Con: High Shipping Prices

One of the worstest (I know it's not a word, but it's the weekend, okay) things about living in Shishmaref is the high shipping prices.

Whatever it costs to mail things to the Lower 48, the shipping rates invariably increase exponentially (I'm sure VFN's international readership can commiserate) when mailing to Alaska. Sigh..

Last week, or so, I did a little shopping in order to, literally, spice up some of my cooking adventures.




I was tired of using powdered garlic. I am a bona fide garlic lover, and the powdered stuff just didn't have the oomph I was looking for.





I also have an affinity for limes. I picked it up from my beautiful sister who spent six weeks in Mexico and Central America. She told me that the people she met squeezed limes on everything. (I tried it, and it turns out that Mexicans and Central Americans are right: food does taste better with a little lime!)

I spent entirely too much time on Amazon.com trying to find a place that 1)carried both minced garlic in water and lime juice, 2) wasn't some quote-unquote-gourmet-type-place-that-thinks-it-must-charge-seventy-five-times-the-market-value-in-order-to-appear-prestigious, and 3) shipped to Alaska. It's harder than you might think...

I was so thrilled when I found a store that fit those qualifications that I ordered right away. I was equally thrilled when the box arrived.






I didn't pay too much attention to the invoice until Steve pointed the total out to me.





Here's a closeup for those of you who missed it the first time. Yes, that's right $64.70. You'll also notice that the actual cooking supplies were only $3.99 and $5.49. THE OTHER $55.22 WAS FOR SHIPPING!!!

It turns out that the nice Amazon merchant did in fact ship to Alaska, but he/she charged over $25 an item to ship. Grrrrrr...

Now, gentle readers may be wondering why VFN agreed to such an outrageous price. Here's the truth: VFN didn't notice the shipping prices. VFN ordered a lot of other stuff on Amazon.com at the same time. When the editor-in-chief saw a big shipping number, she erroneously thought it was because she ordered lots of things.

Sigh... I think I'll go hang my head in shame.

Con: Polar Bears

There are a lot of things we don't have to worry about in Shishmaref: frequent houseguests, demanding social lives, long commutes to work, paying for car insurance, etc. In exchange, we have to worry about polar bears.

I hate polar bears. I hate every cartoon, stuffed animal, or greeting card that makes them look cute and cuddly. Polar bears are not cute and cuddly. They are scary.




Look at the claws on that thing. These claws were not designed for snuggling. They were designed for tearing open flesh.

We don't typically see polar bears Shishmaref. They generally come into the village when they're hungry. That means that they're looking for a meal. Polar bears are one of the few animals that will attack humans even when unprovoked.

The following pictures were not taken in Shishmaref, but the COULD HAVE BEEN! They were taken on the North Slope.




The man being chased works with our librarian's son. They work on the oil pipeline.








Polar bears are very persistent.





And tall.







Did I mention persistent?


I used to have bad dreams about polar bears. I was always trying to run away or protect kids and something was stopping me. It was always terrifying. My students told me that I think about polars too much. The dreams would stop when I stopped being so afraid.

They also asked me what I would do if I was walking with a little kid and a polar bear started chasing us. They wanted to know if I would push the little kid down and run away. In case anybody is wondering, under no circumstances would I ever use a small child as polar bear distraction. The only thing worse than being eaten by a polar bear, would be knowing I fed a small child to a polar bear.

Lucky for me, polar bears don't last long in Shishmaref. Every male over the age of eight is anxious to shoot one. They are quite the prize. When word gets out about a polar bear in town, everybody grabs their guns and starts riding around looking for it.





So please don't think I'm bloodthirsty or savage if I prefer to see polar bears like this...




or this...




or this. I just feel safer that way.

Con: Hauling Our Own Garbage

I hope everybody out there is grateful for waste disposal services. Shishmaref offers no waste disposal (except of the anuq variety; see here). Garbage day is something we look back on with fond memories. It was so easy when we only had to haul the trash to the curb...





Now, we haul our trash to the dump about one mile out of town. This could be a problem because we don't own a vehicle (the main modes of transportation are snow machine and four wheeler). Luckily, the school owns a truck, a four wheeler, and a snow machine, and they trust us to operate all three. The above picture is of Steve proudly posing on the school's four wheeler (commonly called a Honda, regardless of the actual brand). (Note: despite the strange position of Steve's eyelids in this picture, he was not, nor has he ever been, stoned.)




