Villages of Yakutia

In the last post I wrote about Sakha language and a bit about the language situation, especially in the city. It's appropriate then, that I talk a little about the villages here, where Sakha language is especially alive and active and where I've had the most opportunities to speak Sakha language. There are, in fact, people living in the villages who struggle with Russian. They speak only Sakha language with friends and family and have reason to speak Russian only at school, where all are of course expected to learn it and indeed take most of their classes in Russian. It happens though, when all the pupils are Sakha and all the teachers Sakha, that many of the classes are effectively taught in Sakha language and so even teenagers will be shy about speaking Russian.

A week and a half ago I had the opportunity to visit the village of Borogontsi, which is just a 2 hour car trip away from Yakutsk. Some of you may have already noticed the pictures in the slide show from my trip. I accompanied my Sakha language teacher, Stepan Konstantinovich [first name + patronymic is the polite from of address in Russian, like saying Mister or Ms. in English] to the 135th anniversary of Muru school number 1, where he studied just one year. Being 135 years old, however, this school is one of the oldest in the whole region. Schooling only became widespread during the Soviet period, in the 1920's, so when Muru school number 1 was opened in 1873, it was unique indeed. As far as I could tell, almost all the graduates who had the means to come came (there were even representatives from the class of 1930!) and organized reunions by graduating class.

My trip began in Yakutsk on Friday afternoon as my teacher and I, in his car, stopped by the bus station to pick up passengers so they could help pay for the gas to get there. We managed to find 3 people to fit in the back seat, who covered the cost of our trip for significantly less than it would have cost them to take the bus. The road there, like all roads after you leave the center of the city is unpaved. It still being winter, it was better than it is in the summertime as the packed snow makes a relatively smooth driving surface. Where it takes 2 hours in the winter to get there, it can take up to 4 or 5 hours in the summer. To get there, we first drove through the hills around Yakutsk and the coal-mining operations that extract the valuable mineral from them until we reached the banks of the Lena river. It still being winter, we then drive down onto the river, where there is a road cleared on the ice. When I've been with other people, religious or not, superstitious or not, they typically give an offering to the river for luck on their trip. Depending on the person, the offering can be a bit of juice, some bread, candy, cigarettes or alcohol. But typically something consumable. However, my teacher is either scatter-brained and forgets to do such things or simply doesn't care and so we didn't stop.

We arrived in the village earlier than expected, around 5:30, dropped off the passengers at their various destinations and proceeded on to Stepan Konstantinovich's younger sister's house. Since we showed up so early, the family had not yet come home from work, but anyway, Stepan Konstantinovich walked right in without knocking and began to make tea, etc. This is something that continually surprises me here and which I'm only starting to get used to--for close friends and family (even distant relatives) homes are always open. They come for dinner or lunch or just to hang out for half an hour, but are always expected to simply walk right in and make themselves comfortable. Furthermore it's not unusual for relatives to raise each others' children or for them to stay for long periods of time at one another's houses. Just one other example--last summer, my teacher's "nephew" lived with him in Yakutsk while he was going to college. I only just found out that the way they are related is that my teacher's grandmother is his great-grandmother's sister, which makes them quite distantly related indeed.

Anyway, the sister and her husband eventually arrived home and their 20-something son, Kolya came in soon after. We were a long time getting dinner on the table and didn't start eating until well after 8pm, but in the meantime chatted and played with their granddaughter, Diana, who is just 9 months old. I'm proud to say that I hardly spoke a Russian word all evening, managing to participate pretty actively in the conversation using only Sakha language and to follow most of what was going on. After dinner, Kolya disappeared, but the rest of us sat drinking (as usual, the men vodka and the women wine) and chatting until late in the evening. And as usual, I was put in my own room while everyone else split up into the other two bedrooms.

The next day I was able to see a bit of the village. The village is situated on the banks of a big lake, called Lake Muruu, hence the name of the school. When I asked my teacher what the name of the lake was, however, he whispered it, explaining that Sakha never say the names of bodies of water loudly. The village has a population of around 2000 and is the administrative center of the "ulus" or county of Ust-Aldan. As such, a lot of people there have jobs in government offices (like S.K.'s brother-in-law), or banks (like Kolya) or other such institutions and don't necessarily do a lot of farming, as they do in most other villages. However, almost everyone has a good-sized garden and a sizeable portion of residents keep animals. S.K.'s relatives, for instance, have quite a few horses and a hen house full of chickens.

Some of the buildings in the center of the city, for instance the school and the government buildings, are built from stone and/or synthetic materials, but almost all of the other buildings and houses are made of wood. And indeed, most people build their houses themselves. Like everywhere outside of the biggest cities, there is no running water in the town and so all the houses have outhouses for toilets and a bucket positioned over a sink to wash your hands. Instead of showers, those who can afford them have bathhouses, which are effectively saunas. Once a week or so, they heat them up and everyone goes in one by one and scrubs themselves silly, using the cleansing powers of sweat to help.

S.K.'s sister's house is situated some distance from the center of town, on the edge of a large field where they grow hay for their horses in the summertime. Just beyond that field is the forest, where everyone gathers berries and mushrooms in the summertime. As the weather was getting warmer, Sunday morning the women all went for a walk in the forest while the men stayed back at the house grilling "shashlik" or shish-kabobs--a favorite springtime activity here. By that time, S.K.' sister's daughter (the mother of the 9-month old) had also arrived from Yakutsk, bringing with her some of her brother's friends and we all stood around, chatting and enjoying the spring day, before S.K. and I left for the city that afternoon.