Thursday, October 27, 2011
Yesterday
The phone rang and I could understand enough of the Russian to know I was late for breakfast. As the only guest, they make sure I eat well- 10 pieces of fried bread, sausage, and tomatoes. A 30 minute walk through pine and birch plantations to Siberian Federal University, where I lecture to students on climate change and ecology and prepare for my “expedition” to Tuva Republic. And then to an office so reeking of cigarettes that I wonder if I will lose my sense of smell. The university safety officer wants to clear me and my research for personal health and national security reasons. All goes well, but he requires me to draft a letter to the head of the Cultural Studies Department, who are hosting me. I do so, make sure it gets a stamp (to be official, of course), and am told it is wonderful by someone who doesn’t speak English. The head of the Dept. doesn’t speak English either, but my letter is cleared nonetheless. Then I spent awhile absorbing the deep and unreal sounds of Tuvan throat singers on the internet. Listen HERE and HERE and HERE (for a longer video with explanations also). Makes me SUPER excited to go there!
Then off to a Tajik birthday party! I don’t know if I’ve ever met any people who needed so little reason to laugh! It was great. It may seem odd, but they spoke of “Soviet hospitality,” and they’re quite right. The countries are cold and largely empty of people, but where people are, they welcome you.
I also kicked-started the planning for my trip to Tuva, since no one else seemed inclined (people tend to avoid being responsible for things, it seems). And it certainly worked! After a week when no one mentioned the trip, the entire department was abuzz, panicked, almost, about preparations. Four of us will take a 12 hr overnight bus on Saturday to Kyzyl, the capital. And on Monday morning, we’ll take a 9 hr all-terrain-van ride that ends with a ford over a potentially frozen river, before the town of Toora-Khem. We’ll stay at a hotel there and make day trips to the villages of Adyr-Kezhig and Iy. My dream would be to stay there when the other researchers return at the end of a week. But that depends on finding someone who would let me join them hunting sable or in town, and with whom I can communicate enough. I hardly know any Russian, and it's not even the first language in Tuva! So, we’ll see what happens. For now, I’m excited to go to a republic accessible by only 2 roads.
Then off to a Tajik birthday party! I don’t know if I’ve ever met any people who needed so little reason to laugh! It was great. It may seem odd, but they spoke of “Soviet hospitality,” and they’re quite right. The countries are cold and largely empty of people, but where people are, they welcome you.
I also kicked-started the planning for my trip to Tuva, since no one else seemed inclined (people tend to avoid being responsible for things, it seems). And it certainly worked! After a week when no one mentioned the trip, the entire department was abuzz, panicked, almost, about preparations. Four of us will take a 12 hr overnight bus on Saturday to Kyzyl, the capital. And on Monday morning, we’ll take a 9 hr all-terrain-van ride that ends with a ford over a potentially frozen river, before the town of Toora-Khem. We’ll stay at a hotel there and make day trips to the villages of Adyr-Kezhig and Iy. My dream would be to stay there when the other researchers return at the end of a week. But that depends on finding someone who would let me join them hunting sable or in town, and with whom I can communicate enough. I hardly know any Russian, and it's not even the first language in Tuva! So, we’ll see what happens. For now, I’m excited to go to a republic accessible by only 2 roads.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Children’s Home Boat Trip North along the West Coast of Greenland: July 23-Aug 9
This update goes with the slideshow “Boat Trip to North Greenland,” and the map "Take a look at a MAP of where I have been in Greenland."
Day 1: After a windy afternoon crossing from Uummannaq to Illorsuit, the excitement began in an iceberg-filled bay on the south coast of Nunavik/Svartenhuk Halvo, when one boat wouldn’t start, and then the other wouldn’t shift out of neutral! We, Ole Jorgen Hammeken, Robert (“Hivshu”) Peary, Jakoab Markuson, a boy from the Children’s Home, and myself drifted towards the bergs until we were able to take apart the steering lever and tie it back on the boat with string- not a professional fix, but it got the job done in a pinch! We boated north, into the golden midnight sun, until Tasiusaq hut, where the swells were too large to manage in our two small, open boats. So, we spent a mosquito-pestered few hours feigning sleep in the unkempt and now dilapidated hut until 5:30 am, when the ocean calmed.
Day 2: By 9 am, a throng of teenagers greeted us in Sondre Upernavik, where we breakfasted and met Albert and Else Lukassen, who would join us for our northward journey. Our next stop was Kangersuatiaq, through a passageway formed by 30,000 sodas and beers in crates- a lot of drinks for a small settlement! In the early afternoon, we stopped under great cliffs with thousands of wheeling birds, and then crossed an ice-filled fiord to Aappaluttoq, where we met our final group members-Ferdinand (“Aqqaluk”) Grim and another boy from the home.
