Learning 'I Have No Brain' in Yup'ik

And so to the last village on my trip - Stony River - a lovely little island about an hour upriver from Aniak. I'd never been here before but already knew some of the students from previous visits.

Cheryl and I had slept well in the school library, next to a classroom with chirping chicks. I found out afterwards that tradition says that all the schools are haunted by the children of adults who attended the school. The only children I saw were very much flesh and blood, however. We got up early and went for a walk around the village. It was a gorgeous day - chilly but sunny. First we visited the little village church and then we decided to go a different way from that we had gone the night before. We may have gone somewhere we shouldn't have. Whoops. It's a gorgeous place. Very quiet and pretty.

When the students arrived for breakfast, it was lovely to see Brad and Robert again. Brad and Robert are brothers - 16 and 17 years old - friendly, polite, gentle, funny and both of them extremely talented writers. Since I was there last time they have both sent me some of their writing. Brad, in particular, regularly sends me the most wonderful poetry - all about nature and the outdoors. During the day I had a chance to have a good chat with each of them. Both want to go to college. Robert wants to be a police officer (and hopefully SWAT!), Brad is possibly going to study to be a construction manager. They both love being outdoors and building things. They helped their dad build a cabin for their grandparents, and they are going to build a boat this year. There's something about both of them that makes them very special to me and I was really sad to leave them as I hugged them goodbye on Friday. I think I probably embarrassed them both as I told them that they are two of the nicest young men I have ever met, that they are talented and special and capable of doing anything they dream of, but they humoured me :o) The rest of the children in the family are equally lovely, and also very talented. Nichole, age 13, has written a really long story which she is going to send me. Michael, age 9, was a real star in class. He was in the elementary group that I had and I gave them cards with character and setting on and he wrote me a really imaginative story. At the end of the class he asked me if he could have more cards to write another story. And the youngest boy is Nels, who is 7. He's very bright and cute and surprised me and his teacher with the story he wrote for me. This picture is of the four brothers and their sister plus Simeon, known as Junior. The older boys really look out for their younger siblings.

In the High School class I had both Brad and Robert were there and one of the little exercises I got them to do was write about a memory. Robert wrote one about Brad, saying that he was getting on his nerves and wouldn't stop talking. When he walked away from him, Robert found that his pockets were filled with sawdust. He said "I asked my Mom if I could beat him up, but she said no." You can really feel the love they have for each other.

Over the two days I had each class twice - grades 1-4, 6-8 and then all the older students. The Arts Festival had all sorts of good stuff - tie-dying (you can see some of the results in the pictures here, beading (I had a go at that and was rubbish - they were all laughing at me. One of the girls, Crimson, took pity on me and made me a bracelet because my efforts were so bad), making keyrings, decorating boxes, boomwhackers, painting...I'm sure the writing bits were the least interesting, but they all submitted with humour and good grace and I had fun, even if they didn't :o)

With the two younger groups I did the character/setting cards and they wrote me stories, and I also did the character sheets. As usual, I got some that made me cry and some that made me laugh. Some of the students seemed to use the exercise as a way of exploring their feelings, others really stretched their imaginations- I had a character who was a bear but wanted to be a wolf, one who was the abominable snowman but was really a boy in disguise, one who was an alien girl who wanted to come to a planet that had proper air so she could save her family. With the older group I did an exercise where they had to get into groups and pretend to do a radio advert for a book, which they then had to perform for the rest of the class - trying to persuade us to buy the book. I was giving a prize for this one (cold, hard cash). In the end I gave two prizes as they were all so good. A group of 4 students did a very funny one about the Monkey Bar Gym and they won a prize to share. Brad did one on his own - he pretended to be the radio host and really made the book sound exciting. And he said that his author was going to donate money to a childrens' charity for every book sold. When I gave him his prize he said "I can't take that." "Of course you can," I said "You won it." He is such a sweet young man.

I also got them to write some non fiction. Maria wrote 3 wishes that were so lovely. She wouldn't let me read them out but I wish she had done - I think the other students would have been impressed. In every class I left it up to the students as to whether they read things out, I read them out, or I didn't read them out at all. Most of them let me read them out - surprisingly, even the personal ones. Needless to say, on a couple of occasions I struggled to hold back the tears. On one occasion, I didn't manage it.

The toilets at the school couldn't cope with the large influx of people so we had to have a new rule when the showers overflowed "If it's yellow, keep it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down." I don't think I need to say more, do I?

