The Great White North

It's December and I'm still here. December in the Arctic. Wow. Surreal. I am sure rap stars and pop stars feel this way when they make it. Like they have to pinch themselves to see that they're in real life. Except, I need to pinch myself to make sure I'm not losing bloodflow in my face and getting frostbite.

I got an amazing delivery from my mom this week. (I really love that moms never stop being moms---meaning they seem to have this innate drive to take care of their offspring---which I find incredibly handy!) I was talking to my mom last week and mentioned this company called Arctic Fresh that has a whole bunch of cool food on it that I can't get at the store here and before I knew it, she'd pulled up the website and was filling her cart. Yay Christmas for me! I am almost positive that she got at least one of everything on the site. So. Much. Food. But so exciting because now I have things like guacamole and asparagus! Asparagus I say!! The company was actually started by a guy and his wife here in Igloolik so those of us that live in Igloolik actually get doorstep delivery of our food! It is so interesting...you literally here the plane fly over, then they load up their pickup and start making deliveries. The only hitch is that when bad weather hits, there's nothing anyone can do. Planes don't land, Igloolik doesn't get mail, food, supplies. Simple equation really. There has been bad weather here and in the capital, but not at the same time so it really wreaked havoc because when it would be good at one place, it would be shit at the other and so on. We didn't get mail for over a week. Food takes priority over mail.

This week also marks the beginning off 24hrs with no sun. So far it's fine because for like an hour or two during the middle of the day it still gets light.....like a very overcast day. You can see things and see to walk around. Street lights aren't even on. However, by 130 or 2 pm now it's pitch black and I asked someone if it would keep getting light during the middle of the day like it is now. They said no. It's gonna get darker. Good news is that in only 19 days we'll be at the shortest day of the year and we'll be going up from there!

Funny little things that illustrate life up here always happen that I forget. For example, in my office, I was asking my boss if we could get rid of some items that I felt were taking up space. He told me that we couldn't really get rid of them just yet because even after they're done for the immediate time, we might need them in the future. He then told me that the cabinet should be locked anyways to protect these items from being stolen. As he leans on said cabinet and remarks, "See, it's locked" as he pulls the handle and the drawer slides open. He looks startled and I started laughing and he asks me why I didn't have it locked. I continue laughing while I explain how I arrived in Igloolik and I had no office orientation or bosses in the office for 2 months. How would I know what was supposed to be locked and furthermore, WHERE oh WHERE would the key be kept. He then looks at me and says, "Sheesh, you don't know where the keys are kept either??!" With a small smirk, he walks away from the cabinet and past my desk to the wall where there is a dead fox hanging. He pushes the body aside and there, under the fur is a ring of keys. Obviously. By this time, I'm dying laughing and he's laughing too because this whole situation and place is just so funny sometimes. Shockingly, I didn't discover the keys before now because I don't go around playing with dead animals hanging about. I can say with some assurance that most people, 1. do not have a dead fox hanging in their office, and 2. do not hide keys underneath its body. lolololol. Welcome to my life.

I discovered another piece of Arctic life when I thought my house was on fire. I was inside, smelled the unmistakable smell of crap burning that should not be burning. I run to the dryer and sniff, then the other rooms. I determined it wasn't coming from inside my unit so I go outside to make sure it's not any unit physically attached to mine. If my stuff burned down, I'd probably leave. I don't know how I'd recover. Anyway, I'm start walking down the road to see where the smoke is coming from. I meet up with another woman who, like me, had wandered outside to determine what was burning. As we walked, we came upon kids that had built a snow house/cave in a big pile of snow that the graders had piled up. It was so freaking cool. They had a light inside and a sheet of plywood as a door. They also had a snow slide on the outside from the top to the bottom. It was all I could do to not ask to go inside and chill.

