ON THE ROAD - Amaknak / Halifax

And so, as I wander across the muddy and stony beaches of Dutch Harbour, Amaknak island, Unalaska, staring a lush green there in the back, probably imagination, a back dog comes to me, and then a certain guy, already saying “Hello hello stranger! My name is Liam, but you can call me Noah, James, or Oliver, or any other names you want”. And I, a bit surprised by the appearance of this newcomer, right way, “Hello Liam, Oliver or James…” I say, and then, “by the way… and what time it is?”. And instead of telling me the time, in the meantime he already asking some of those perennial questions like… “Are you a tourist or…?”; “No, no not a tourist, but yeah, I’m not from here... say, I just arrived by boat, I mean, some guys actually dropped me over here, there, and off they went…” I say and he kinda smiles, a suspicious kind of smile, and accordingly, I also ask him if he is really a local, or… “Yes, I was born here, but… I’m the son of a Russian man with a Caribbean woman… if that answer to curiosity about the color of my skin…” he says. And so, in the meanwhile, as we walk by the harbor I notice some kind of bells or Wind Chimes hanging from the masts of some boats, and as I look at it, the boy straight way tells me that that is not Wind Chimes “That is Vint Tshimes, or Ulu Chimes, that’s the way we say it here…” he informs me, “as you may see, they are not made of metal tubes, as usual, these ones are made of clay, which makes the sound more light, isn't it?”; “hum, actually yes, lighter or hollower…” And then, as we pass several groups of fishermen, I get to see that they have a lot of gear to organize, and they seem to do it patiently, quietly, even if I see no fish around. And so, now, inside the window of one of these boats, I can see several clocks displaying the time in different cities around the world, places such as Tokyo, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Cape Town, London, New York, and there is also a thermometer, it actually shows 55 degrees Fahrenheit, what is about 13 degrees Celsius, and so, yes, it’s fresh, but not really cold, I may say. And then “It's already summer and it won’t get much hotter than this” my comrade says. Albeit, despite being summer, up on our front, a chain of grayish clouds is hovering over the green hills. And then, I also can spot some purple flowers up there, on the slopes, and as my mate tells me about these flowers, I get distracted, again. So, afterwards, as we leave the harbor, a couple of yellow school buses are waiting for tourists here, French speaking ones, I notice. And as we pass by them, I actually understand what they are actually talking about. Not the usual conversation about cheese this time, they are actually talking about Cordova and the head of the Orca Inlet on the east side of the Prince William Sound. So, as it goes, in the meanwhile, a middle aged man with slanted eyes tells the others that there are no roads connecting Cordova to other Alaskan communities, and so, I get to curious about that Cordova, and thus, I ask around what are they actually talking about, know that there was some accident there, years ago, “The Exxon Valdez oil spill”, my colleague says, “people want to go there because of that”, and we skip that conversation. Further, as we advance, we pass a couple of souvenir shops, but there is almost no one inside, and then we pass some provincial cafes with wooden fences on the front. My mate even greets the lady at the door of one of those cafes, “her name is Monica”, he says, “she is my auntie”, he confides. Then, along the roadside, by the water we follow, and after a while I can resume it. There are almost no buildings here, just a couple of warehouses with grayish containers on the lot and some broken piers made of wood and moss. The warehouses look semi-rotten, and the accesses covered with weeds and piles of shellfish hulls. Further, we get to a muddy area and see some one-floor abandoned houses, also in ruin. No doors, no windows, fallen roofs, plus all that mud around, so, Chernobyl comes to my mind. And then, under some prickly pines, I see a sign saying “Tsunami evacuation area”, and another one pointing to the “Unangan”, that was were the first inhabitants of the inland live, my mate tells me, and then, we cross a wooden bridge over a mud river, and from where we already can see one part of Unalaska city. But right here, after the bridge, no buildings yet, just some one storey houses with metal roofs. And so, in the meanwhile, a van stops on the other side of the road, and some kibitzers get out of the van and start taking photos in our direction. “God’s away on business”, my mate says, pointing to the big white building on our back, with that kind of roof, like a small arabesque palace. And so, as we approach it, the Japanese tourists are already leaving, and I still try to ask them what’s their religion, but they just smile and point something at the sky. “I love Japanese noise music!” I say, and they leave. Then, on the back of the church I can see some more of those strange crosses with three bars, the lowest one kinda slanted, and I wonder what that means. So, as it goes, my comrade tells me about a movie that was shot here, a movie with vampires and a post-office man that was a cannibal. “Actually the postman