Maria spoke more yup'ik than anyone I have met out here. She would come up to me and try and teach me something else. I can now answer the question "Do you have a brain with "I have no brain." (It sounds something like bah-TREE-toh) She also very patiently tried to teach me to count from 1 to 10 but when you consider that numbers 8 and 9 are Pingayunlegen (pronounced 'Ping-ay-OON-ligen' (with the g in the back of the throat as though you've swallowed a tennis ball)) and Qulngunritaar (pronounced 'I can't bloody say that') And then she would ask me all sorts of questions about me and where I lived. Each answer would be met with "Holy cow." She was so funny and sweet. I got lots of questions about whether I had a boyfriend and children. They all thought Ewan was a really weird name :o)

I am a gussack - basically a non-native. However, Maria and her friends said I was now a gusskimo - someone who is half white, half eskimo. I was very honoured.

In the evening, some of the boys built a bonfire outside. Worryingly, as you can see from this photo, it was only a few feet from a sign that basically said "For goodness sake, don't get fire anywhere near these tanks full of gas." We cooked marshmallows and made S'mores - two cooked marshmallows on top of a big chunk of chocolate and put between two graham crackers. Delicious. Some of us just ate marshmallows, as you can see from this picture. We finally went inside when the mosquitos came out. I may not have seen a bear, but I've seen a mosquito the size of one. Good grief - they're enormous. For some reason, they seemed to like me, and I'm now the proud owner of mosquito bites the size of Scotland.

That night we all camped out in the school. Crimson, the girl who had made me the bracelet, wanted to sleep next to me, so she hauled a mat out of the gym and put it next to my sleeping mat. I kept waking up to find her little face about an inch from mine.

When it came time to say goodbye the next day I was very sad. It was a very special couple of days. We went down to the airfield and waited for the planes to come and pick us up. Cheryl and I were travelling back to Aniak together.

Happily for me, it was Fred, my favourite pilot. For the first few minutes he flew really close to the water so we had a wonderful view of the sun sparkling on the water, and the ice breaking up. It really was spectacular. At one point I was about to say "How low are we, exactly?" when I saw him checking out of the window at my side. "Just making sure I don't dip the wing in the water," he said. I guess that answered my question - about 5 inches.

Fred and I both had headsets, Cheryl couldn't hear us. I turned to him and said "Cheryl said she'd really like to do that G-Force weightlessness thing."

"Are you sure she said that she would be OK with that?

"Yep." I crossed my fingers, hoping that when I had told Cheryl about my previous experience last year and she said "Oh my, that sounds absolutely terrifying" what she actually meant was "I would love to do that." But it was too late to worry. Fred, still flying low over the water, picked up speed and headed along the river. Just as it looked as though he was going to fly straight into a bunch of trees (and I'm sure at this point I heard a faint yelp from Cheryl in the back, the plane lifted into the air, my stomach turned over, and I came out of my seat as though I was in space. I laughed gleefully.

And then Fred said the magic words. "I guess we're going to have to take it higher if you're going to fly the rest of the way back."

"I guess we are", I said, casually, passing my camera back to Cheryl with a shite-eating grin on my face.

So, there I was, merrily flying at my usual 500 feet, following the river when Fred said "Are you scared?"

"No, should I be?" As I said it the plane started yawing (oh yes, people, I know the terminology - just call me Biggles) from left to right and Fred was grinning. "You bloody stop that," I said. "That's not fair."

"If you had your feet in the correct place, you'd know what I was doing."

I just stuck my tongue out and carried on. After another little while he said "Are you ready for a challenge?"

I looked at him. That entails me either gaining or losing height and going off course, so I try not to do it too often.

"You wanna fly over those mountains?"

He pointed to these enormous great buggers in the distance.

"How high would I need to go?"

"About 4000 feet."

"OK, if you're sure."

The next few minutes consisted of me saying "Am I high enough yet?" in an increasingly panicked voice and Fred saying "Nope" in an increasingly calm one. Honestly, the man's unflappable. He just rests his arm on the dashboard thingy (technical term, sorry) and gazes out of the window at the scenery.

But I did it. I got high enough to fly over the mountain. Didn't see a bloody thing except the spot in front of me, but Cheryl got some photos. Then we started to descend.

"Come down at about 300 feet a minute and head for that bit of the river. By the time you get there, we'll be ready to come in to land."

"OK," I said, watching my little descending dial. Or so I thought.

"Donna, why are you still climbing?"

"I'm not! Look that little needle is going down."

"That little needle's the wrong little needle. It's this one you should be looking at."

"Oh." I watched the correct little needle.

A minute later Fred said, "Well, you made up for climbing that last minute."

"How do you mean?"

"You came down 700 feet in that minute there."

"Look, I have all these bloody dials to watch." By this time, Fred had added another dial for me to watch - I was up to 4 now. "You can't expect me to get all of them exactly right."