Finally, this week I did a 2 day employee orientation and cultural orientation. My favorite things were receiving solid stats about tobacco use in Nunavut, listening to the elder's stories, and visiting with the instructor. First, the crazy smoking stats. In Nunavut, 74% of people smoke. I don't know if yall remember my entry about this place keeping tobacco makers in business?? Well, I feel completely supported in that statement!!! Compare that rate with the overall Canadian rate of 13% (U.S. rate is 15%). Can you believe that? 74%!!!! Pregnant women? Yeah, they smoke at a rate of 76% in Nunavut. That's not second hand smoke, that's the pregnant women themselves. I was talking to the instructor about this during break and he was telling me how it's completely accepted and you'll be having a conversation with an extremely pregnant woman while she's puffing away. He said it's hard to even stand around and watch that. It would be like standing around and watching a parent excessively beat their child. Hard to do. The infant mortality rate is 21/1000 here compared to 5/1000 in Canada and 6/1000 in the U.S. (Finland and Japan have the lowest infant mortality at 2.3/1000). So just let that sink in.....here in Nunavut, infants die at a rate 4x higher than the rest of Canada. Did I mention tuberculosis is prevalent here as well. Eeek. Back to smoking....a full 95% of infants are exposed to second-hand smoking in Nunavut. Compare that to 5% for Canada. !!! I mean, these numbers are mind-blowing. Nunavut has one of the highest smoking rates in ALL of the world. !!

Listening to the elder's stories were fascinating. He did not speak English and looked like he'd stepped right out of the National Geographic article about Arctic Inuit peoples. He was born in an igloo. He doesn't know how old he is. He remembered the first time he saw a white man. Igloolik didn't exist. He and his community/family would pass by what is now Igloolik as they moved to and from their summer/winter grounds. The first white man was a missionary. This missionary then sent for a ship which brought wood and nails to build a church/house. The elder remembered that they were fascinated by this wooden structure. They'd never seen wood before. Hearing and seeing a plane for the first time was quite the impression as well. The noise of the engine was most memorable. They didn't understand that the noise was from the thing called an engine and was necessary to keep the machine airborne. So here I was, sitting in Igloolik's community hall, listening to a true voice of history and the past. The man remembered when 2 priests were here and then a ship came to take them off to a war. The Inuit didn't know what the war was or what it was about, but the white men had to go. Obviously, this was WWII. To think about the fact that this man, in his lifetime, has come from basically 1000 AD to 2018 AD in terms of lifestyle and technology. It's incredible. I can't even really fathom it. He went from literally not knowing what wood and an engine was to flying on planes, going to Ottawa, driving a snowmobile, etc. !!!!

Finally, I got to chat with the instructor. I was showing him how to get to the restaurant during lunch and he asked where I was from. When I told him originally from Tennessee, his interest was quite piqued. (as a completely unrelated aside, most young Nunavummiut know Nashville because the one and only Nunavummiut NHL player, Tootoo, got drafted and played for Nashville as his first team!). We ended up chatting over lunch and sharing our cultures. Really neat. He is from a much smaller town than Igloolik and so it was really cool to hear his perspectives and experiences. One story he told was how when he was 15, he thought he was all that and had a big ego. He built an igloo and was super proud of himself, telling his family how good he was. Well, a few days later, a blizzard hit and his brother called him and told him to get dressed, come over, and bring his snow knives. When he got to his brother's house, his brother pointed outside and said, "Now go build an igloo". So, Peter went outside and tried to build one. About an hour later, frustrated, defeated, and with frostbitten cheeks, he returned inside. His brother looked at him, said nothing and got dressed to go outside. He went outside and 45 minutes later came back inside and told Peter to take a look. There, in the backyard was a finished igloo. He looked to Peter and said, "Building an igloo when everything is easy is nothing to be proud of. When you can build an igloo when things are tough, then you're ready to be a man." I thought that was a neat story and holds a lot of life lessons.
This is the stuff I love. Hearing these stories and learning about the culture is fascinating.Read more