World Shopping

It’s been more than a month since Scott and I have returned from Tanzania to the States and I’m still experiencing sticker shock. For someone who loves to cook, you’d think I’d be excited to be back in the land of ingredients, but I can’t bear to buy anything that we don’t ‘need’ because everything seems so overpriced. The gloss and size of grocery stores here are still too intimidating for me. Instead of piquing my interest, the amount of options and aisles is dizzying and, more than anything, I just want to get out of there.

I miss Tumaini shop in Monduli, the only store we went to on a regular basis. I miss the pile of bananas and tomatoes and onions and ginger and mangos that were kept outside and the smile of the young man who was in charge of them. I miss Faraha behind the counter inside the shop, his unwavering kindness and peaceful disposition. If he thought you needed any help whatsoever, he’d immediately offer assistance. I miss the refrigerators in the back of the shop which kept glass bottles of Stony Tangawizi, Coke, Sprite, and various colors of Fanta. I miss glancing inside the meat freezer to see if Faraha had any ground beef in stock, usually our lone affordable option for incorporating meat into our meals. I miss that you could check out everything the shop had to offer in a few minutes. For vegetables that Tumaini didn’t have, we’d swing by the daily vegetable market.

In Bhutan, I miss the few shops in Kanglung I would frequent on my walk from school to home. They all had their own unique name, but I never knew them. To Scott, I’d refer to them by events or what they offered – “the shop we went into with Tenzin,” “the shop where we get toilet paper.” I liked to stop in a few shops because you never know what each shop just got in that day. If I was lucky, I might find bunches of asparagus laying on the shop’s window pane, or cilantro, or something else that was green that I didn’t know the name for. One shop’s tomatoes might look riper than another shop’s. If I couldn’t find cheese at one shop, the next one might have it. As quaint as it was, there were surprises to be had in the Upper Market shopping scene in Kanglung – the occasional squash or large bulb garlic. A whole other shopping experience existed in Lower Market where sometimes I would find such treasures as broccoli or green onion.

I even miss Bobs’. In Wrangell there were two grocery stores in town that kept the exact same hours. Within our group of friends, there was a constant debate over which store was better – Bobs’ or City Market. While the majority of our friends picked City as their go-to grocery store, Scott and I were loyal Bobs’ shoppers and it had everything to do with location. Bobs’ was located behind both the Fish and Game office and the Wrangell Sentinel office. After work, it was a matter of walking a few meters to pick up whatever was for dinner that night. We also liked their deli for a quick and affordable lunch. Everyone at Bobs’ knew us, we knew everyone. But the same would’ve applied at City as well. In each grocery store, there was also a movie rental section and an attached liquor store – all of that in one location, simple.

It will just be a matter of time until I get used to the shopping scene in Juneau. What’s funny is that, even though I work downtown, I have yet to check out the shops, which is something I would’ve done immediately if I lived in Wrangell and came to Juneau to visit. In fact, I remember when Mike Tozzo and I took our first trip to Juneau in 2006 for the annual folk music festival. We marveled at the escalator in the airport, the variety of restaurants and stores. We ate sushi and Mexican. We were giddy.

I know, 2006 wasn’t that long ago.

Our First Weekend in Juneau

After doing a massive shop at Fred Meyer’s – Alaska’s version of a grocery story/Walmart – Scott and I explored one of Juneau’s natural wonders. With the sun shining down on us, a rare occurrence in the rainforest, we drove to Mendenhall Glacier. We drove to a glacier. And explored whatever beauty there was to see that was accessible by foot.

 

 

On Sunday, we used additional footwear and snowshoed the Spaulding Meadows Trail.

We'll Get There

Scott arrived to our new home city on Monday by ferry. Along with his elderly (yet robust) red Toyota Tacoma, he had boarded the Alaska Marine Highway's Kennicott ferry in Prince Rupert last Sunday at 9 am and when he drove off the ferry a little after noon on Monday, he had started and finished the entirety of Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, a book I had devoured and loved in Tanzania and had been pushing him to read. So that’s what floated in his mind as he drifted in the ocean from Canada through the islands of Southeast Alaska to Juneau – images and voices of Africa.

