Savoonga and Anchorage

Over the past month, I was fortunate enough to go on two trip. First I went to Savoonga and the next week I went to Anchorage.

Savoonga is a village located on St. Lawerence Island, between Alaska and Russia. This trip was one of my favorite village trips to date. I went to Savoonga to cover a story about the first ASIST workshope in a village. ASIST stands for Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training. It is a two day workshop that was brought to Savoonga through a grant. I was unable to go to all of the training but I did go most of the second day. It was amazing to see how many high school students attended the training and wanted to help. The village was going to start a youth council for suicide prevention because the need to get involved among the students. I did get a profile and 2 news stories from that trip. Since a group of friends from Nome were in town to conduct this workshop, we explored Nome. We decided to go on a walk along the beach and we couldn't have had a better adventure. As we were walking, I found a big piece of baleen laying on the beach. Of course we took lots of pictures but as we walked further along, we found a bunch of them neatly lying in a row (the picture above). We decided to continue our walk. A little bit further, we saw a large skeleton. Loren decided to try and pick it up but he could had a hard time. Turns out the skeleton was from a walrus. The spin was alonger than any of us and about as wide as my head. The skull was missing it's ivory, for obvious reasons (natives carve stuff out of them). After realizing we couldn't move it, we decided to continue our journey. Jason looked out to the water and discovered there were a bunch of whales within sight. We stood there and watch the whales come up for breath. There was a bunch of them. Apparently, this is was whale migration season. As we continued our journey down the beach, we saw a bunch of kids running. We asked them what the rush was and they said they wanted to make beef jerkey. Sure enough, there was a whale that was catch and brought onto shore only hours ago and the kids went to slice up their share for afternoon snacks. The name beef jerkey made me laugh, it seemed more like whale jerky to me. The following is a picture of one of the kids getting his jerkey

After that great adventure, we decided to head back to town to go to Eskimo Dancing and a potluck. It was a contempory potluck with Subway and Airport Pizza but fun none the less. I personally was forced to dance by some of the kids who went to the workshop. Another great think about Savoonga, there are many ivory carving artists in that village and they make some beautiful work! I only had $30 on me which was enough to get an old ivory charm for a necklace. I found out that old ivory is found in camps across the St. Lawrence Island. The island used to be covered with camps but a famine and flu struck the island killing about 4/5ths of the population. The remaining population moved to Gambell and then Savoonga. So there are camps from before 1918 with thousands of ivory burried around the camps.

The other great trip I went on was to Anchorage. I had the opportunity to go there through an organization that I volunteer for, Relay for Life. During college, I have always been a huge supporter of it and found they are trying to start one in Nome. As a volunteer, the relay staff decided to send me and 2 other ladies to Anchorage for a training session. The training itself was very educational but the city was a complete culture shock! I've been a city girl so long and then I moved to Nome and grew accustomed to that lifestyle. Once I was in a heavily populated area, I grew nervous and couldn't get over how strange it was to see so many cars on a road.... or stop lights... or skyscrapers... or just about everything. It was interesting to walk around the hospital to go the training and see people in business suits. That is not something I don't think anyone in Nome owns. I never thought it would affect me because I was a business major in college and was no stranger to the professional "looking" world but it really is another world to me now. The city of Anchorage is a lot different than I thought. It was clearly planned out so the city is extremely spaced out. You have to have a car to get anywhere.

It wasn't a bad type of culture shock (if there is such a thing) but it was definately a reality check that there are so many different lifestyles within the World, US, and even the state of Alaska.