The Salluit Sistaz Say Salut!

Dear family, friends, and devoted readers: we are sad to report that this is our last blog post, but we have spent an incredible six weeks in Salluit that we will never forget. Here is an update on our last couple of days in this (still) snowy paradise.

            After much preparation, we successfully pulled off our “Salluit Masters” game on Wednesday with the students and teachers at Ikusik. This was a modified version of a scavenger hunt, with “Masters” (ie. teachers) that students had to meet at each location to which their clues lead them. Classes competed against one another, and each had to perform an activity and answer a question for each master before they could receive a clue leading them to the next station. For example, at the Co-op (grocery store) they had to plan a healthy meal with shelf items, including something from each of the four food groups. At the municipality, they answered questions about Salluit’s history. In the culture room at Ikusik, the team had to sit in a circle and compliment the person to their left, and at the community center they had to make a human pyramid and answer two questions from our sexual health lessons. We had a surprisingly great turn out and it was amazing to see the classes working together and running all over town. Students and teachers alike became excited, and extremely competitive! As teachers panted running after their students they asked us if we knew we had spread out the masters all over Salluit intentionally – we joyfully answered that this had indeed been our plan, just to make the students run! To win the game a team had to visit every station, and then be the first team to the top of the hill where we stood waiting. The two winning teams (one primary class and one secondary) were awarded a pizza and ice-cream meal, which they enjoyed the next day with pride!

The winning teams after the Salluit Masters game

With Janie's class after their pizza and ice cream lunch, and a bit of face painting!

            As for teaching, we taught the remainder of our substance abuse lessons at Ikusik (the high school) and taught an introduction to substances lesson at Pigiurvik (elementary). The lesson at Pigiurvik focused on cigarettes and inhalants, since these are substances that are often a problem for young children in Salluit (its been very difficult to see children as young as 8 years old smoking in town). We also taught a lesson on Substances at the rehab centre, and joined the boys for dinner and games afterwards. It was certainly tough to start saying our goodbyes, but comforting to know QHO Peer Ed’s will be returning next year to continue our lessons.

On Thursday after our last lessons we began preparing for our big thank you meal on Friday. Luckily, two of the teachers and one student gave us a hand; otherwise we would have been there until all hours of the night! On Friday all students, staff and teachers stopped by the school kitchen throughout the day and enjoyed delicious (if we may say so ourselves) macaroni and tomato and meat sauce, grilled-cheese, jello and juice! This was the first time we cooked a meal for approximately 100 people, so our estimates of the amount of food we would need were not quite right. We didn’t have enough grill cheeses, and had enough macaroni for triple the amount of people! Fortunately we were able to give away all of our left over food at the end of the day – we’re pretty sure most of Salluit had macaroni for dinner that night.

After an exhausting day of cooking we sat down with Kate (our main community contact) to have a final talk about our project, and the plans we have for the coming years. About 30 minutes into our meeting she told us we had to go to the staff room. When we got there we were shocked and overwhelmed to see all the teachers and staff had gathered to thank us! We were not expecting this at all and had a hard time holding back our tears. A few spoke about their appreciation for the project and everyone thanked us for our hard work. We were so happy to know that the teachers liked our work and wanted to see it continue in the coming years. We also both received lovely hand made cards with a picture of Salluit, and hand made necklaces with inuksuk charms!

Later that evening, we organized our last official event: Justin Bieber Movie Night. Yes, that’s right Ellie, we were struck with the fever, and decided to show “Never Say Never”. For those of you who don’t know who this is or what this movie is about, where have you been for the past two years? (Just kidding, it’s the biography of a young teenage boy from Stratford who is now a very famous pop star.) After the movie, the kids helped us clean up, and then we joined them for some games outside. We walked around Salluit, played tag on the playground, and even swung a few rocks with the baseball bats as the kids often do here. We then made our way to the Pigiurvik gym to play volleyball and basketball with the older students.

On our last day we headed back to Ikusik for one last task: putting together the epic QHO resource box that will remain in the library for teachers and future QHO PE’s to use when planning their lessons. Those who know us will not be surprised to hear that this box is a miracle of organization including labelled bags for each subject’s materials, a binder of lesson plans, and a master list describing everything in the box and how it should be used in lessons. We hope these resources will encourage some of the teachers to teach health lessons throughout the year!

Before we say goodbye, we’d like to thank all our blog readers- as without your donations and support we would never have had this incredible experience. We are still trying to process everything that we have done, seen, learned and experienced while in Salluit, but we can agree that this trip will stay in our minds and our hearts forever!

Northern Love,

            Sad but Satisfied Salluit Sistazz

           

10 Things we’ll miss about Salluit:

1)   Being able to walk anywhere and everywhere, but secretly wishing we had a QHO four-wheeler

2)    The adorable “Eee-lo” phrase that kids repeat constantly (translation: just kidding!)

