Life with Polar Eskimos

Dear Friends,

I took a different path through town and found the south beach. A few yards off the water, there are wooden slatted open air huts where seal ribs are hanging along with meat that is braided.

The seal skins are lying on the floor drying as flies buzz about them, the breeze off the inlet hopefully drying the skin with its layer of fat before the maggots hatch and feast.

I found further down the inlet just off the pebbly beach a bearded seal's bodiless head, its eyes closed, the whiskered face masklike. No use for it. The Eskimos smile whenever they pass you. What a wonderful adaptation to months of cold and dark since smiling actually causes a chemical release of the neurotransmitters in the brain responsible for feeling good. As a stranger who frequents the streets of this small town, I find it very reassuring.

And now I sometimes can put a name to a face as I meet more and more people in the hospital's outpatient clinic. Some of the Eskimo behavior is less adaptive, especially in an institutional setting.

Because this is an affiliative culture, nepotism rules. The odds of being fired if you're Native are next to nil. And because their sense of time is traditionally non-Western and hewing to a schedule unnatural, people often have a slippery sense of what tasks must be done day to day.

Obligation on the job is different from most places these days in the lower 48. I have been warned several times (once by my medical director as I am writing this letter) that when I get to the village of Point Hope tomorrow the health aides who do all the medical work there may actually leave because I've arrived.

I need to be firm with them about what they must do to help me. The man who supervises the health aides in all 11 villages hasn't done his job, and consequently the entire village medical system is falling apart. No one seems to be able to do anything about it because he can't be reprimanded nor fired, especially by the primarily white medical establishment here.

My current roommate who lived and worked as a physician's assistant for three years in Point Hope told me if everyone leaves for a funeral or wherever, I should just close the clinic (the scheduled appointments be damned) and go with them! If I can't beat them, I guess I'll join 'em.

The place operates pretty well without medical providers all but 6 weeks of the year so they probably don't need me all that much anyway.

Yesterday I walked out of town up to Cemetary Hill, which overlooks the town, lagoon, runway, and harbor. On the way out I watched as two young men stood up on their snowmobiles, revved the engines as hard as they would go, and flew along the tundra over the water for 50 yards or so and then back onto the tundra, thunderous noise and exhaust wafting my way on the road and leaving huge ruts through the moist, snowless grasses. It beats buying jet skis as long as they have no plans to hit the open water.

On the way home, three little girls ages 5 to 7 joined me. They took turns riding the one bike. They asked 'can we follow?' The five year old jumped on and off the bike, which was too big for her, with great alacrity. She told me about her dreams about monsters that she was strong enough to fight. She wants to go to Anchorage where her Mom is and asks me where it is.

One of the other girls asked, 'Who's watching you then? 'and she said 'everybody - brother, aunt, uncle.' She asked if she could come back with me and did I have snacks.

I worried about this 5 year old, not just for now but there was something about her spirit that made me worry about drugs and alcohol in her future. You could see the risk taker in her already.

If only there could be a way to figure out who is at risk early - not just here but everywhere. One of the nurses took me aside Friday and asked me to see a man who needed to catch a plane for Anchorage in an hour. His 19 year old daughter had committed suicide there last night.

I walked in noticing as I did that I was shutting down emotionally, an airlock around my torso and neck, so that I could face this man I had never met who needed my help. But what could I possibly say to him? How could I look into his eyes authentically? I didn't even want to imagine what he was going through and what else could I convey to him? Everything felt trite.

He cried and told his story. He had her when he was young and irresponsible. Her mother's sister brought her to one of the villages and raised her there. She left for college last year. He saw her two summers ago here in Kotzebue where she was a cashier in a local store. He introduced himself to her as her father.

They barely spoke each time he went through the grocery line. Maybe 5 times in all. Then he decided to visit her in her village last fall but she had already left for college. He thinks her mother's family, who live in Anchorage, let her down with all the drugs and alcohol, although he hates to point fingers at a time like this.

He promises himself he will take better care of the 14 year old daughter who lives with her mother elsewhere in Alaska. He will visit her and try to get her mother to let him be apart of her life. Anything to prevent this from happening to his only other child. Anything.

Tomorrow morning I take my first bush airplane trip. I have done my research and this is the airline that didn't crash two years ago in Kotzebue Sound killing everyone on board, mostly villagers.

I am not sure anyone from the health center will pick me up but my roommate tells me to hitch a ride from the tiny airport as it's a long walk to town. The problem of polar bears still has me confused.

Two doctors here told me in no uncertain terms to avoid walking on the beach at Point Hope alone as they will hunt me down and eat me if they are nearby. My roommate who lived there for 3 years said she never saw a polar bear the entire time. Only thing is that she's phobic about walking in the villages by herself so her 'track record' isn't so credible.

I look forward to working very hard this week in this whaling town where some of the people still speak Inupiat and live in the old way. If you have time, check a map - it's even further up the Northwest coast of Alaska where the wind blows harder and colder. No mosquitos though!

Love, Rachel