Summer of Light

To clear up any confusion, almost all the blog entries since I left for Greenland have been typed up on someone elses laptop, away from internet access. I save the post, then later place it on the blog once I find internet access. The last post with pictures was quickly written on the spot.

This current post is being written up offline, so it could end up being outdated.

For the last week I have been in Nuuk making contacts and having meetings with the Foreign Ministry, city hall, the national museum, the tourist office, etc. An American teacher has been my lifeline, connecting me up with great resources (including this laptop which I'm typing this up on).

On Wednesday I gave a presentation to a class of freshman at a high school. I talked about climate change, global warming, and Greenland's perspective. They looked pretty bored, and it didn't help that they are in the midst of learning English, rather than fluent speakers like most Danish adults. But it was a great experience and it definitely helped refine my presentation skills for young audiences. And even though they seemed only marginally interested in something that is directly impacting their country, they were probably still better behaved than an american class of the same age for a similar presentation.

After school, the teacher of the class invited me to join him and two of his friends on a boat trip to hunt seals. The teacher is a Dane that has been living in Greenland for four years. The hunting serves as an escape from town and is a normal recreational activity. There aren't many roads that go very far in any direction and ice/icebergs clog the harbor for much of the year, leaving residents of Nuuk with a 'tiger in a cage' complex. When the water becomes safe enough for small boats the city breaths an exuberant sigh of relief. Boats take to the inlets and nearby islands like kids racing out at recess to claim the prime swings. So having a boat and going for a cruise serves a particularly liberating form of recreation. Pictures from the beautiful trip once I return to Denmark or a cheaper internet connection. We spent about fours hours boating around islands and inlets off the coast (in the waters of the Davis Strait). The hunting consisted of scanning the waters while boating around, looking for dark spots or ripples in the water. Once a seal was spotted, the boat was stopped, and the marksman waited for the seal to resurface. Once the curious seal popped his head up to investigate, he was greeted with shots from a .22. The seals were never closer than 70 meters, so don't confuse the image above for hunting groundhogs (a la Jon's wedding weekend). We saw about five seals, but the marksman didn't shoot any. The boat was fairly crowded with the four of us on it, so I was relieved that we didn't have to find room for a bloody 200 pound dead seal. I'm not sure what the group had in mind for the seal, but I imagine most of it would have been put to use, as they complained of other recreational hunters just killing seals for sport rather than making use of the meat, skin, etc. After failing to shoot a seal, we cruised by some small icebergs before returning from our venture. The weather was gorgeous, bright sun and clear skies, and I am looking forward to posting pictures.

The next two days were rainy, cold, and dreary, exactly like the Danish winter. I used the weather to conduct most of my interviews and schedule new meetings. The American teacher and I had dinner with a reporter from the local paper. The paper was featuring the teacher in a spread and article that came out on Friday and I got to tag along for the dinner.

The Summer of Light continues, though Nuuk does get "darker" than NEEM camp. But it is a very, very relative darkness, similar to a dark/cloudy thunderstorm day (which I hear has been quite frequent in the midwest/plains region lately). The flooding in Iowa and the tornado in Manhattan, KS, actually made CNN international news here in Nuuk. It was a brief one minute spot and it was interesting to see the coverage. Returning to the light, everyone keeps mentioning how the light makes people manic and I am starting to wonder if I am succumbing to the power of suggestion. I feel tired most all the time and the amount of light leads to a constant guessing game about what time it might be. Despite feeling tired, falling asleep is a bit of a chore as you have to trick yourself into thinking you're laying down for what looks like an afternoon nap. And when you wake up, whether it is 3AM or 10AM, it looks and feels the same. Waking up anytime in between means you likely don't fall back asleep.