Adventures in Fieldwork Part 5
Note: This essay is about my own culture shock and is not in any way intended to be disparaging towards the people in Village. The conditions there are complex and I am not being critical of the place or the people. My focus is on my own mindset and shortcomings in this situation. Photo by Shari Burke.
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| the village late July sunset |
As I lay there fully dressed on top of the bed, I was thinking over everything that had happened to me in my degree program. I was thinking of my last trip to Village. I thought of what I would tell my advisor and my friends. I realized I didn’t really care about any of that. I had to be realistic. Now that I had a better understanding of the reality of Village life, I had to admit that doing extensive fieldwork, which would require me to live in Village for at least a year was probably not a good idea. Bringing our high-school-aged daughter to such a place was out of the question and I was not keen on being away from her and Bill for that long, even though I could’ve gone home for visits. Since there was no way I was going to sleep at all that night, I had plenty of time to think about the situation, the kind of work I wanted to do, my sense of ethics, and more. As I lay there fully dressed and on top of the covers, with my parka over me as a blanket, I listened as the son came home and was intercepted before he could enter his room and be instructed to sleep on the couch. I heard people screaming down the streets on their snow machines. I wanted to go home. I really had no interest in fieldwork anymore. I had changed my subject after the last trip from motherhood to language preservation thinking it would be less emotionally charged, but suddenly I knew that it was all emotionally charged. To my friends in Fairbanks I was Kuukpiaq. To the people in Village, I was WHITE, which automatically made me suspicious. Could I overcome their suspicions? Maybe. Did I want to keep trying for even longer than the few years I’d already invested? I rather thought not. I watched the hands on my watch move closer to the time when I could get out of bed and leave. I planned my strategy and what I was going to say.
As it turned out, most everyone was up and out early—there was a game. I got up as soon as they had left. Because I thought there might still be one person in the house, I pretended to call home and learn that someone was ill, so I could use that as my excuse for leaving without causing hard feelings. I called the airline to change my return ticket. I had a choice of a flight that was leaving in 2 hours or one that would be leaving in 12 hours. The idea of 12 more hours there was not penetrating my brain, so I reserved a spot on the flight a mere two hours away. Because I had no idea what the address was, I could not call a taxi, so I prepared to walk. I threw on clean clothes, brushed my teeth, wrote a note, left it with the gifts I’d brought, picked up my suitcase in one hand and my carry-on bag in the other and stepped out into the dark –25 F degree Village morning. Village is above the arctic circle and it was January, so there was not going to be any daylight for a long while. I began to walk toward the airport. The streets were deserted. I could see the airport in the distance and it seemed to pull me toward it, but when I got to the gate that we had driven out of the night before, it was closed! My heart sank, but I doggedly kept on. I was determined to get to that airport.
I put my suitcase down and looked around. I spotted a road that seemed to go in the right direction, so I grabbed my suitcase and headed that way. Suddenly there were headlights coming toward me. “Please let it be a woman,” I repeated over and over as the headlights got closer. The car stopped and an older woman rolled down her window. “Where are you coming from?” she asked incredulously. She was apparently unaccustomed to seeing large white women hauling luggage down the street on foot in the dark and cold winter mornings. “Back there somewhere,” I answered as I waved my hand in the direction I had come. “Does this road take you to the airport terminal building?” She invited me to hop in and I gratefully accepted. I felt like hugging her, but settled for thanking her about a million times as she pulled up to the door of the terminal building.
I went inside, checked in and called Bill. He was still asleep, but woke up quickly as I told him in a quiet voice, lest I be overheard, that I would be home later that day. I felt a bit silly, speaking in hushed tones hunched over the receiver with my hand cupped over my mouth and the phone, but it’s a small place where everyone knows everyone. It seemed a bit dramatic, but I was very tired and focused on getting out without hurt feelings. I knew the flight from Anchorage was already late, but I was not at all concerned about that. I would have happily spent days in the Anchorage airport as long as I was out of Village.
I only had to spend three hours in Anchorage, and I did have to go buy a novel in one of those airport shops, because I’d foolishly brought only academic reading with me and given the small amount of sleep I’d gotten for the previous week or so, that wasn’t gonna cut it. The novel filled the time and I was soon stumbling off the plane and into the terminal in Fairbanks. My husband greeted me with a rather wide-eyed look and explained that a friend had brought him because it was so cold (-45F) that the truck battery had frozen. We walked up to the friend who had the same wide-eyed look about him as his mouth fell open. I guess I was looking a little worse for wear.
Friend went to get his vehicle and we headed for home. On the way, I told them both what had happened. When I got to the end of the story, I said it out loud for the first time. ‘I won’t be going back to Village again,’ I stated. I watched our friend’s wide eyes in the rear view mirror as he slowly nodded.
