Wednesday, December 20, 2000

Recently I was reading an article from a November Anchorage Daily News on Lessons in Coping. I know that the lower 48 has different concepts of what goes on here in Alaska. And I have learned in the past two and a half years of living in the "bush" that even people in Alaska have a misconception of what goes on in parts of their own state.

I am a teacher in Wales not England, but Alaska. Our village is famous for being the farthest west you can travel and stay on the North American continent. We see Russia and tomorrow on good weather days. There is a lot of coping to be done when a person lives or moves here, both personal and professional.

One of my biggest challenges so far this year has been to work with the seniors to earn enough money for four students and two chaperones to go to Georgia and Florida for a graduation trip. This year is one of the larger groups to graduate. Since we are in the farthest northwest that you can go, we decided, Why not experience the far south and east?

But it has been a struggle to get a village of 160 people to buy enough pop, candy, t-shirts, and to play sports with us to get money to travel. It costs almost as much to travel from Wales to Nome to Anchorage as it does to travel from Anchorage to Florida. We cannot depend on visitors to help out because we don't get that many. Even people in the district try not to travel here very often, afraid that they will get stuck here by weather.

Every time I talk with any student about the lower 48, I get questions and comments that really stun me. Just like the questions and comments I get when I visit the lower 48. Two questions from the lower 48 that come to mind are: Do they live in igloos? And, Do you get any snow days for school?

One of the girls here told me that if there were bugs in Florida, she didn't want to go. Only a handful of these kids, if that many, have seen a McDonalds, though there is a Burger King in the grocery store in Nome.

Living in Wales, I have to cope with not having fresh fruit and vegetables; meats arrive frozen and sometimes the bread does, too! We have gone days without a plane, which means no mail. As I told one of the new teachers this year, "You will soon find that the excitement in your life will be to hear a plane circling to land."

I have learned to talk differently here and find I use it sometimes in correspondence and my speech in the summer. The first time I returned to Kentucky, after nine months in Wales, I thought there were too many birds around. Driving again was stressful. I also found that I wanted to return to Alaska and Wales as soon as I could. I, too, didn't want to deal with the bugs.

Now let me tell you about my village. Wales is a very small village of Inupiut Eskimos. It is one of 12 remaining whale-hunting villages in Alaska. When you read the history of Alaska, you will read about the flu epidemic of 1918 that killed most of the population here. Afterward many families moved to Barrow and Kotzebue. Some of the original family kin are still here. Ivory artifacts have been found dating back more than 5,000 years.

Our school name is Kingikmiut Ilisagvik, which in Eskimo means "learning place for people of the high place". Our mascot is the killer whale, the orca. The student body consists of about 55 students from preschool through 12th grade.

Wales is in a tundra area and there is a mountain to the south called Cape, which has the Continental Divide running along the top, and a mountain to the east called Razorback. The Bering Strait is on our west.

The lowest temperature has gotten as low as minus 80 degrees and the highest has gotten to 80 degrees, but the average temperature runs minus 40 degrees in February (without windchill) to upper 50s in the summer. Snow can last from November to June. Eighty percent of the year is windy and winds can pass 50 miles per hour. Snowdrifts can reach as tall as 14 feet throughout the village, taller than most buildings. Around the school, drifts have gotten to almost 30 feet.

The only running water is in a few of the public buildings: the Washeteria, the Dome (city offices and clinic), teacher housing and the school. When there is a problem with the water and sewer (and, trust me, there have been problems), we use "honey-buckets" or slop jars, as they are called in the South. We have one store and one church.

A lot of the families go subsistence hunting for food. Eskimo food includes whale blubber and skin, dried fish and meat, greens, berries, walrus, seal oil and meat, reindeer, stink flipper and fermented walrus. Wild animals, such as fox, brown bear, polar bear, moose, musk ox, reindeer, snow owls, ptarmigans, cranes, snow birds, and porcupine roam freely around the village throughout the year. Reindeer are corralled, butchered and shared among the village.

During the fall, we have clamming season and in the winter, ice fishing is another way of getting food. In spring, if we are lucky like last year, a whaling crew kills a bowhead whale. This village is allotted two whales per year.

Ghost stories and legends are a big part of the Eskimo culture. We celebrate with potluck feasts and Eskimo games and contests such as Eskimo baseball, seal hop, stick pull, leg wrestle, one foot high kick, and kneel jump.