"It would just be nice to know what height you're going to fly at so I can tell Aniak we're coming in at a certain height. It's nice for all the other planes to know."

I thought for a moment. "Can't you just tell them we'll be coming in somewhere between 500 and 3000 feet?"

But I managed to get my act together and start a slow descent. After a few minutes Fred said "We've got about 1300 feet to descend."

"How long will that take?" I said.

He looked at me. "Oh any thing between an hour and 5 seconds, since it's you."

"Oh haha very funny."

It was truly brilliant. I have never had so much fun in my life. Cheryl was looking a tad green by the time we landed though. I gave Fred a big hug and thanked him for making my trips such a wonderful experience and for being such a good sport.

Emily had gone off to a graduation, so I was going to be staying at her house on my own. Jim picked us up from the airport. "Where does Emily live?" he said.

"Errrrrr...near the river," I said, helpful as ever.

He looked at me pityingly. "Donna, we're on an island. Everyone lives near the river."

Fasten Your Seatbelts, It's Going To Be a Bumpy Ride

Let me just say right off that today I flew a plane. For a whole hour. Yes, I did. But first, to catch up from where I left off.

On Saturday I was supposed to be flying to Sleetmute. However, as happens in the Bush, the best laid plans of moose and men and all that... Friday was warmish, yesterday was freezing cold and snowing. We met Fred, our pilot, at the airport and he said "Well we could go. Two planes going upriver had to turn back, but if you're willing to try...We might be forced to land on the river. " He was surprisingly cheerful when he said this. Apparently, Fred is prepared to do things other pilots won't try.

I also mentioned about him letting me fly the plane last time and said "But I'm sure you kept your hands on the controls, just in case."

"Nope," he said, and laughed.

And there I thought the whole time that I wasn't actually in control and I was. Someone had mentioned to me the night before that Fred had said "Most people either go too high or too low, but she just kept straight on." I was very proud :o)

So, instead of going to Sleetmute, Emily and I went to a rummage sale at the school and I ended up with loads of bling - some gorgeous traditional earrings and bracelets made of beads. One pair of earrings has tiny mukluks on. Mukluks are little snowboots. Unfortunately, I got the word wrong and told Emily I had earrings with muktuk on. "You have earrings made of whale blubber?" she said. OK, so I need more practise at my yup'ik, obviously.

I then attended a birthday party for a 4-year old. An hour and a half later I could have slept for Alaska. And I was stuffed with cake and ice cream. Yum yum. However, I'm now very worried about having to give my weight on the next plane I fly on (that's another good thing about Fred - he never asks your weight).

Today, Sunday, I got up to find an inch of snow on the ground, but the weather had really cleared up so I could fly to Sleetmute, which is about an hour and a quarter upriver (if you fly in a straight line and don't follow the winding Kuskokwim River it's about 50 minutes). My pilot up was Matt, who's 22 and has been a Bush pilot since he was 16. (Did I mention I flew a plane? Well, that was on the way back, not on the way up). Matt gave me the safety demonstration - "Whatever you do, don't touch that lever," he said, pointing to a lever about one millimetre away from my knee.

Sleetmute is a very small village of around 100 people, and the school has 8 pupils. It's a very special place for me. I spent a couple of days there last time I was there, and one of my favourite people, Mary Effemka - one of the village Elders - lives there.

Bambi at the store very foolishly said I could borrow her ATV (even when I told her I don't drive), and off I set to visit Mary. Just call me Ayrton Senna Pod. I got into 2nd gear and a whole 12 miles an hour. The tracks are really bad at the moment and there are a lot of pot-holes and still a fair bit of snow. When I arrived at Mary's I actually went to the wrong house first and almost got eaten by the most enormous dog. When I knocked on the door I realised my mistake when a very sleepy looking man came to the door. Whoops, sorry George.

I had brought Mary some little gifts from Scotland and she gave me a beautiful suncatcher made of beads. We took a walk down to the river, and sat and visited for a while. Mary lost her husband to suicide a couple of years ago and this time she told me the story of how they had met, and how long she has lived in the village. It was fascinating. Mary is a wonderful lady and I always feel very sad when I say goodbye to her, but I was really glad that I had got to see her.

After that, I met up with Susan, who's the head of the Upriver schools and we went for a walk by the river. Susan travels quite a lot and, while she was away some time ago, one of the villagers brought her some fish and left them outside her house on the steps. Then, before Susan arrived back it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. Covering up the fish on her doorstep. They stayed nice and frozen until the snow started to thaw last week.Finally all the snow disappeared and Susan found 5 rotting fish on her doorstep. By this time, they were beginning to stink a tad, so today Susan threw them down by the river for the birds. As a result, I was able to get really really close to a bald eagle and see it drag off this huge fish in its beak. A couple of the eagles were wheeling above our heads for ages - it was an amazing sight.