3)    Hearing calls of “Hi Melanie!”, “Hi Kathryn!” coming from all directions as we walk through town

4)    Being asked “Do you have baby?”, “Are you married?” and “Est-ce que tu as amoureux?” on a daily basis (these aren’t typos, that’s how they say it!) 

5)    Snow in June…okay maybe we won’t miss that one as much

6)    Enjoying seafood so fresh it may still be moving, with our Salluit family – Nathan and Barb

7)    The Salluit “School bus” that drives around but never seems to pick up any children, or go anywhere near the schools

8)    Being lost in translation, and wondering whether to greet someone in Inuktitut, French or English!?

  9) The incredible and untouched land, which we hope to return to someday

10 Each and every one of the energetic, kind, funny and warm people we have met (We had to get cheesy, its our last blog!) 

Something else we'll miss at home, the crazy Salluit wind!! 

   

And to think our parents were worried we wouldn’t eat enough in Salluit…

It seems like just yesterday that we first arrived, but our final week in Salluit has already begun!

Last week we taught many lessons on substance abuse, including some very successful smoking lessons where we showed the students other products that contain the same chemicals as cigarettes (gasoline, toilet bowl cleaner and moth balls to name a few). We even had one question in our question box asking how someone can quit smoking, so we feel this lesson was very effective! At the Rehab Centre we taught the boys about bullying and conflict resolution. They listened well and participated despite the lesson being far less exciting than their last lesson on sexual health. 

After our lesson at the rehab we discovered that Ikusik (the secondary school) was closed for the morning, as two young women had gone missing while out fishing the two days earlier. Since Salluit is such a small community, everyone was affected by this upsetting news. Luckily, the girls were found later that day, and both were alright!

Salluit continues to surprise us with its many delicious delicacies…on Wednesday evening we were invited to go mussel picking! We snowmobiled to the “lake”, which is an open patch of water within the frozen channel. The tide was low so we were able to walk around in the shallow water and pull up the fresh mussels that were everywhere you looked. Unfortunately, we were quite unprepared for the temperature, having slightly overlooked the fact that we’d be dipping our hands into freezing cold ocean water. The Inuit women laughed at our method of taking turns picking mussels while the other warmed their numb hands…meanwhile they picked their mussels at rapid speed with their bare hands! We even tried raw mussels and fresh picked seaweed. Despite being frozen, we managed to get just enough Mussels for an incredible dinner. This was Mel’s first time trying them, so we suspect she won’t be impressed with the mussels in Ottawa after trying these fresh from the ocean!

Mussel picking! 

On Friday, Mary (the school guidance counselor) said she would bring us some freshly caught Arctic Char for dinner. We thanked her and tried to tell her one fish was plenty, but she insisted on bringing three – one for each of us and one for Barbara! Since the last fish we’d made was gutted and these weren’t (plus they were all frozen together), this made for one very entertaining afternoon. But our culinary skills prevailed again, and we will be eating fish for the next seven days to finish it all.

The weekend consisted of more eating, planning, and then eating some more. We were invited to have dinner with teachers on both Saturday and Sunday night, plus Barb had a “healthy women’s lunch” on Sunday, to which teachers brought cheese cake, chocolate pudding cups and cookies. Though the “health” aspect was questionable, we weren’t complaining (until after when we realized shorts and bikinis are a week away). We have decided that since we are eating non-stop daily workouts in the gym have become necessary!

Today we continued teaching substances lessons, and continued planning activities for our last week. These include a scavenger hunt/modified game of “Chinese Masters”, a thank-you meal for all students, teachers and staff, and a movie night. If we can pull everything off it will be a miracle, but we want to give it our all for our last week! We also taught a lesson at the Adult Education Centre today, to a group of women in training to work at the nursery school. Our lesson on “Women’s Health” included nutrition, diabetes, pap smears and breast exams. It was a great opportunity to reach other members of the community, and we hope lessons at the centre will continue with the Salluit project next year!

Stay tuned for our last blog! 

Northern Love,

                    Sufficiently Satiated Sistazz 

Teaching a lesson on Smoking

       

The ABC's of Salluit

A is for Annie Alaku - On Tuesday we invited Annie, a community elder and past principal, to return to Ikusik School and talk to the students about physical and sexual abuse. First, she spoke to the older students, and then to the grade 5 & 6 students. Thanks to the translations by an Inuk teacher sitting next to us, we were very lucky to be a part of this moving presentation. She spoke from personal experience and from the heart when she talked to the students about these subjects. Given the cultural differences, these were difficult subjects for us to approach and to teach, so we were fortunate that she accepted our invitation, and gave such an incredible talk. It is one of our goals to connect students to community members who can support them long after we have left Salluit, so we feel this presentation was a great success!