ate the orthodox priest,” he says “...and then, the Alaskan natives, the ones with slanted eyes, became vampires… so, they would come during the night, looking for people with no slanted eyes, etc”. Then, my colleague tells me that his great-grandfather was a Russian Eskimo, “but Eskimo, is a term that people don’t like over here”, he says “coz it refers to several sorts of people” he adds, “the ones from Siberia, the ones from North Pole, and the ones from Alaska… it’s to put all in the same bag, the Yupik, the Iñupiat, the Chukchi etc.” And then, to justify his dark skin, he confides that his mother is actually from Caribbean origin, “but now she lives in Europe”, he says. And so, here we go again, through this quiet, semi-abandoned city, well, not really a city, because there are no buildings, just some fenced amenities and one floor wooden houses with corrugated steel panel roofs, and not many people outside… just some quiet individuals minding their own business. And so, now, we approach another lake, and I get confused about from where we came, because water surrounds us from several sides. So, my mate tells me “This is East Broadway Avenue… and there, is West Broadway Avenue, from where we came, where is the Iliuliuk Harbor and the fish factories, and down there is the Beaver Inlet, or Bobrovoy Guba, in Russian language, it’s uninhabited, but good for fishing.” So, we cross the main road and there is no traffic at all, but, we can hear some noise, and then I understand that someone is revving the engine of a stopped pickup, down there, and that thing is producing a lot of black smoke, as we can see. The smoke mixes with the fog and gets heavy, creating a black cloud hovering in the middle of the road. And then, “I live here”, Noah/James/Oliver says, thus, once we get to the front porch of his house, a house similar to the other ones around, a small one floor wooden house with a front porch and a shack on the side. So, as we go inside, “I’m living here with a couple of mates,” he says, “but they are all out now… they work on the fishing ships and local factories, so, sometimes they are working on the ships, other times at the factories… I never know exactly…” And as we get in the small living room, on the wall, I see huge pictures of palm trees and people stretched under them, on the beach, and the landscapes looking so very realistic, but the bodies are somehow glazed, dull. And also, hanging on the ceiling of this same living room, there are many kinds of fishing lures, some of them mixed with colorful feathers, looking more like native hand-painted earrings. But the main thing here is a huge cast iron stove, still steaming a bit. So, I sit on its side, warming up my hands. And now, I take a look at the stuff hanging on the sides of it, on racks, kitchen and bedroom stuff, all mixed up. And all the seats around are also covered with stuff, so he tells me to throw these gadgets to the floor, if I want to sit. And then, for some reason, he starts talking about his mother, who kinda abandoned him when he was only five. “I grew up with my father,” he says, “he used to work on the fishing ships as well, but not fishing… cargo”. And then I ask him if his father still lives in town, and he tells me that no, “he is now in Los Angeles, living with some Spanish speaking fat woman”. Likewise, he also asks me about my family, my parents, my wife, my travels, and I tell him a bunch of things, all mixed up, like the stuff he has hanging around the stove, and then we sit on the sofa and begin watching a documentary about the reggae/dub guru Lee "Scratch" Perry. And so, I ask him if he is also a fan of Lee Perry, and “yes” he tells me. And then, coming back to the screen, in this interview we are watching now, Lee is in his lonely shelter, in Switzerland, it looks, somewhere in the middle of snowy mountains. And so, what we see now is an old man with red beard, dressed in shabby colorful clothes, his jacket full of badges, a cap with some mirrors, and even his boots are painted with some kind of inscriptions. Then we see him in his garden, and there is a lot of rubbish around him, and it looks like he is actually organizing all this stuff/rubbish, making some sculptures with it. And then, he leaves the sculpture thing and starts to play with some metal tubes and chains, doing stunts with it, and then he even inserts his mouth on one of the tube's extremities, and begins saying some silly words while throwing and rubbing those chains against the metal pipes, “...The Earth is the Lord, and the Lord have no record… This is, everybody walks on the earth, shits on the Earth and spits on the Earth… So, people don't respect the Earth and the Earth calls for a revolution now.... Uauuuu! The Earth calls for justice and no more coppice; no more dismiss, no more cornice, no more poultice. Cause the Earth releases ganja and wants no panjaa… what she wants is ambanja asamanja asanja azanja banja barzinja bednja belinja beramanja betanja…” Then, next morning, I’m already aboard this ferry-boat heading to Holmes, Alaska mainland. And so, as we advance, going from inland to inland, I exchange impressions with some other passengers on board. This is, presently hearing what this old fisherman have to say “But the region's crown jewels are still the red and the blue king