Then we went over to the school and some of the students came by to say hello. It was lovely to see them again. After that, Susan, Bambi and I visited for a little while as we waited for my plane to arrive to take me back to Aniak. I learned a very valuable lesson. If someone says they want to give you a gift of oosik, just say no. Apparently it's a very popular thing to give as a gift. But why on earth would anyone want a whale's penis bone? I mean, what are you going to do with it? Do they come with batteries?

Then my favourite pilot arrived to take me home. Oh, did I mention that I flew this plane. I FLEW THIS PLANE!

"Can I sit next to you?" I said.

"Nope, you've got to sit all the way in back," he said. And then laughed very loudly when he saw my crestfallen face. So I got in and put on my headset (I felt like Biggles- it allows you to talk to the pilot and listen in to all the stuff that's going on), and got to shut my own door.

"Do you want to fly low and follow the river?" he said.

"Oh yes, that would be great. How low are we flying?"

"About 50 feet."

"Wow, that's low."

"We can go lower than that,", he said. And, believe me, when Fred says low, he means low. We flew for about 15 minutes 5 feet off the surface of the river. It makes you feel as though you're going really fast.

"This is Red Devil coming up," he said. "In front of us is the school." And when he said "in front of us" he meant that too. I was too petrified to take a photo but when we got to about what seemed to be a foot from the window of the school he took us up over the roof, rather than through it.

And then he said those magic words "I guess if you're going to fly we need to get a bit higher."

"Well, unless you want us to go plunging through the ice it might be a good idea," I said casually, as though flying a plane was an everyday occurrence.

So for the next hour (with one brief exception, of which more later), I flew the damn plane! The Kuskokwim is a very winding river so I got lots of chances to turn. I should say right now that turning while trying to keep at a steady altitude is not exactly easy. To go higher, you pull back on the steering wheel thingy (sorry for the technical term there, we pilots tend to use a lot of that), to go lower, you push it forward. Even a tiny little movement can have it moving up and down like a roller coaster. Or maybe that's just me...

I had two dials to watch. One was altitude, which I tried to keep between 400 and 500 feet. Quite successfully, I must say, at least after the first little while. Near the start we had to cross a mountain, instead of following the river and I was so scared of hitting the mountain (I have no spatial awareness) that I climbed a tad too far.

"Hey, we're up to 1000 feet, but that's cool," said my unfaze-able co-pilot.

"Whoops," I said, as I took the plane into a nose-dive to get back down to 500 feet.

The other dial I had to try and keep at zero.

"I'm doing not too bad on that one," I said, I've been watching it and it's hovering around zero all the time. I was so proud of myself.

"Yeah, it is...shame you're watching the wrong dial." Oh how we laughed.

After a little while I relaxed into it, my dials were fairly steady, and I made the mistake of telling Fred that I was getting quite comfortable.

"Then we'll make it a little more difficult," he said, the fiend. We went off course, to see whether one of the smaller rivers was breaking up yet. So now I had another dial to watch - this one had to point towards the west all the time. OK, so I mastered that one too.

"If you bank it really steeply upwards and then sharply downwards, you can go weightless," he said.

"Oh ha-ha, very funny."

"I'm going to take a photo of you flying the plane."

"I think you might prefer to watch what I'm doing," I said, but he didn't listen to me. Those white knuckles you see on the steering wheel thingy are mine. And the next photo was one that Fred took while I was banking sharply to the left - look at that angle.

Oh my goodness, you have no idea how brilliant it was. I'm still on a high. At one point, he took back control, so he could go in a circle and get really low again so I could see a moose and her calf by the side of the river. I tried to get a good photo but couldn't. Take my word for it though - it was wonderful to see them.

I brought the plane in towards the runway. "You just carry on," he said. Followed by "At the rate you're descending, we're not going to make the runway." He said it so calmly, too. There's something wrong with that man, I'm sure of it. So I gave control back and he landed it beautifully. And then he gave control back to me again. On the ground, you don't steer with the steering wheel thingy, you steer with pedal-y things. Right to go right, left to go left. It sounds logical but it was really hard. I told him if anyone was watching they would think he was drunk.

"Aim for between the telegraph pole and the hangar."

He had to be kidding, it was a six inch space.

"No, I didn't say aim for the telegraph pole, Donna."

"Did I tell you I gave up driving a car because I couldn't park?"

"By the time you leave, we'll have you landing the plane."

Hahahahahahahahaha.

I cannot get the huge grin off my face, and while we were flying I just couldn't stop myself laughing gleefully from time to time. It was an amazing experience. I am, officially, the luckiest person in the world.