A clash of cultures?

Warning: this post may contain images that might cause distress amongst animal lovers and devotees of Fox's Glacier Mints

It is not without a sense of irony that as I write a post about the school's culture day, Jacob and I are currently watching 'Family Jewels with Gene Simmons' on TV, having earlier sat through 'Sober House with Dr Drew.' There's more culture on the mouldy piece of cheese in my fridge than in either of those programmes. They're not shows that either of us would normally watch, but neither of us could be bothered to reach for the remote so, consequently, we were sucked into the sad , lonely and sometimes grotesque lives of others for the best part of two hours. Come to think of it, that pretty much sums up your experience when reading this blog...

But I digest.

As I was saying before I interrupted myself, it was culture day at the school today, the one day in the year that's set aside to celebrate the traditional ways of life in a Northern town. I always enjoy days like this, but I'm not sure how I view the fact that just one day is devoted to celebrating and promoting a culture that is being swamped and overrun by southern mores...I'll leave you to decide your own opinion on that one. I think that's a debate for another time.

Culture day here was very different to the one I experienced in Inukjuak. Here, all the action took place outside, and after two or three hours of milling around everyone had gone their separate ways. In that time though we were able to examine an igloo that had been built by Mark Tertiluk, the centre director at the school, and a second igloo was constructed during the course of the morning. Many of the children - and some of the staff - went sliding, either on plastic sleds, their bottoms or even on sealskins (or any combination of the three), there was some impromptu throat singing and, of course, there was the requisite smörgåsbord of country food, Arctic Char and walrus on this occasion.

If indeed these are to be my final couple of weeks in the North then I guess this will be the last time I get to experience Inuit culture in such a way, and I feel privileged to have the chance to be involved in such an intimate way. I only hope that the incessant march of western 'culture', Gene Simmons, Dr Drew and all, doesn't mean that future generations, both Inuit and quallunaat alike, are denied that chance.

Christmas in September

It felt like Christmas today.

Firstly, the container ship that was carrying our cargo of school supplies finally arrived, and now we have paper and binders for our classes. Earlier today my students actually used up the last piece of writing paper that we had in the classroom, so the ship's appearance couldn't have come at a better time; quite what we would have used to write on next week I hadn't figured out yet.

Then, having returned home at the end of the school day, I received a knock on the door from our centre director, Mark Tertiluk, who was kindly delivering four boxes of food that had just arrived at the airport for me! Melanie flew back to the UK yesterday for a very brief visit - she flies back to Canada on Monday - and on her way to Montreal she dropped off said boxes at Air Inuit HQ. Apparently they were originally going to take a couple of weeks to come up, but Melanie smiled at the right people and, lo and behold, here they are. Talk about service!

I now have just about the fullest larder that I've ever had in my time in the North - Melanie had even managed to slip in a box of Timbits for me, a rare pleasure in these parts - and after a week of illness, I suddenly feel much better!