Day 3: We refueled our boats and our food supply at the well-provisioned grocery store, lunching on hot dogs and coke. While the wind gusted in the afternoon, Albert and Aqqaluk made small repairs and Jakoab cleaned the boats. From 4 pm till 2:30 am, we covered 220 km, and 20 or 25 people greeted us on the pier under the Kullorsuaq (Devil’s Thumb). At 4 am, shirtless and sweating, we dined on muskox soup in the service house.
Day 4: After socializing with locals at our place in the morning, buying more groceries and gasoline, and devouring mattak (narwhal skin and blubber) and nikoq qileluaq (dried narwhal) at a local hunter’s house, we waved goodbye to the townspeople on the pier for the next leg of the journey- to Savissivik. We stopped for dinner at the site of Uissakassak’s home at Tuttulissuaq, where some narwhal hunters from Aappaluttoq stopped by. Uissakassak was an Inughuit (North Greenlander) who was kidnapped by American expolorer Robert Peary in the early 20th century and taken to the Natural History Museum in New York. The remaining mounds from the stone/peat illut (houses) were BIG, maybe 8 or 9 meters across! Middens lay beside each house, filled with bleached seal and narwhal bones. And then began our crossing of one of the longest uninhabited stretches on the west coast- Melville Bay. Fortunately, the weather was perfect, and the shore (where the ice cap met the ocean) slipped by in the distance. As we reached the north end of the bay, appaliarsuit (little auks) began to rise like so many torpedoes from the water as we zoomed by. They often outpaced the boats, which drove past the increasingly common icebergs at 45-50 km/hr! As we rounded the final corner and Savissivik came into sight, we almost felt as though we needed to duck, the appaliarsuit were so dense on the water. We were received by three grizzled, middle-aged men- a symbolic reception, for this small and most-isolated community has seen great population decline recently, and many are out hunting narwhal.
Days 5-11: We had intended to stop for only a short while in Savissivik, but spent an entire week! Fog and wind had rolled in, so we could not leave for Qaanaaq, farther north. On our fourth morning in town, we woke to find two of our four boats smashed against the rocky shore, spelling an end to our northward progression and lengthening our stay. While not patching the holes in Albert and Aqqaluk’s boats in patches of sunlight, we socialized with the locals, Robert gave a drum dance at the request of the Savissimiut (people of Savissivik), many hiked to the top of the overlooking hill and to the gravel plain beside the community, and Aqqaluk and Sven went seal hunting. We also played cards, populated the church for Sunday service (there were 2 churchgoers aside from our group), attended a presentation by geologists searching for iron ore nearby, caught appaliarsuit in nets and wowed as they careened and zoomed by overhead, went for a midnight boat ride in the bays nearby, fetched water from the single pump in town, and mulled over the fate of this apparently neglected community, sinking into the melting permafrost.
Days 12 & 13: With clear weather and abandoned hopes of continuing north, at 6 pm we returned south across Melville Bay without Robert, who flew to Qaanaaq, but with Gabriel, a hunter from Kullorsuaq who had been left behind by his narwhal party! After searching fruitlessly for hours for seals, we stumbled across two in front of Tuttulissuaq. These served as our breakfast, for we had driven overnight. After a sunlit morning nap, we drove onwards to Kullorsuaq, where Principle Sven Nielsen let us sleep on the floor of the very nice new school.
Days 14 & 15: After tea, cake, and mattak at schoolteacher Birgitta Kammann’s, we headed off to Tussaaq, an abandoned settlement, where we explored buildings frozen in 1995, the year the settlement closed, cleaned another seal, and then continued south to Aappaluttoq. The next morning, we took Albert’s boat out of the water again for repairs. Ole Jorgen and I drove out to a nearby cruise ship to ask for 4 stroke engine oil, saving us a trip to another community called Upernavik! In the evening, we, except the boys, dined on frozen seal, dried ammassett, cod, and tikagullik soup (piked whale, I believe) at the home of Nikolaj and Elisabeth Johannesen.