With Annie after her amazing presentations.

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B is for Bannock - Following Annie's presentation we had planned to cook Bannock with the cooking class, but our Bannock expert (the school guidance counsellor) was nowhere to be found! We asked the students if any of them knew how to make the bread, and a couple reluctantly shrugged, so we figured we would give it a try. As the kids started pilling ingredients into the bowl we became more and more horrified. These ingredients included: half a pack of lard, loads of flour, tons of baking powder and WAY too much salt (note: it seems to be a somewhat adaptable recipe, so it may be that the kids were just feeling particularly creative that day). We also added cinnamon and raisins to one batch – the students really looked at us funny when we did that! I don’t think it was up to their standards, as they didn’t eat much of it and laughed a lot. Meanwhile, we couldn’t stop eating our somewhat delicious creation!

C is for Climb (number two!) -  After our dance on Saturday (see D below) that lasted until 2am, we had a much needed sleep in, followed by another hike in the Salluit tundra. Although we were quite tired, we thought it was a great opportunity to accomplish our hiking goal: to conquer the second of the two mountains that enclose Salluit in a valley. In our 4.5 hour hike we saw two gorgeous hawks, some geese and the ever incredible landscape. In some places the snow was still solid and untouched, and in others we could start to see the tundra flora. By the end of the day we were quite exhausted, but glad we’d dragged ourselves out of bed!

D is for Dance - Our dance this Saturday was a great success! We had the grade 5 and 6 students’ dance from 8:30 to 10:30pm, and then the older students from 10:30 to 1:30am. In total we had about 90 students attend! Throughout the night, the IPL class from Ikusik graciously prepared and sold food – including homemade donuts and cinnamon buns. It was a good thing we were dancing the whole night! We were also very lucky to have Charlie, a recent graduate of Ikusik, as our DJ for the night. In both dances, the Macarena, the beach balls we brought, and a game called Jack/Queen/King were a big hit. It was surprising to see that a lot of the kids did not know how to do the Macarena, and they clearly liked it as they kept asking to play it again. We were especially happy when they asked to the play the song for the hip hop dance we have been teaching them in our weekly hip hop classes, and some of them even joined us in doing the dance. In the Jack/Queen/King game the music plays and when it stops I would scream “Jack”, “Queen” or “King”. From there the paired students need to get into a certain position – jack is piggy-back, queen is sit on the other’s knee while they are on one knee and king is sit on the other’s back while the other is on all fours. It’s a competition therefore they have to get into the position as fast as possible and the last pair is eliminated. It was quite a funny show to see! We gave out Queen’s t-shirts and lanyards as prizes. As mentioned in our last post, it is true that although everyone loves “discos” as they are called, very few actually dance. They mostly walked in circles around the gymnasium and played with the beach balls. But as most of you know, Kathryn and I love to dance, so we ended up dancing alone and trying to convince the kids to dance for most of the night. We did manage to get a few dancing – and by dancing we mean they usually just laughed and imitated how we danced (great!). All in all we had a great time and think the kids did too, as they kept asking us when the next one was going to be! In other dance related news, we had our third hip hop class today and are very proud of our dedicated dancers! 

Sweaty but happy at the end of the dance! 

         

       We have run out of letter ideas, but other activities this week include our Nutrition lessons at Pigiurvik, a second girls night, and a second lesson at the Rehab Centre! At Pigiurvik we taught several classes on nutrition with the help of various translators. These lessons included a game to sort out foods into the four food groups, having the kids draw their favourite meals including something from each group, and making delicious trail mix! Our Monday ended with girl’s night which we had planned for the high school girls. We couldn’t help but feel a little down when only four girls showed up, but we still had a great time. We watched “Stick It”, made muffins and popcorn, and painted our nails! On Tuesday our second lesson at the Rehab Centre focused on puberty, sex, pregnancy and condoms. The boys were all smirks and giggles at first, but calmed down and participated intently afterwards. From there, we went back to Ikusik to join in on a staff meeting. This was a great opportunity, as we were able to outline our long term goals for the QHO project in Salluit, and some of our ideas for future initiatives at Ikusik (these include a leadership program, and a QHO resource box in the library). We finished off the day with a great work out in the gymnasium, and a delicious dinner cooked by the IPL students!

            This week we are also starting Substance Abuse lessons. Valuable advice from community members has allowed us to focus on the substances most relevant in Salluit, including Alcohol and Inhalants. As the weekend approaches we are beginning to make plans for our final week, which has come far too quickly! 

     Northern Love, 

               Salsa-ing Sistazz