Summer in Siberia

Hello Hello! Sorry again for the long delay, but its not so easy to use the internet and I keep forgetting to bring with my USB stick with my blog posts when I do. Anyway, to give you all a short update on where I am, what I’m doing—I’m in the town of Nyurba (see my last post) in western Yakutia, where I’ll be until the end of the summer. For the last week or 2 I’ve been teaching in the mornings at an English summer camp. It’s a lot of fun, but teaching is really hard and really draining, especially when you have no experience and education for teaching the subject matter you’re supposed to be teaching. But I’m getting by and I think the kids are enjoying it anyway. I have two groups of students, one younger (ages 9-12) and one older (ages 12-14). But I’m trying to make things interesting by teaching them English songs and games. But they speak almost no English, so its kind of tough at times. If anyone remembers any good, simple games that use the language a bit please remind me! I’ve already taught them duck, duck goose (that went over best), I spy, I’m going to grandma’s house, London Bridges, and hangman. But I’m open to suggestions J
Anyway, here are some things I’ve written in the last few weeks. I tried to include photos but it just didn’t work out with the internet connection. I hope you enjoy anyway!
Love to all!
Susan

Where I Live, With Whom I Live

I’m living here in Nyurba with the family of my friend, Sardana, whom many of you know or have met. I met Sardana in 2003-4, when we were both in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh—it’s largely because of her that I ended up in Yakutia at all, since I had hardly even heard of the place before I met her. Anyway, I stayed with her family when I was doing my master’s research here in 2005 and got to know them well and they are kindly hosting me again, despite the fact that Sardana is now in graduate school in the U.S. (thus not here).
Constantly living in the house are Sardana’s mother (Rita), her father (Nikolai), their granddaughter (Nyurguyana), who is 12 now and Sardana’s brother (Kolya), who is 24.

However, since Rita and Nikolai have 7 children total, all of whom are grown, the extended family is quite large and there are always others around. When I arrived, the oldest son, Dima and his 6-year-old son Vova were living here temporarily. Sardana’s older sister Anchik is also often here with her 2 children, Vika (5) and Nikita (1.5), who are both adorable little bundles of energy, ensuring that life is never dull when they’re around. Sardana’s younger sister Dunya (25) was raised by their aunt, Nikolai’s sister, who didn’t have any children of her own. But she and her “mother” live close by so I see them often and Dunya and I have become close friends. Dunya works as the journalist/editor of the town’s Russian-language newspaper and as such is a great help, letting me tag along to any events she attends as part of work. More than that, she’s also a super interesting person—we have endless conversations about politics and history, anthropology and culture.

Rita and Nikolai’s house is located not far from the city center, one street down from the river bank, near the small port of Nyurba and a canal that flows into the river. They have maybe ¼ of an acre of land, which like all the properties on the street, is enclosed by a wooden fence. As you walk in through the gate along the wooden planks laid as a walkway, their 2-story wooden house is to the left, and to the right, lining the entire border of their property is a system of garage/sheds where they keep their motorcycle (their only form of motorized transportation), various tools, and firewood. Behind the house is a small field where they plant potatoes and 2 decently sized green-houses for tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables. On the other side of the house, Nikolai keeps his carpentry tools—a good-sized collection of machines that he uses in constructing just about anything you can imagine, including their house and the houses of various family members. In the far corner of the property is the outhouse—a simple small wooden structure with a hole in the floor. Next to the outhouse is the doghouse, where they keep their dog chained just out of reach of people on their way to the bathroom—this caused me no small amount of terror before the dog became convinced I was supposed to be there, as every time I went to the bathroom, he’d jump up, barking with such furor that I was certain, each time, he’d break through the chain and that would be the end of me.

The house itself is made entirely of wood. I live on the second floor, which is more or less a small loft/bedroom above the kitchen. On the first floor there are: 2 large rooms (the kitchen and living room) and 3 small bedrooms, an entry room/air lock where they keep barrels of water and the furnace, and a “veranda”—basically a storage room that’s outside the main part of the house and therefore, not heated—they use it for storing various things (including an old piano), but its especially useful for extra food storage in the winter. The house is heated by wood and by coal (in the winter), using a system of pipes and radiators that keep it nice and toasty. The walls are thick and each of the windows has three panes of glass separated by a foot or so of space between the panes, so that the house is well-insulated.

ICE DRIFTS AND FLOODING

Every year in the middle of May, the ice breaks up on the river and starts flowing, heralding the end of winter and beginning of summer. The whole process is very sudden—the ice begins to melt long before, but is still fairly thick when one day it begins to break, as the current from up river reaches Nyurba and pushes the ice downstream. This year, in some places, the ice had already melted entirely before the major push began, so that the night before, the river appeared almost totally clear. The next day, all the ice from upstream showed up and began banging into the rusting barges and boats that were left at the port all winter. As Dunya, Nyurguyana and I stood watching, one of the barges that had sat chained there for years was swept away as a huge sheet of ice rammed into it. The ice-driftage, or “ledokhod” lasts a couple of days and is typically accompanied by strong winds that carry the ice away and rising waters.