Day 16: We took Albert’s boat out of the water at a DIFFERENT spot, and then Ole Jorgen and I went for a boat ride with Nikolaj and Elisabeth as our guides. We stopped at an old reindeer hunting site (abandoned in the 1920s after the introduction of guns led to extermination of all the deer), where we played a game in which you jump from stone to stone, picked flowers, and ate blueberries and crowberries straight from the ankle-high plants. Back in Aappaluttoq, it was time to go, so at 7 pm, we left for what seemed like a straightforward final leg of our journey. Instead, since Albert’s boat was still leaking, and Aqqaluk had a musk ox permit, we stopped at 2 am at Arfertuarsuq hut, where we strained to pull the boat onto the sandy beach. Aqqaluk’s family had joined us from Aappaluttoq and Sondre Upernavik, where we also picked up a narwhal tusk to transport south for a lady.
Days 17 & 18: Up at noon for boat repairs, hiking and scanning the hills for the elusive musk ox, and more napping. Around 7 pm, we left for Uummannaq, witnessing our first sunset on the way, as we had returned 5 degrees south, to where the midnight sun no longer shone. A haze (of pollution?) hung over Nussuaq Peninsula. An hour away from Uummannaq, one boat ran out of gas! So, the other boats gave enough of theirs to reach shore, and I drove with the two boys to nearby Ikorfat hut, where were to spend the night until we were brought new gas tomorrow! We practiced with the rifle, sat around a campfire of local plants and scraps of wood, observed young foxes as they played around the hut, and watched the first sunrise of the season. One boy watched yet another terrible American film, and, after sleeping from 6 am till 2:30 pm, I left for Uummannaq with Albert, who had returned with Jakoab, who would stay with the boys for another few days, in a sort of “wilderness-therapy” (stay out on the land and your attitude will improve)
Day 1: After a windy afternoon crossing from Uummannaq to Illorsuit, the excitement began in an iceberg-filled bay on the south coast of Nunavik/Svartenhuk Halvo, when one boat wouldn’t start, and then the other wouldn’t shift out of neutral! We, Ole Jorgen Hammeken, Robert (“Hivshu”) Peary, Jakoab Markuson, a boy from the Children’s Home, and myself drifted towards the bergs until we were able to take apart the steering lever and tie it back on the boat with string- not a professional fix, but it got the job done in a pinch! We boated north, into the golden midnight sun, until Tasiusaq hut, where the swells were too large to manage in our two small, open boats. So, we spent a mosquito-pestered few hours feigning sleep in the unkempt and now dilapidated hut until 5:30 am, when the ocean calmed.
Day 2: By 9 am, a throng of teenagers greeted us in Sondre Upernavik, where we breakfasted and met Albert and Else Lukassen, who would join us for our northward journey. Our next stop was Kangersuatiaq, through a passageway formed by 30,000 sodas and beers in crates- a lot of drinks for a small settlement! In the early afternoon, we stopped under great cliffs with thousands of wheeling birds, and then crossed an ice-filled fiord to Aappaluttoq, where we met our final group members-Ferdinand (“Aqqaluk”) Grim and another boy from the home.
Day 3: We refueled our boats and our food supply at the well-provisioned grocery store, lunching on hot dogs and coke. While the wind gusted in the afternoon, Albert and Aqqaluk made small repairs and Jakoab cleaned the boats. From 4 pm till 2:30 am, we covered 220 km, and 20 or 25 people greeted us on the pier under the Kullorsuaq (Devil’s Thumb). At 4 am, shirtless and sweating, we dined on muskox soup in the service house.
Day 4: After socializing with locals at our place in the morning, buying more groceries and gasoline, and devouring mattak (narwhal skin and blubber) and nikoq qileluaq (dried narwhal) at a local hunter’s house, we waved goodbye to the townspeople on the pier for the next leg of the journey- to Savissivik. We stopped for dinner at the site of Uissakassak’s home at Tuttulissuaq, where some narwhal hunters from Aappaluttoq stopped by. Uissakassak was an Inughuit (North Greenlander) who was kidnapped by American expolorer Robert Peary in the early 20th century and taken to the Natural History Museum in New York. The remaining mounds from the stone/peat illut (houses) were BIG, maybe 8 or 9 meters across! Middens lay beside each house, filled with bleached seal and narwhal bones. And then began our crossing of one of the longest uninhabited stretches on the west coast- Melville Bay. Fortunately, the weather was perfect, and the shore (where the ice cap met the ocean) slipped by in the distance. As we reached the north end of the bay, appaliarsuit (little auks) began to rise like so many torpedoes from the water as we zoomed by. They often outpaced the boats, which drove past the increasingly common icebergs at 45-50 km/hr! As we rounded the final corner and Savissivik came into sight, we almost felt as though we needed to duck, the appaliarsuit were so dense on the water. We were received by three grizzled, middle-aged men- a symbolic reception, for this small and most-isolated community has seen great population decline recently, and many are out hunting narwhal.