crabs… I mean, the Red King Crab is one of the bigger crabs in the world, say… it can reach a carapace width up to eleven inches, and a leg span of almost two meters, and it can weigh almost three kilos, and… “I haven’t seen any of them, do they live close to the Aleutian islands?”; “No boy, its habitat is mainly around the Kamchatka Peninsula, a peninsula belonging to Russia… yet, the Blue King Crab can be found on American waters, mainly around the St. Lawrence and St. Matthew Islands, the Pribilof, and the Diomedes, located in the middle of the Bering Strait, close to Siberia…” And then, after explaining a bit about the Pribilof islands, Saint Paul and Saint George, he talks about the Diomedes again “Big Diomede belongs Russia, and Little Diomede is ours, sometimes called Tomorrow and Yesterday Islands, because they are separated by different time zones, this is, Big Diomede is almost a day ahead of Little Diomede, despite one being just about two miles away from the other''. And so, while talking about giant crabs, its habitats, its use in cosmetics, and its symbolism, we go through the Kreditzins group of islands, Aiktak, Avatanak, Derbin, Kaligagan Rootok, Round, Tigalda, and Ugamak, all uninhabited. And then the inhabited ones, we make stops at False Pass, Cold Bay, King Cove, Sand point, Chignik, Port Lions, Kodiak, Seldovia and three days after leaving Dutch Harbour we are actually reaching Homer, Alaska mainland, where I get off, still accompanied by the old fisherman, a crab expert, and thus, there, on the port, waiting for him is his son... an economic analyst of the fish industries, that, accordingly, takes us to the big Alaskan city of Anchorage, a kind of Mecca for the all freaky pilgrims of America… and so, once there, as I wander through the illegal encampments spreading through the forests around the city, encampments where I meet crazies of all kind, old style hobos; hippies living on trees; dealers of quantum strategies; creatures burned by modern technology here cooling their minds… and some cyclists. This is, people use bicycles to move between the camps and the city, and so, actually most the forests around these camps are full disassembled pieces of bicycles and many other junk related with bicycles, wheels hanging in the trees, etc. And so, this here is a camp about a mile from the industrial area. People come and go. But there are about ten fellows that have been staying here for long, I get to know. And so, I can actually describe the camp as this: a bigger communal tent in the middle, where we can stand and move around a bit, a hearth with fire always burning in the middle, and in a corner, a stove that is like a piece of art, half stick on the earth, and metal tubes actually coming out of it, say, connecting the stove with a bunch small tents around it. And, here now, around this fire, I can tell you the name of the ten main settlers. Closer to the big stove, we have Jim, the older, already flaunting a white beard, and then we have a certain Liam, a middle age man with strange glasses, an expert in recycled electronics. And we have Olivia and Emma, both latinas, Spanish speakers, but displaying slanted eyes. And we also have Amelia, an old woman that doesn’t like to speak at all, people say she is a witch. And we have Dee Dee, a story teller. And Duman, the very one interested in constructions, say, the one that made a cabin up there on a tree. And to finish, we have Ron and Beavis, the lumberjacks, and Mila, the transvestite. Ron and Beavis are the dealers here, in matter of fact. They just interested in drugs, wood and fire. They take drugs to make fire and make fires to take drugs, something like that, they like to say. Actually they are always going and coming back to the city, but never with their bikes, they always looking for rides, sometimes riding each other. Normally they use clothes with slogans referring Punk rock ideology, etc. Duman, the one that sleeps in a cabin up on a tree, is from Turkish pedigree, his mother lives in Canada, he says, and his father is in Cyprus, a Turkish/Greek inland on the Mediterranean Sea. And, I got to know that actually his name, “Duman”, actually means smoke in Turkish language, and is also the name of a certain Turkish rock band. And so, Duman, is actually the one helping Ron and Beavis in the constructions, usually. About Amelia, there is not much to say, coz she doesn’t speak yeah. But people say she speaks only in private, only when you get the opportunity of being alone with she, inside her tent. She dresses sophisticated, garments over garments, strings around the waist, braids falling over her shoulders. Huge earrings on the ears. Mirrors on her palms. Yet Dee Dee is from California, he said, but he have been everywhere not only in this country but also in Europe and Asia, Africa and more, he adds. Now, Olivia and Emma have both Mexican and Alaskan roots, to say, they have both roots in the ancient people from Mexico, the Mayas, and the Haida from the coastline of Canada/Alaska. Plus, I got to know that, some famous anthropologist has compared the Haida to the Vikings, while Haida have replied saying that Vikings are like the Haida. After so, continuing, here there is also Liam, the middle aged man with strange glasses. He is the one always solving the problems with the