During lunch that Monday, I walked from the Capitol to the KTOO office in hopes of catching Scott before I had to start work again. I lingered for as long as I could as my lunch time extended beyond an hour, but not knowing if the ferry would arrive late, I hurried back to the Capitol for more training. Within three minutes of leaving KTOO, Tiffany from the control room called for me over the radio (which I’m always plugged into during work hours), “Lisa, your fiancé is at KTOO.” Luckily, my supervisor, Skip, let me take the rest of the day off.

We spent two nights with Scott’s good friends, Anthony and Lori. They were a couple of the first people Scott ever met in Alaska in 2001 when Scott went to Haines to do bear research with Anthony. With their two kids, Eli and Serena, Anthony and Lori warmly welcomed us to Juneau. Staying with them almost made it feel like we were just visiting friends in Juneau and we’d be off again. A couple times, Lori even said, “It’s so nice to have you guys here and I can’t believe you’re staying; you’re not leaving.” It was a weird concept for all of us to take in.

But we didn’t want to overstay our welcome, especially since Anthony and Lori have busy lives juggling work and being good parents. And we were eager to move into our new temporary home. We got the go-ahead from the house owners on Wednesday and that night, in the heavy, cold rain, we unloaded Scott’s truck with our belongings into our new home at 9601 North Douglas Highway. Carrying heavy loads (Scott’s loads being heavier than mine), we were careful with our footing not to slip on the thick layer of ice that covered the driveway. On Wednesday night, we were chilled, wet, tired, and home. We were home.

*

Now it’s late Saturday morning. Scott is shoveling the driveway. Stacked up rubber tote containers still remain in the kitchen and the bathroom. For the most part, Scott has unpacked, but I still can’t bring myself to. For one thing, it’s hard to unpack knowing we’ll just have repack it all in six months (that’s when the homeowners will return from their two years of sailing). Also, it’s still a strange concept having all this stuff, stuff we’ve lived without for three years. Is there really a need to unpack and organize so many items of clothes when I’ve grown accustomed with having such a limited amount? I did enjoy unpacking and rediscovering how many cookbooks I have, but it makes me wonder where I got them all. I have all these balls of yarn. What plans did I have with all of them? All this stuff, all these choices, just complicates things. Who needs all these options?

That’s how most of Juneau is – options. What restaurant should we go to? What cell phone provider should we choose? What grocery store is most affordable? What pump has the cheapest gas? On what trail should we go snowshoeing tomorrow?

But living here does necessitate a lot of stuff. Our shopping list is ever-growing – sponges, paper towels, dish rags, cooking oil, dish detergent, laundry detergent, tissues, soap, garbage bags, a radio, an endless amount of food items … And once we buy all this stuff we’ll need to find a place to put it. So much of this life is having places to store all the stuff we buy and have – the reason to have cupboards and shelves and closets and drawers.

But we’ll get there. We’ll adjust.

Juneau: When It's Not Raining

Practice

... in the Senate Finance Room.

My First Press Pass

... which is funny because I don't currently consider myself a member of the press. As part of the Gavel crew, I'm more of a fly on the wall. I'm not taking notes at any meetings. I'm not going to ask any hard questions. I just do my job as quietly as possible and stay out of the way as much as possible. My job is to not make any waves. I'm the opposite of a reporter.

Getting Ready

I had my first ‘going out’ experience in Juneau. Before our staff party, I went to the Triangle bar with a couple people from work. We sat at the bar and after I ordered an Alaskan Amber, the bartender asked me where I lived. “Here,” I said, “I live in Juneau.” The bartender was surprised and said, “Oh, I haven’t seen you before.” So I explained that I had just moved to Juneau a few nights ago. It turns out that she had lived in Wrangell before as well, but she was only 12 at the time and had previously lived in Seattle and Wrangell was much too small for her. As most people in Juneau are, she was surprised when I said that I had enjoyed my time in Wrangell. In fact, after people here find out that I once lived in Wrangell, there first question is always, “Did you like it there?” And when I say that I did, they are almost too shocked to say anything else. There’s this silence on their end as if I’ve just spoken in a language they don’t understand.

