Sunday, March 29, 2009

Camaii Trip

Note: Camaii (pronounced Ja-my-ya) is a Yup'ik Eskimo greeting meaning "Howdy, Hi, How are you doing, etc" The Camaii Festival is an annual event that draws dancers and people from all over. You can also find furs, jewelry, sculptures, carvings, grass baskets, etc hand made and created by the people of the Kuskokwim Delta and surrounding area.

Bethel is approximately 40 miles from the village of Eek. I am the school Site Administrator (glorified principal) in Eek. The area is wide open tundra and the weather constantly plays havoc on travel, which by the way, is only by boat, air, or snow mobile depending on season.

Enjoy the read.

The month of March is about to end and I have neglected this column for too long. Time to get back to the weekly writings. We are in Bethel right now. Camaii was fun. We haven’t attended the festivities in a few years. Glad we did.
The cab dropped us off shortly after the doors opened. The place was already hopping. It was time to shop. Irene always carries a list with family names and when we find something that we think they will like we buy it. She writes the item we purchased by their name and it then becomes a gift at a later date. I never see the thing again. Irene will store them away and then wrap and mail the package. If she left it to me to keep up with the item, then neither of us (or the recipient) would ever see it again. It is a good system.
We looked at all the wonderful, skillfully made crafts, clothing, art, carvings, etc and got ideas. Then headed to watch the dancing for a while. Along the way we passed the concession stand. It was crowded so we kept on. So glad we did.
We got to see a couple of dancing groups. Or does one call them teams? Or is there another name for several people together dancing? Does it really matter? Anyway, we watched about three sets(?) of dancers before our stomachs talked to us.
The crowd was gone from the food area, but so was some food. They ran out of hamburgers, hotdogs, and a couple of other edibles. How do we know? It appears the process of elimination works in all sorts of cases. By narrowing down the choices one doesn’t really need to make the decision. It is made for them. I’ll explain.
Irene ordered a cheeseburger.
“We are out of cheeseburgers,” the concessionaire (?) replied.
“How about a hotdog?” I blurted out.
“No hotdogs either.” She blurted back.
I gave her an “I-don’t-understand-why-there-isn’t-any-food-at-the-concession-stand-on-the-first-full-day-of-Camaii-when-there-are-so-many-people-here” look.
Sometimes I hate logic, especially when it destroys my logic. “We are waiting for our stuff from Anchorage,” she explained.
Oh yeah, blame it on a volcano. One can’t argue with that.
Irene decided to be simple about the matter, “Well, what do you have?”
“Nachos.”
Irene countered, “Well then, nachos it is,” and with that we had lunch and headed back to the gym and the dancing. Glad we did.
The Akiuk Grizzlies were on stage and to us they were fantastic. The drumming and singing were super and the dancers were great. It was the first time I had seen a nine-year-old boy do solo dancing. I know all dances tell a story, but it was the first time I had seen male dancers apparently dancing a story about women. It was very entertaining and had good light-hearted humor. Wish I knew the story they were dancing, but you don’t have to know the story to enjoy the dancing.
Intermission followed their performance so we decided to go by some things. We knew what we wanted to buy to fulfill some of our gift list. Of course, we bought more than we anticipated, but that is usually the case.
Back at the hotel we regrouped, put on snow pants and such and headed to the store. Sort of glad we did. After looking at how much prices have risen since the last time we shopped in Bethel our wants were quickly eliminated from our minds and we pretty much stuck to our needs. We figured about a hundred bucks for the small amount of groceries we had in our basket. Wrong. It was more like a hundred-fifty.
Saturday night was noisy for Irene. Seems our neighbors in the room next door were quite wound up. She was glad she brought earplugs. Me? I sleep without my hearing aids.
All in all it wasn’t a bad trip. We spent more than we budget for, had noisy neighbors in the room next door, watched superb dancing, ate junk food lunch and dinners, and now have woken up to iffy weather.
Maybe we will spend thee days at the airport waiting for the weather to clear - or maybe not. Who knows? At least we pre-reserved a hotel room and hand washed some clothes last night in preparation. We might be glad we did, but I hope not.
Until next week, be safe and stay warm.