it's all about the truck

A lot of the events over the last few days for me have revolved around a beat up red pick-up truck that I have been driving around. By "beat up", I mean that there are some dents in its side, I can only open the driver's door from the outside, there is no rear-view mirror, and it is always a guess whether I am in reverse or neutral or drive because the shifter is a bit off (I will take a picture of the truck soon and post it so that you can all have a mental picture of it). Neither Rebecca or Ning (Ning is the name that most people call Robin) have their license right now so I have ended up driving them around in Rebecca’s parents’ truck. It all started with picking up a trailer that Rebecca and Ning need for moving some things, but we ended up going for a ride around town on Friday. A ‘little’ ride ended up taking most of our afternoon as we went visiting some of their friends, drove some of them to the store, went off-roading, and picked up Rebecca’s dad at the airport. I had a lot of fun and they really liked getting to drive around again.

At one house, I met a man named Frank Umoak who offered to be an interpreter for me. Frank is an elder but still very lively. He is going to take me around to all of the elders who don’t speak English or who have broken English and do the interviews with me. I visited Frank again this evening and had coffee with him. He was telling me about some meetings that are coming up in town this week. I am going to sit in on the meetings to learn a bit about what people are doing in town, what it is important to them at the moment, and hopefully get to meet some people.

This afternoon we went out for a big Father’s Day picnic with a bunch of the Pokiak relatives. I met some more people and got to have some herring, caribou ribs and dry fish dipped in whale oil (note to future Arctic visitors: whale oil is really strong tasting and not too appealing to southern palettes upon first taste – but putting some salt on the meat helps). It was a great day to be outside with a big blue sky and a bit of a breeze.