solar panels, although not much sun arriving here, he have been experimenting a new technology, making electricity from the fire, connecting gadgets under the fireplace, and more, he have even tried to produce electricity based on the pressure of the smoke passing through the metal chimney in the middle of this tent. Then, we have Jim, the captain, the one with white beard, that have always a smile for any kind of ridiculous attempts from the others. He has been living here for more than twenty years now, he says. Long ago he was a seaman that became a drug addicted that became a jailer. His family is scattered between two continents. But, essentially, he has no family, he confesses. Thus, he is the one always telling stories about jail. This is, just now he is actually asserting this story about one of his old his jail mates, which has killed his wife and escaped to Mexico… but he couldn’t learn to speak Spanish, so he could not understand that people. He just liked the women there. So, he ended up working around the Mexico-American border, selling fake American identity papers to the illegals. So, “the ones without money, he would actually rape them, without giving importance to whether they were men or women…” he says. “He liked to hear them screaming like pigs…” he adds, and then “Gime gime dinero, gime dinero señorita bonita… if you don’t give me it, I will have to fuck your mamacita…oi oi oi”, he troll. And at this point, the Spanish speaking girls, Olivia and Emma, come by and begin shouting at the old man, saying that he is being racist and homophobic and the old man Jim just laughs and laughs more and more, and as it goes, the girls began throwing stuff is his direction, and then he just starts shouting some non-sense stuff, the girls screaming more and more, and as they scream, people are already getting off their tents, wandering about, pushing here, pushing there, and in the meanwhile arrows are actually being fired from above., and so, there I go, running away from there with a bunch of many others, that end up teaching me the way to the main road, through the forest and came to a road and was caught by a lorry driver that took me to a small town named Tok. It was a nice man with long beard and swollen eyes, he even took me into a cottage-hotel there, and I would end up sleeping in the same room as he. And so, next day, already out, a French speaking lady on a rented car gave me a ride to another town; she tried to impress me with her knowledge of the French language, which was actually weak. We spoke about the differences between the French Guiana and the Guyana, two small countries in South America, on the top of Brazil, being French Guiana part of European community, we spoke about their cousin: blaff of fish. Awara broth. Lawyer Fierce. Kalawang of pig. She understood about that, but when I said I was not interested in pigs she came to a stop. The next ride was with a group of men working in road constructions, say, men cleaning apparatus left on the side of the road, fixing potholes, remarking the lines on the pavement… by now all of them using their yellow helmets and gloves inside the van, they want to know from where I was coming, and when I said Aleutian Islands, they wan to know which island, this while already revealing that all of them aboard are what people call First Nations, and thus, accordingly, as it goes, I would get to know that the one driving is a Yup'ik, and the other on the side is a Inupiat, and the thirst one a Métis, “people that descend from a cross between the First Nations and the first European settlers, primarily French and Irish” he informs. And as he says this, “traitors”, the Yup'ik guy on my side says, “no you're the traitor” the one installed between the Inupiat and the driver says, and then, “You the real traitors..” the driver says, addressing who I’m not sure. “You know, your roots are actually Russian, you were bought by America, and now, you're both playing on the Canuck side, because here, it is more soft…” he utters, softly laughing. And then, “blame our ancestors, not me”, the Inupiat guy on my side says, and in the meanwhile, to break the embarrassing silence, the one between the driver and the one on my side starts to mess with the radio, so, we get news in English, we get news in Spanish, and then, we get news in some kind of language they call Michif, this is, a mix of some strange sort of french, some strange sort of English, and some indigenous talking… “mainly from the Ojibwe and Assiniboine language, with some Plains Cree words, a western dialect kind of Cree!” the driver explains, and then, as we advance listening some american pop music, making stops here and there to pick up debris left on the roadside, fill this or that pothole, repaint tags and lines on the pavement... and as we nearing the end of the British Columbia state, they would put me in contact with other road workers from Alberta, and the ones from Alberta would put me in contact with the ones from Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and so, in this fashion I would cross Ontario, Quebec, Nova Brunswick, and then reach Halifax, the capital and most populous municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located just in front of the Bedford basin, off the Atlantic ocean, where I’m heading now.