Waqaa Cangacit From Stony River

Back from a wonderful couple of days in Stony River, so time to catch up on my last day in Kalskag. This will be a fairly brief post as I am absolutely shattered.

On Wednesday I got up and walked all of 5 yards to work with the High Schoolers in Lower Kalskag. The High Schoolers out here are probably the most challenging but also the most rewarding to work with. Today I was in Melanie's Class and the students rotated around to me. With one class, I had them for two periods so we got to do loads of stuff and I got to know them a bit.

As ever, they surprised me with the openness, honesty and willingness to talk about really tough things, as well as with their humour and good nature.

When I started this blog two and a half years ago, before my first trip, I said that I wasn't just going to talk about the good things, but I was going to try and give a full picture of life here. But, while I am happy to talk at length about the happy things, and the great stories that some of the students did for me, and tell you exactly who they are, there's a lot of things where I won't give the students' names and a lot that I find out that I wouldn't mention on here. Some of it's really sad and makes my heart ache for these students.

There are a lot of things which make life so difficult for them out here - alcohol problems in the families, physical and sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, self-harm, suicide. It's not just the adults who drink, sometimes the students do too. One I spoke to has just come out of a rehab programme. And it's not just the high-schoolers. There's a drug called 'punk' which basically sounds like magic mushrooms. They add it to the chewing tobacco. And it's on sale at the village store.

One of the exercises I do is where I get the students to make up a character and get to know them by answering questions about that character - what they look like, what their favourite things are, what their bad habits and best personality traits are, what they are most afraid of, what they want out of life and what their biggest secret is. The results of this exercise have really surprised me - a lot of the students, instead of making up a character, have used it to talk about something close to them. One student in one of the villages made me cry because, while I was talking to her about the character, and telling her how powerful and painful some of the things she had written were, she told me that it was actually her. The experiences were something that an adult should never have to suffer, let alone a small child. Sometimes it's hard not to cry. Sometimes I just cry. I want to take them home and keep them safe. All I can do is hug them, what good is that to them?

And then there are the students who write me brilliantly funny stories or descriptive or inventive stories. And they do it with great enthusiasm. A couple of students who didn't finish their stories in the class have since e-mailed me their finished stories with an "I hope you like it." There is some real talent here - one sixteen-year old, Martin, showed me a film he had made. I told him he should enter one of his films for a competition - he's really good.

While I was in between lessons one of the students brought me in a note from her cousin - little Catherine who I had met the day before. "I will never forget you. Call me." She gave me her number again. So, as I had an hour or so after school and before the plane came to pick me up to go up to Stony River, I called her and she and her friends came over to hang out. This is us, with a tiny little puppy. I don't know how you spell his name but it's pronounced something like 'Slaqtaaq' and it means 'Little dog who wanders around the village'. Before I left Karen gave me a beaded pen holder, made in Kalskag, and a card signed by every one of the kindergarten and elementary students. Yes, I cried.

And then it was off to Stony River which is about an hour and a half upstream. Part of the flight was with Steve, part was with Matt. As I didn't get to fly it meant I could watch the scenery and take loads of pictures.

We flew through the mountains - practically into the mountains. I could almost reach out and touch this peak. I'd never been to Stony before so was really excited. It's a beautiful little island of about 3 and a half acres. The scenery pictures in this post are from Stony. There are only about 50 people who live in the village. This is the petrol station. One of the teachers, Rick, took us for a walk around half of the island and then Cheryl and I settled down in the school overnight. I've never slept in a school before (well, only at my desk when I wasn't supposed to).

We then had two days of an Arts Festival to which the other small schools upriver flew their students into. More of that in the next post, along with making S'mores, learning bad words in Yup'ik, an overflowing toilet, and a hair-raising flight over the mountains. It was a lot of fun.