I will just have to suffice or you can use your imagination to photoshop in some cute Yupik eskimo faces into these.  

We also saw a porcupine when we were out...which was neato... unfortunately I wasn't fast enough to my camera.

One night, after hosting a teen night, we heard some announcement on the VHF (a radio that everyone in the village has- they just talk like it's a walkie talkie)  about a plane coming in.  Instantly the girls got excited and asked us if we'd be going to the 'store plane'.  Of course, we didn't know what that was and when we asked it was described as 'a plane where you can buy ice cream and pizza and stuff!'  So off we went to check this out.   It sure was popular- just about everyone had come out of their homes and were off to the air strip to go to the store plane.  We hitched a ride and this is what we found...

This is the 'store plane'... some guy owns an old WWII plane, fills it up with stuff from costco and flies it out to the village.  What a lucky village-  he brought all sorts of fresh food (and pizza and ice cream like the kids said).  We asked how much for something- it's $20 for any item.

Here's all the people from the village grocery shopping from the back of the plane.  

Not only were the crow berries and blue berries ripe, but so were the salmon berries (which were actually cloud berries...turns out salmon berries are a lot more like an actual raspberry).  These however, grow on lower more boggier ground.

Kirsten with her berries... I was being a bum and didn't go out picking. It's hard to be motivated when you don't like the taste of them (which is a weird almost smoky taste).

 Here's me trying to do some NYO (Native Youth Olympics) which a lot of the village kids compete in each year.  I like it- like track and field in a way- with all kinds of events.  This one is the one foot jump in which you have to jump off both feet, kick that little leather ball and then land on the same foot you kicked with....it was hard, but fun.

 I only took advantage of that road for running on one day, but it sure was a nice day to go running and I snagged this shot of the fireweed.

If you go down to the 'beach' you can see what people have caught that day.... here's a humpy.

And here's a lady using her ulu to fillet it....

And one of the kids insisted on showing us the heart.

Kirsten and I would go for walks sometimes, which acted as informal photo shoots.  Here are some of our pictures:

Now that we are done with our job in Manokotak, I get a couple days off in Anchorage, yeeeeeehaw!