We've reached a point of perseverance.
I pulled myself together this morning and worked with Baba on Evenki. She struggled with the colours. I decided to switch to numbers instead. Numbers 6-10 were simple for her. But once we got to eleven Baba was already struggling a little. Baba wanted to see the dictionary. I told myself, that despite all my training that says to stay away from written forms when trying to learn the phonetics of a language, I was dealing with the speaker of an endangered language. Working with endangered languages requires sensitivity and breaking the rules is necessary. We managed the numbers up to fifty before giving it a rest.
We were hoping to see people today. We made two phone calls, both people were not available during the day. So we resigned ourselves to a slow day. Unfortunately this meant a day preventing PJ from injuring himself on the many things around the yard- poky nails, semi-wild dogs, big drums of water, etc, etc. At least it was a mild sunny day.
Baba went off to the forest, and I did spend some time with Yura. Yura got pulled over by police. They wanted to see his "technosmotr" (roadworthy certificate for the vehicle). He didn't have one with him. The policeman told him to come back at 12 with the documents. Yura went back later, not actually possessing such a document because his old stalwart UAZik Russian 4wd, is far from roadworthy. He paid the 500 ruble ($17) fine, and does so every time he gets caught. Seriously who said that Russia is more strict than Australia!
Melody started making tacos for dinner including a delicious salsa. I was really looking forward to one of her meals, as opposed to the more bland Russian food. Just as she was nearly finished around 6pm, a phone call came. It was Tatiana, whom we saw last Wednesday. Could we come around straight away? Food was waiting on the table. Culture is a hard thing to understand. For a culture that is event oriented and can make you wait hours sometimes, you can also be expected to do something with zero notice. (Well she had said she would call us back, we just didn't expect to be then have to drop everything at a moments notice.) We had no choice, if we wanted to be polite we were very much obliged to go.
Alas, no tacos tonight. Yura drove us to her place. She had a spread laid out on the table: boiled potatoes, cabbage and oil salad, fresh tomatoes with onion, cold but cooked reindeer meat, chunks of cheese and raw fish. I had little time to prepare myself again for the raw fish, even though we at them on Saturday. My head was just not in the space, but we politely persevered.
After dinner PJ proceededmto tear Tatiana's place apart while we attempted to relate to her. She showed us photos of her past family (all deceased) and her present family- husband, daughter and two sons. Her husband and one of her sons are off in the forest hunting for sobol furs for three months. Yura says that you shouldn't hunt in the Summer time. Summer is for growing he says. The animals need to grow bigger, and then you hunt them in the Winter. I guess not everyone agrees with Yura.
I am building up my understanding of the economy here. It is not bustling by an means, but it is not non-existent either. Hunters sell their furs that move along the supply chain to become expensive fur coats. I am sure the actual producers of the coats make a lot more money than the hunters, even though the hunters have worked very hard for the kill. It would be a smart person who could develop vertical industry, to hunt and produce the final product. Even the production of fur coats in Baykit would be good for the local economy. This does not happen though.
I was able to work with Tatiana to translate the transcription I made of her story in Evenki. She spoke of her parents and their occupations- which was a life in the chum and hunting. It was a valuable exercise in grammatical analysis. Tatiana was more forth coming with grammatical information than Baba is.
Thankfully we were able to get an early evening after this, and I'm finishing my blog at 10:30 this evening.
Tomorrow we hope to see Artem again. Thursday we hope to see another proficient speaker. Friday we fly back to Krasnoyarsk. Saturday we rest. Sunday we have a birthday party to go to. Monday we plan to get into our regular schedule. Abigail will go back to Russian kindergarten, I plan to start teaching English again, as well as take some more Russian classes. In September we hope to see Sakha students again.
After a little more than a year back in Russia I think we can say we worked ourself into a good occupational pattern.
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