Many people think that Wales is so small, there is nothing to see or do. If you love the outdoors and hiking, you will never get bored. When walking along the mountains, you can see rock formations called Three Old Ladies, Foot Prints, the Chair, the Mitten and White Rock.

We have a peace monument facing Russia which is a dove in open hands. That's what you see when you look at it, but it means much more. The design was made to allude an incomplete bridge, a bird, an Eskimo sled, a Russian constructivist sculpture, and a hand extended in friendship. An identical sculpture was installed on the Russian mainland facing us.

Eskimo dances are taught and practiced within the village and school. Many families go to "camp." This is the time to collect and harvest fish and berries to store for the winter.

The northern lights are a beautiful addition to our dark skies. A sight of wavy green, pink, blue, and yellow lights that no one should miss fills the skies many nights.

Travel in, out and around Wales is limited and expensive. We are accessible only by bush plane, snowmobile, and boat. Most of the vehicles in the village are snowmobiles (called snowmachines here) and four wheelers. And then there is the old-fashion way: walking.

We joke and tell people that the washeteria apartment is a quarter mile from the school, but in the winter it turns to a half mile. You have to climb up and down, up and down, anywhere from five to eight drifts that are roof high. We can't travel the beach, which has no drifts, because there are polar bears around once the water freezes.

And no, we are not in total darkness. Up until mid-December we lose light about an hour a week. Then we have three to three and a half hours of light that will grow as winter wears off and spring appears. By May, when the temperature can still be in the 20s, it will feel very warm and you'll see kids running around in short sleeves.

And that brings up another question from the lower 48: Do the kids were shorts and summer clothes up there? Yes, but the shorts are called shorties.

There are lots more little comments, like when I order from people over the phone who think that AK stands for Arkansas or that the abbreviation for Alaska is Al. "We will UPS it to you and it will get there in two days." Is that a guarantee or money back? I hate it when I find something to order and in small print it says "except Alaska and Hawaii."

One medical insurance company told me that they would reimburse me when I returned to the States. Hey, Alaska is in the states; remember the 49th state?

How many places can you make up an address and the mail still gets to you? My favorites are 101 Walrus Way or I. C. Russia. I even had a friend address a letter to me with just my first name and Wales, Alaska and the zip. And it got here!

Now that you know about Wales, you can see that there is a lot of coping to do. But the article talked about educational matters and where the urban areas are complaining about the rural areas getting more money. Urban people can't comprehend what it's like to struggle with off-the-road freight costs, crumbling facilities, high teacher turnover and disheartened students.

We have worries of housing and water supply, supplies that sometimes do not arrive, where weather turns schedules in and out. The district has computers, but they may be older ones and/or not working properly. Another big hurdle to face is logistics. We can't go to a hardware store, Wal-Mart, or an Office Depot when we need things. We have to think a year ahead and order things.

And then, as teachers know, orders arrive mixed up and we have to straighten them out and if there are returns, there is again cost and time spent. It could be months before we get the right items.

We wear different hats to get the jobs done. Here in Wales, we have seven teachers, with two of us working half time as either counselor or special education teacher seven teachers for a school of preschool to 12th grade. As a halftime teacher of middle school and high school math, I may also have to teach PE, dance, art or music. We only get an itinerant teacher for vocational education for a semester once a year. This year we had wood shop. At this point, we have less than 10 days of school left in the semester and some of the wood for projects still hasn't arrived.

Now DON'T get me wrong. I love living in Wales. Just ask my mom, who lives in Port Charlotte, Fla. What I do want is for the lower 48 to learn more about the state and especially the bush area and even the urban areas of Alaska to learn more about the rural parts. I have lived in three of the lower 48 states and visited almost all. I try to bring the lower 48 to my students. They are limited, but who isn't? You are only limited in education if you allow yourself to be.

I am always talking to people about traveling to and in Alaska. I brought up my mom and two sisters to Wales. Mom is ready to return. Lots of people take cruises and those are nice, but you miss out on so much. I want to share this way of way of life and have you share your life with us.

Do I sound like I'm begging? Maybe I am. I would love some help and I hope this editorial will inspire some of your readers to help make it possible for these four students to get a bigger view of the world. We would appreciate any help from money to free passes to events.

With a little bit of help from many friends, there may be Eskimos visiting you at the end of May.

Judy Standafer

P.O. Box 508,

Wales, Alaska 99783

Jstandafer@Waa.bssd.org or Jstandafer@Wales.bssd.schoolzone.net

Fax 907-664-3031, phone 907-664-2173

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