*

The crew I'll be working with for the next four months moved our TV cameras and other equipment into the press room of the Capitol today. The whole building was buzzing with energy – legislators moving into different offices, boxes crowding the hallway, movers pushing computers here and files there. Everybody’s getting everything into place for the session to start on Tuesday. It was a pretty good feeling to be a part of this machine, this bigger entity. I’ve never been in a press room, I’ve never gotten a press badge before, I’ve never worn a radio with an earplug. I’m nervous that I’ll mess up and miss taping some important moment of Alaskan legislative history, but I’m also excited to be in the fray, to get an inside look at how the Alaska legislature works.

*

It was sunny in Juneau today, which is amazing since I just wrote that sunglasses weather is a rarity. The sky was bright blue and the mountains were radiant. It was one of those quintessentially beautiful Southeast Alaska day, which is always the best reminder of why one lives in Alaska at all.

The Present Tense

Drizzling rain quickly melted away the white snow that lightly blanketed Juneau yesterday morning. For my first day of work, I was kidding myself to stick sunglasses in my bag. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it dawned on me soon enough that sunglasses weather is a rarity in Southeast Alaska. I had somehow forgotten.

*

During work training today, one of the people in charge was going through the group trying to recall which ones of us had journalism experience. He started with the young woman sitting next to me and said, “You’ve had some experience in journalism,” and was about to say the same thing to me, but cut himself short. “You’ve had some experience – No, you are a journalist, aren’t you?” After I quickly confirmed his assertion I thought more about it. He used the present tense as in I am a journalist. But am I? I’m not doing any sort of journalism work at the moment. For the past three years, I’ve done zero professional journalism and have mostly been a teacher. In fact, of the almost ten years I’ve been out of college, only four of them have been devoted to a type of journalism. Would it have been more honest of me to have said today, "I was a reporter"? Of the jobs I have had though, reporting, whether for print or radio, was certainly the most rewarding and what I had the most pleasure doing. So, do we title ourselves by what we enjoy or by what we actually do? I guess, the simple answer is to not title yourself at all.

The man who had posed this question to me is someone who truly loves journalism, way more than I do. As I’m not familiar with his work, I’m not accounting for skill, but from the brief two days I’ve interacted with him, I can tell that he has a real passion for informing the public through reporting, deciphering otherwise confusing information so that people are wiser, exposing people and issues for who and what they really are. This is what he wants to do all the time. His love for it is palpable and respectable.

When it comes down to it, I can report. I can, as best to my ability, understand a topic and try to discover something new about it that’s useful to the public. I can do that and I like doing it, but what I love, what I’ve always loved, is just learning more about people and getting them to tell stories about their lives. That’s what hooked me to journalism back in college when I got to intern for the Hartford Courant. Being a “journalist” allowed me to not only ask questions, it gave me an “in” to accept answers; by being a journalist, I was worthy of people’s time and thoughtful answers, answers they may not give non-journalists. I guess it comes down to power, the power of information, to be the bearer of explanations and stories and answers.

I never went to journalism school or had proper training in reporting. In so many ways, I feel like an amateur. When I’m among a group of reporters and journalists and there’s talk of news and issues and jargon is being thrown around, I often feel out of the loop as if I’m missing something. Maybe it’s confidence I’m missing (I’ve been accused of this), maybe it’s actual knowledge, maybe it’s hunger. Maybe it’s just time.

Fit

The view this morning from my temporary apartment's deck.

 

Juneau is like a foreign country. I feel like an alien at the KTOO office building on Egan Drive even though, a few years ago, I once spent two weeks working there and actually many of the faces are familiar. It felt weird to eat lunch out and not recognize people. It’s strange to walk along a highway with traffic lights and so many cars speeding past me. Who’s inside all those cars and where are they going? In so many ways, being here feels temporary, like I’m just on job training and I’ll get to return home. Except, Juneau is home.

