On January
31, I got asked to travel with the girls basketball team to Kwigillingok (also
called Kwig), which is our sister village. Many of the villagers from
Kongiganak came from Kwigillingok, and many of their family members still live
in that village.
Of course
the only way to travel from one place to the next is by plane, so we all loaded
into two small planes after the half-day at school and flew about fifteen
minutes to Kwig. Once we all arrived in Kwig, we had a few minutes to get the
girls warmed up and ready to play ball. I am definitely not a basketball
expert, so I let Dolly, who also works at the school be in charge of all of
that, since she is the coach.
Watching
the girls play basketball was very different from teaching them. I have been
teaching for a few weeks now and am starting to become more comfortable with
the students. You can be a little more relaxed when chaperoning than when
teaching but you still have to be authoritative figure for the children.
So, you are
probably wondering how does all of this work? The way basketball works in the
villages is that games will be played in a tournament style fashion, except
there are no teams that get eliminated. After a few games, dinner will be served
and everyone will eat then help clean up the gym, so the games can quickly
resume. Once all of the games have been played for the night, you set up
sleeping bags on the floor of the classroom that you are assigned to stay in
for your time visiting. Yes, I have slept on the floor on a classroom now. (All
of my images of teachers sleeping in their classrooms as a young child came
true this weekend.) It is honestly like a large slumber party with students and
the coach. But, we didn’t spend all night just relaxing in the classroom.
Instead, we got to walk around and travel around Kwig, mainly to go shopping in
the other stores to get some snacks to eat. But, once morning comes, the games
will start right up again.
My biggest
problem with this weekend was that after the games were all done, we got
trapped in Kwig because of the bad weather. The second day in Kwig was hard to
keep the girls positive, since many of them were homesick and tired. I have
learned the torture I put my parents through as a teenager of not wanting to go
to bed at a decent time. My girls kept
me up until 2A.M. I guess this is pay-back from keeping my parents up all of
those nights when I was younger.
Kong also helped out with kitchen duty since
February 1 was our coach’s birthday and her relative was the cook for the
school. So, I volunteered with some of the girls to cook and serve dinner to
all of the teams. We cooked spaghetti (Yes, I ate spaghetti since I did not
want to starve.), vegetables, got fruit cocktail prepared, and even helped make
a lemon cake. It was fun being able to help out and be a part of another school
community.
Once dinner
was done, many of the girls went over the Tuntutuliak classroom, where the
coach named Patrick was telling the girls ghost stories of a little girl that
died in the hallway of the school. Many of the girls I was chaperoning for
would not even go to the bathroom at night since they swore this little girl
was going to attack them. So, thank you Patrick for keeping all of the Kong girls
up and even scaring them by turning lights on and off in the upstairs room. It
was a very interesting and exhausting night having to constantly take girls to
the bathroom since they were all too scared to go to the bathroom.
Finally on
Sunday, February 2, the weather was good enough for all of us to fly home. I
was completely exhausted since this trip has completely drained my entire
weekend away, but it was overall a very rewarding experience. I got time to
bond with some of my female students, and learn about their lives. In the end,
it wasn’t a bad trip at all, and I even made it back to the school in time to
watch the Super Bowl!
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