Days 5-11: We had intended to stop for only a short while in Savissivik, but spent an entire week! Fog and wind had rolled in, so we could not leave for Qaanaaq, farther north. On our fourth morning in town, we woke to find two of our four boats smashed against the rocky shore, spelling an end to our northward progression and lengthening our stay. While not patching the holes in Albert and Aqqaluk’s boats in patches of sunlight, we socialized with the locals, Robert gave a drum dance at the request of the Savissimiut (people of Savissivik), many hiked to the top of the overlooking hill and to the gravel plain beside the community, and Aqqaluk and Sven went seal hunting. We also played cards, populated the church for Sunday service (there were 2 churchgoers aside from our group), attended a presentation by geologists searching for iron ore nearby, caught appaliarsuit in nets and wowed as they careened and zoomed by overhead, went for a midnight boat ride in the bays nearby, fetched water from the single pump in town, and mulled over the fate of this apparently neglected community, sinking into the melting permafrost.
Days 12 & 13: With clear weather and abandoned hopes of continuing north, at 6 pm we returned south across Melville Bay without Robert, who flew to Qaanaaq, but with Gabriel, a hunter from Kullorsuaq who had been left behind by his narwhal party! After searching fruitlessly for hours for seals, we stumbled across two in front of Tuttulissuaq. These served as our breakfast, for we had driven overnight. After a sunlit morning nap, we drove onwards to Kullorsuaq, where Principle Sven Nielsen let us sleep on the floor of the very nice new school.
Days 14 & 15: After tea, cake, and mattak at schoolteacher Birgitta Kammann’s, we headed off to Tussaaq, an abandoned settlement, where we explored buildings frozen in 1995, the year the settlement closed, cleaned another seal, and then continued south to Aappaluttoq. The next morning, we took Albert’s boat out of the water again for repairs. Ole Jorgen and I drove out to a nearby cruise ship to ask for 4 stroke engine oil, saving us a trip to another community called Upernavik! In the evening, we, except the boys, dined on frozen seal, dried ammassett, cod, and tikagullik soup (piked whale, I believe) at the home of Nikolaj and Elisabeth Johannesen.
Day 16: We took Albert’s boat out of the water at a DIFFERENT spot, and then Ole Jorgen and I went for a boat ride with Nikolaj and Elisabeth as our guides. We stopped at an old reindeer hunting site (abandoned in the 1920s after the introduction of guns led to extermination of all the deer), where we played a game in which you jump from stone to stone, picked flowers, and ate blueberries and crowberries straight from the ankle-high plants. Back in Aappaluttoq, it was time to go, so at 7 pm, we left for what seemed like a straightforward final leg of our journey. Instead, since Albert’s boat was still leaking, and Aqqaluk had a musk ox permit, we stopped at 2 am at Arfertuarsuq hut, where we strained to pull the boat onto the sandy beach. Aqqaluk’s family had joined us from Aappaluttoq and Sondre Upernavik, where we also picked up a narwhal tusk to transport south for a lady.
Days 17 & 18: Up at noon for boat repairs, hiking and scanning the hills for the elusive musk ox, and more napping. Around 7 pm, we left for Uummannaq, witnessing our first sunset on the way, as we had returned 5 degrees south, to where the midnight sun no longer shone. A haze (of pollution?) hung over Nussuaq Peninsula. An hour away from Uummannaq, one boat ran out of gas! So, the other boats gave enough of theirs to reach shore, and I drove with the two boys to nearby Ikorfat hut, where were to spend the night until we were brought new gas tomorrow! We practiced with the rifle, sat around a campfire of local plants and scraps of wood, observed young foxes as they played around the hut, and watched the first sunrise of the season. One boy watched yet another terrible American film, and, after sleeping from 6 am till 2:30 pm, I left for Uummannaq with Albert, who had returned with Jakoab, who would stay with the boys for another few days, in a sort of “wilderness-therapy” (stay out on the land and your attitude will improve)
Long time no see!
Dear Friends!
I have been a bad blogger. My brother told me that if I updated weekly I’d soon have 400,000 views. It worked for him! He now has five times that many (check out his minute physics youtube channel)!
A quick update on my whereabouts and recent activities:
I’m currently in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, on the Yenisey River, near the geographical center of Asia. It’s right in the middle of Siberia. At 56 degrees North, it’s not the Arctic, but it’s currently snowing, and the temperature regularly drops to negative 40 in the winter! Right now I’m in this industrial city of a million people, but I’m preparing for two trips to rural communities in the region. It’s quite difficult to do, especially this time of year, as we either have to wait for the rivers to freeze so we can drive across them, or charter a helicopter.