This is the dump in all it's glory. Actually, this is only a very small fraction of the dump. Imagine this picture multiplied by about sixty and surrounding you. Yeah, it's pretty gross. I am glad it is always cold around here, or the smell would knock out small animals and children.




If you are polite, after you dump your trash, you light it on fire. This is a picture of me doing my best to exercise good dump etiquette by lighting our box o' garbage on fire. What this picture doesn't show is the strong wind that was blowing, making extremely difficult to light a match for more that .5 seconds. (Apparently Steve had a lot of experiences lighting matches in his childhood. I, however, was raised in a home where playing with fire was bad.) View From the North can't exactly remember if I got the fire started or not. VFN consulted Steve, but he only shrugged. The task may have been turned over to a more able member of the dump expedition.

(Note to gentle readers: this is the only time I have personally been to the dump. It was almost three years ago. I only went because I thought that it would be a good picture taking opportunity. The rest of our waste disposal has been handled by my very strong and good-looking husband. Thank you.)




Once the garbage catches on fire, you wait long enough to determine that the rubbish will in fact burn and not blow out after a measly thirty seconds. If you are really lucky, you will find a fire that somebody else started, and you can just toss on your trash and go.




We stayed long enough this first time to watch our garbage burn almost completely (the novelty of that wore off real fast). As evidenced by the massive piles of trash behind our small pile of ashes, not everybody makes an effort to burn their trash, which is rude. In their defense, trash like empty pop cans (produced by the thousands in Shishmaref) doesn't burn very well. Also, it can sometimes be hard to start fires in the snow. VFN refuses to judge those who drop and dash without burning.

Steve and I (but mostly Steve) look forward to the day when somebody else will haul our trash away for us. We also look forward to the day when taking out the trash doesn't require snow boots, gloves, and earmuffs.

Con: Lack of Plumbing

One of the biggest cons about living in Shishmaref is the lack of indoor plumbing. Yes that's right, Shishmaref has no central sewer system. The school has flush toilets and running water, but the houses don't. We are lucky enough that our little house is close enough to the school that our sink and shower are hooked into the pipes. Our toilet, however, is not.



This was our first toilet, the Incinolet. It had a little oven at the bottom. We lined the top compartment with a paper liner. The little black foot petal on the bottom right would drop the liner, and any accompanying waste, into the oven, where it would be burned to ashes.




This picture is blurry, but it's a closeup of the Incinolet logo. It's an outhouse being struck by a bolt of lightning. Nice. If that doesn't make you want to own one, I don't know what will... We didn't really like the incinolet for the following reasons:

• it burned a really nasty smoke
• the smoke left our bathroom via a chimney, alerting the entire village every time we used the restroom
• Steve hated cleaning the ashtray out

After a few months, we switched to the preferred toilet model around Shishmaref: the honey bucket.




This is a honey bucket cover. Yes, it is a plywood box with a toilet seat attached. Underneath is the actual honey bucket (in order to preserve this blog's G-rating, I chose not to post pictures of the honey bucket). It is literally a five gallon bucket lined with a black garbage bag. (If you look in the upper right hand portion of the above picture, you can see the step-aerobic steps and weights I never use...)





When the honey bucket is full, Steve takes it to a dumping container much like the one pictured above. The garbage bag full of waste is deposited in the big metal container. When the container is full, somebody calls the city. The city sends the Anuq Men (anuq is Inupiaq for poo). They come with a big vacuum contraption that gets rid of the waste. I have no idea where it goes from there.

Most people are absolutely disgusted and shocked when they hear about our plumbing situation. It's actually not that bad for the following reasons:

• Our bathroom is not heated. That makes for some very fast late night visits, but it also prevents any smell normally associated with waste disposal
• Steve always takes the honey bucket out. I've only done it once, and it was to prove to him that I could do it if I wanted to. (I simply don't. Steve doesn't want to do the taxes. I think it's a fair trade.)

Our plumbing situation definitely took some getting used to, but I rarely think about it anymore. At worst, it is mildly annoying.