Kimmirut

This is the end of my journey in Nunavut, and Kimmirut was an appropriate place to end. It is the most beautiful of the landscapes I have seen so far, with huge powerful looking mountains, crystalline blue ocean and only about 400 people living there. Our week got off to a bit of a shaky start on a few accounts. Firstly the trip from Iqaluit to Kimmirut was done in a twin Otter plane, which is a life experience in itself, and this plane was VERY full of food, in fact I had Ritz Cracker boxes jammed against my knees on the flight there. Marc also got off the flight and ended up with a horrible case of vertigo which would last the week. Pretty much none of our baggage arrived, save Marc's bag of art and one supply box which had all the stuff we had planned to do on the land. The Kimmirut camp was set up with one day in town and three days on the land so we built some bridges and mined some cookies on day one with 2 kids registered at the start of the camp and by the end of the day we had 25.

Kimmirut has a real sense of community, lots of smiles and waves while you walk down the street and our hotel was above the coop store, which is one of two places in town (the other being the ubiquitous Northmart) where you can buy things. This coop was a little different than other ones I'd seen because it had a lot more furs and pelts, it seems there is still a good trade in furs in Kimmirut. My hotel window overlooked the harbour which was breathtaking.

We headed up to Katannilik Park by boat up the Soper River. It was literally breathtaking, it was a beautiful sunny day, the kids and gear had all been shuttled up earlier in the day and once the kids went up, we headed back to town to thankfully collect our luggage which had made the next flight; camping would have been hard in a t shirt and jeans here.... The boat ride didn't take long and there was about a 10 minute hike once we reached the Soper Rapids to get to the camp site. It was in the middle of a valley, right next to the river and rapids, with a mountain to the South and wide open meadows to the North. The kids were swimming, with lots of squeals of delight when we got there so Lori and I decided to join them, yikes it was COLD, but the air was nice and warm so it wasn't so bad.

The way this camp was set up was that there was to be about 3 hours a day of science programming for the kids and the rest was suppose to be traditional knowledge taught to the kids by the four elders (2 men and 2 women). After dropping our stuff off among the tents and going for a quick swim in the Soper River, we headed into the cabin and there was seal meat stewing which I was invited to help myself to. Seal meat is delicious, the blubber surrounding the seal meat was a little harder to eat, but thanks to a tip from one of the kids that ketchup is really good with seal, the blubber ended up going down fine. There was also a type of blood broth from the seal that the kids were really keen on it. After the seal, me and a pack of kids wandered out onto the tundra and started picking (and eating :-) wild blueberries and cloudberries, which are absolutely to die for fresh off the tundra, still warm from the sun.

The next day was a little trying on my patience, but I think that was somewhat the point. I like to have things scheduled and prepared ahead of time, and that is not the Inuit way. Lori, Susie and I did camp in the morning, the kids were not quite awake yet and for some activities were totally into it, but not so much for others, so they wandered off and started up games of soccer. The one activity which was fantastic was collecting field specimens for the microscope. There are lemmings (avinnqaq's) abound in Kimmirut and catching them is a sport here, not only for the kids, but for the polar bear guard dog who we had along on the trip with us. While collecting specimens one of the kids got a lemming, and the dog killed it, so we performed a bit of an impromptu dissection (mostly with the help of the dogs teeth) and looked at its teeth (which are like little beaver teeth!), fur, blood and brain. It was really great how into the biology the kids were and their total lack of squeamish-ness.

After lunch, the group divided into girls and boys, and the guys all headed up the mountain for the elders to teach the boys about building Inukshuks, learning the landscape and hunting. The girls stayed behind and we had an amazing time. The elders started talking (in Inutkitut, which Susie translated for me, which I felt a little awkward and sad about, I wished that I could have understood) about being girls on the land, having to learn about preparing food and skins, and making clothes. They learned by watching their mothers and aunts and other women in camp, and asked a lot of questions. The women said that life back then was a lot harder, and being on the land now is easy in comparison. They talked about giving birth in ice houses, using arctic hare pelts for diapers and how much fun it was to do the sewing. I felt so special to have been given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall when the girls were listening and learning from these women who had seen such an enormous and for me, incomprehensible, change in their lifetime. To go from giving birth in an igloo, to watching their daughters and perhaps even granddaughters have to fly from their communities to Iqaluit to give birth in a very modern hospital must be so very strange and I would think overwhelming. These women keep so much poise and humour, I felt very comfortable around them. The elder then started doing a dance which was a game where one woman would get up and start tapping out a rhythm with their feet and another woman would have to get up and mimic her foot rhythm. I tried and totally failed! The girls then started an amazing dance, I’ll put up a video of it, cause it would be hard to describe.

The rest of the day was pretty much free time, which I had trouble with as I had gotten used to trying to cram in so many activities with kids for the past five weeks, that free time seemed wasted to me at first, I felt like I should have started an activity and get the kids learning. Fortunately I didn’t, because patience, waiting and just hanging out was a key part of time in camp and that in itself was an important learning experience for not just the kids, but me too. After dinner, Lori, Susie and I went berry picking for a few hours, it was wonderful to just let my mind go and focus completely on the here and now of picking fresh beautiful berries with a stunning landscape all around me, I felt the stress I had accumulated unintentionally through the trip just fall away.

That night was so very special. I ended up playing limbo and jump (jump is the opposite of limbo where you have a string and you raise it higher and higher and see who can get over without touching, Itee, one of the elders even tried for a bit). Tommy, our community contact for the camp, set up a bonfire and as we were heading down onto the beach for it, me and Oolaie, one of the campers noticed a huge harvest almost full moon rising up over the mountains. As the bonfire got going (with the help of some Honda gas..) the northern lights started up a show in the sky and the kids all started whistling. Apparently the northern lights represent your ancestors visiting you and if you whistle, they will come closer, if you clap, they will go away. The kids also mentioned something about whistling too much and they’ll take your head off, kinda worrisome... Anyways it was a perfect night to end an amazing trip.

The next day we did some more science activities in the morning and had loads of fun with the kids. Lunch included the best bannock I’ve had thus far on the trip, so very tasty!!! And then off to Sandbar beach for cartwheels in the sand, jumping in the water and then another hour or so of berry picking. Once back into town we held an open house for all the parents and families, and had lots of excited kids show up asking to learn about science, it just warmed my heart. On my way out I had some more frank discussions with some of the 11 year old girls at camp and again, was reminded that the fun loving children I watched chase lemmings and scream with delight in the river have problems become my own comprehension, this is truly a land of extreme’s in all aspects of life here.

I will do one last blog entry just to give myself some closure on this trip, which really did change my life in so many unexpected ways. I will also spend some time and make a massive photo album, as well as a more condensed one so people can see the trip through my eyes (and Kris and Tyler’s who took some amazing photos!) I am doing a cross Canada road trip next, so I will try and jot down any fun stories from that adventure too, it seems like the fun and learning never ever stops. Thanks for all your emails and comments, I am happy to share my experience with as many of you as possible, Nunavut is a truly spectacular part of our great country and I feel so privileged to have not only travelled to and around it, but to have had such a warm and unique experience there.