Naturally, I’ve always equated being in Alaska with being in Wrangell. Even though I know the state is huge and I love exploring it and traveling around, to me, Wrangell is Alaska. I used to think there was no point to live in the state if I couldn’t be there. But here I am (soon to be – here we are).

I miss KSTK and its office of just four, only four. I miss recognizing almost everyone who walks into a restaurant that I’m eating at. I miss living in a town with no traffic lights, no cars speeding past me, and no questioning thoughts of where people were off to; in Wrangell, there just weren’t that many places to go. I miss knowing how things work. I miss knowing what is going on. I miss knowing my place, where I belonged, because in a small town like Wrangell, you just know it; you know where you fit in.

Resettling

It’s remarkable to me that less than one month ago, Scott and I were walking around in t-shirts and sandals in Tanzania and that our biggest worries were about public transportation from one part of the country to another. Tanzanian shillings were wadded up in various pants pockets. A meal of chipsi mayai or wali na kuku was undoubtedly in our near future. We slept on sheets that were stamped with the name of whatever cheap guesthouse we were staying at. We carried packs on our backs filled with clothing and items we’d been carrying since May. That was our life.  

We traveled from Gombe National Park in Western Tanzania back to Monduli for one last night at the volunteer staff house we had called home for a year and a half of the past three years to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. In airport land, we stopped in Istanbul before arriving at JFK Airport in New York the evening of December 18.

Ever since, our lives have existed in a cold winter in the great land of America. No more exposed arms or bare calves. No more Tanzanian shillings or meals for under $2. No more stamped sheets.

We traded our backpacks of minimal belongings for seemingly endless piles of clothes and items we forgot we had, that we wonder if we need and, yet, cannot part with. After looking through almost twenty rubber totes of stuff, we could only fill one plastic bag to give to the local thrift store. The majority of our belongings will go with us; some we’re leaving behind for a later episode of stuff inventory.

For the past three weeks, in New York and Wyoming, Scott and I have been spoiled by the generosity of our families and friends with meals and rides and visits.

Stephen and Amber, dear friends from Wrangell we hadn't seen for three years, came to visit Scott and I in Saratoga, Wyoming. We spent hours catching up over food, beer, and a soak in the local hot springs.

We’ve, indeed, been on a long holiday. Dreams of our Tanzanian students, of friends from Bhutan and Wrangell, of family members have made waking both sweeter and confusing.

For me, my holiday comes to an end… now.

I’m sitting among the C gates of the Seattle Airport. Starbucks is in front of me, the eatery Waji’s to my left, and fellow airport travelers are all around – some moving, some sitting still, but all in anticipation for whatever comes next.

In less than an hour, I’ll board a flight to Alaska. In some ways this flight is nothing like the one I took over seven years ago when I was first going to Alaska to write for the Wrangell Sentinel – I’m older now, traveling a lot lighter, and it’s evening time instead of early morning. In other ways, it’s eerily similar – I’m alone (Scott is driving up in a week with his truck full of our belongings), about to start a job I know almost nothing about, and I’m nervous.

But it’s a different kind of nervousness than the one I had as a 25-year-old going to Alaska for the first time. That former version of me had just spent two years living excessivly in Hong Kong and was embarking on another adventure in a completely new part of the world.

The nervousness I have now stems from a hesitancy to resettle into life in the western world. I’m without a mobile phone which I know my new co-workers will find strange. All I’m arriving to Juneau with this evening is a backpack stuffed with a sleeping bag and enough work clothes to last a week. I don’t plan on showering tomorrow morning (I’m trying to mimic my abroad bathing schedule which attempts to conserve water). I’d like to embrace this new life in America as slowly as possible but I know it’ll be difficult. Already, on a meal for just myself, I spent an amount of money that would’ve paid for at least two Tanzanian meals for both Scott and myself. For my past two dinners, I’ve eaten more red meat than I likely did the whole five months in Tanzania.

It seems inevitable that daily life will soon involve overspending, overindulging, not enough walking, unhealthy doses of vanity, and other qualities of life that cannot exist in the developing world. I guess that I can say that I was extremely fortunate to have lived without these for a small piece of time.

Greetings from Wyoming

A snowshoe excursion above Encampment.