This year, the rising waters began even before the ledokhod began as the snow melted, turning the dirt roads to a muddy mess and even flooding some regions. However, once the ice started to flow, the stream/canal filled to the brim, reforming the lake it had been dug to empty in the 1820s and completely flooding the low regions of the town. Two pedestrian bridges were wiped out by the rising waters and hundreds of residents had to be evacuated, living with relatives or in government shelters for a month or more, waiting for the waters to subside. Regionally, the flooding destroyed a number of bridges along the highway to Yakutsk, making ground transportation to Yakutsk just about impossible until the rivers freeze again—and even then, they won’t be drivable until December, when the ice becomes thick enough to support traffic. While there are rumors that the steamship that used to ferry passengers may make the trip to Yakutsk again this summer, for the most part, people are connected with Yakutsk only by air, which is getting more and more expensive every year—for instance, my one-way ticket from Nyurba to Yakutsk cost 7,000 rubles, almost $300. When you consider that a typical monthly salary here is around 10,000 rubles (about $415), the cost of travel becomes even more exorbitant. And this is only to Yakutsk—a 1.5 hour plane ride away.

SUMMER ARRIVES

After the ice flows away, summer gradually unfolds. By the middle of May, it was already light until 11:30. Now, in the beginning of June, it never gets dark. The sun sets for 2-3 hours each night, but it stays light enough that even in the darkest part of the night, I can sit outside and read a book. The weather is strange—constantly changing, one day sunny and hot, the next day snowing. For example, one day this week, I woke up to cold, windy, rainy weather—I went out in the morning wearing my winter coat, hat and gloves and still was shivering. The same day, when I went out after lunch, the sun had come out, dried up the streets, and it was so hot that I was warm walking around in short sleeves. On such days, the sun is intense. I’m not sure why—perhaps it’s because of the northern geographical position, or perhaps it’s just because my skin has gone so long without any sun exposure, but I feel like the sun is more severe here, like it almost hurts my skin and that I burn more quickly than I do at home.

After 8 long months of winter, everyone follows closely the revival of the natural world that accompanies the warmer weather. People cheerily point out every new bird song, eagerly seeking a glimpse of the source. I can almost identify more birds and their songs in Sakha language now than I can in English—I’ve never been so attuned to the different sounds around me. Work “collectives” (the staff of a given workplace) take the afternoon off and go together to the “forest,” the woods just outside the town, to enjoy the first glimpses of green and to gather the first flowers, called “nyurguhun” (in English, snow drops, as they sometimes appear before all the snow has melted). In the woods outside the city, the small white, purple and yellow flowers are indeed everywhere, beautiful little jewelry for the trees.

Since the beginning of warmer weather, I have gone to the forest just about every weekend (and a few times during the weeks as well). The “forest” consists of just about any of the area outside the town and includes woods but also wide clearings, or “alaases,” often encircling a lake, where long grasses grow in the summer time. These are the hay fields, the foundation of cattle raising here, providing the cows with food during the long winter. The vegetation is characteristic of forest-tundra regions, with just a few species of trees that cover the whole region. Close to the town, there are primarily thick clusters of birch trees, dotted with the occasional larch. Old larch trees play an important role in Sakha traditional belief, connecting the upper, middle, and lower worlds and to this day are considered sacred. Dead larch trees are supposed to be home to abaahi, evil spirits, still very much alive in the present, stories about them told like ghost stories are in the US—some people take them seriously, others dismiss them as superstition. Birch trees are also very important part of Sakha culture—the easy-to-remove outer-layer of bark is used to make all sorts of handicrafts, artwork, and jewelry and in the spring time, they drink the sap that drips down the trees like juice. Further from the city, are pine forests, dark with tall evergreens, creating the feeling of a real “forest.”

Gone Fishing:

Nyurguyana had been begging her grandfather for weeks to take her fishing. One of the first warm weekends after the ice broke-up, he finally agreed. As it turned out, the day was a great one for heading to the forest, so Anchik and her kids wanted to tag along, and Vova wouldn’t be left behind—we decided to make a day of it and we loaded the whole family into their small row boat and rowed across the river for a picnic. The current was still strong so that rowing all 8 of us across was no easy task—Nikolai started out rowing alone, but soon, Anchik joined in. On the way back, Dunya and I switched off with her as well. As it was, we still ended up quite a ways downstream from where we wanted to be and had to row up stream along the shore, where the current was weaker.

Once docking, the first order of business was to build a fire. Nikolai quickly found a few pieces of wood and some kindling and got it going, while the rest of us found bigger pieces of wood to keep it going. Nyurguyana and Vova disappeared almost immediately after with their grandfather, taking with them their home-made fishing rods and cans of worms they had enthusiastically gathered the previous night. The rest of us stayed and got lunch ready, heating water for tea and for soup, a whole feast constructed right on site. Soon, Nyurguyana and Vova came up, showing off their catch—a pile of minnows, they held in a jar of water.

After lunch, the non-fishers went in search of snowdrops (the first flowers of spring), dragging the little kids, Vika and Nikita with us. The birch trees were beginning to bud and Rita remembered that a friend of hers makes some kind of medicinal rub from birch buds, so we collected handfuls to give to her. Walking in the woods, we also got the rare glimpse of a muskrat, swimming upstream—they were apparently brought to Yakutia from North America at some point in the 20th century and have since multiplied and spread all over, quite suited to the habitat. Local people hunt them as their fur is quite valuable. We hiked for an hour or two and finally dragged ourselves back at the insistent behest of Vika who had grown tired of picking birch buds long before.

We got back to find everyone else just about asleep in the tent they had brought with them. We packed up, loaded everyone into the boat and rowed across the current once more.