For the last month of my stay in Greenland, I lived in the settlement of Qaarsut (pop. 180). Only one or two people spoke halting English, so it was a real challenge and opportunity to learn Greenlandic and learn from people not incredibly influence by American pop culture! I visited and lounged around with people a lot, since that is what you do until the wind/snow/rain dies down and you can go out on the ocean. When the weather was good, I tried to invite myself on as many hunting and fishing trips as possible. At the beginning of the month it was quite frustrating, since I would ask people what they would do for the day and they would say “Nothing. Stay in town.” And later I would stop by and they would be out catching 10 seals. However, I gradually improved my communication abilities and understanding of the weather-dependent rhythm of the settlement, and people learned that I wanted to come along, so would stop by to knock on my door and ask me to come. My time in Qaarsut was certainly the highlight of my entire Watson so far, as I have never before delved in such depth into the local ways of another place.
Winter began with a 15 cm snowstorm on September 18, my last day in Qaarsut, as I fled towards Iceland, where fall was still in full color. I spent two weekends in Reykjavik, the capitol, with an Icelandic family I’d met by chance earlier, and in between, toured around the country looking at farms, volcanoes, and fishing boats.
On October 2 I flew to Oslo, Norway, for the sole purpose of applying for a Russian visa, as Greenland has no Russian consulate and I’ve heard good things about the consulate in Norway. The lady in front of me was refused, by I got my long-awaited visa! I had spend the last two months trying to receive an invitation from my hosts in Krasnoyarsk, so I was quite happy to be successful after all! In my remaining time in Norway, I took a train south to Ås, an agricultural town, where I visited with ag development researchers and picked apples and mushrooms. Then, just because, I flew north toward Trondheim, where I visited with a really nice family for my few remaining days in Norway. On Oct. 12, I flew to Krasnoyarsk.
I have been a bad blogger. My brother told me that if I updated weekly I’d soon have 400,000 views. It worked for him! He now has five times that many (check out his minute physics youtube channel)!
A quick update on my whereabouts and recent activities:
I’m currently in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, on the Yenisey River, near the geographical center of Asia. It’s right in the middle of Siberia. At 56 degrees North, it’s not the Arctic, but it’s currently snowing, and the temperature regularly drops to negative 40 in the winter! Right now I’m in this industrial city of a million people, but I’m preparing for two trips to rural communities in the region. It’s quite difficult to do, especially this time of year, as we either have to wait for the rivers to freeze so we can drive across them, or charter a helicopter.
For the last month of my stay in Greenland, I lived in the settlement of Qaarsut (pop. 180). Only one or two people spoke halting English, so it was a real challenge and opportunity to learn Greenlandic and learn from people not incredibly influence by American pop culture! I visited and lounged around with people a lot, since that is what you do until the wind/snow/rain dies down and you can go out on the ocean. When the weather was good, I tried to invite myself on as many hunting and fishing trips as possible. At the beginning of the month it was quite frustrating, since I would ask people what they would do for the day and they would say “Nothing. Stay in town.” And later I would stop by and they would be out catching 10 seals. However, I gradually improved my communication abilities and understanding of the weather-dependent rhythm of the settlement, and people learned that I wanted to come along, so would stop by to knock on my door and ask me to come. My time in Qaarsut was certainly the highlight of my entire Watson so far, as I have never before delved in such depth into the local ways of another place.
Winter began with a 15 cm snowstorm on September 18, my last day in Qaarsut, as I fled towards Iceland, where fall was still in full color. I spent two weekends in Reykjavik, the capitol, with an Icelandic family I’d met by chance earlier, and in between, toured around the country looking at farms, volcanoes, and fishing boats.
On October 2 I flew to Oslo, Norway, for the sole purpose of applying for a Russian visa, as Greenland has no Russian consulate and I’ve heard good things about the consulate in Norway. The lady in front of me was refused, by I got my long-awaited visa! I had spend the last two months trying to receive an invitation from my hosts in Krasnoyarsk, so I was quite happy to be successful after all! In my remaining time in Norway, I took a train south to Ås, an agricultural town, where I visited with ag development researchers and picked apples and mushrooms. Then, just because, I flew north toward Trondheim, where I visited with a really nice family for my few remaining days in Norway. On Oct. 12, I flew to Krasnoyarsk.
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