Father's Day Mission 2007 - Part 2: Akutan!

Akutan Island. A small island in the Aleutian chain accessible only by boat or floatplane and home to 89 villagers and 1200 fish processors from all over the world...what an unusual combination!


As you'll see from the wooden map, it also has an unusual shape and the village is located at the end of the long, skinny bay, protected from the wild waters of the ocean and surrounded on all sides by steep mountains.

As we approached the island, the buzz on the ferry started talking about the hillside being on fire! The ferry had passed the island on it's way into Dutch at around 4 am that morning and the passengers, smelling smoke from their warm, cozy beds, begin stumbling out of their rooms to see what was going on. Word spread quickly....the volcano had erupted! Then a few smarter people started wondering, does volcano smoke smell like woodsmoke? Alas, no exciting volcano eruption...just a grassfire probably started by irresponsible smoking kids playing with firecrackers (geez....who would ever do something like that!?). But it did spread fast and luckily the VPSO (that's Village Public Safety Officer) and his crew were able to stop it from coming to the village.


When we stepped off the boat, we felt immediately at home. It was nice to get back to a small boardwalk village reimniscent of the YK Delta villages (well, except with mountains!). Here's the Bayview Plaza hotel, run by the Akutan Native Corp. You, too, can stay here for a mere $90 per night! It even has a mini-kitchenette stocked with entertaining coffee mugs and Lady Grey tea.

And of course, we love the cruisers and the little "can't grow" pups!


Of course, it is a little fancier than the Delta villages we are used to....streetlights?!?

The village is home to 2 churches. The traditional Russian Orthodox Church sits in the city center. Church services are held about once a month when a travelling minister is able to make it out.

The CEO of the Trident fish plant paid for The Safe Harbor Church to be built about 10 years ago.
Yes, this looks like quite a large church, eh? I had the chance to talk to the pastor and his wife. It is attended by just one person from the village and Trident workers make up the rest of the parish. All religion aside, this is my kind of church.

I mean, where else can you play pingpong and basketball during church???

The island has a school for the local kids which is dangerously close to closure. A school in Alaska has to have 10 kids to stay open. They currently only have about 6 and it is slated to close after the next school year. Such a crazy world. It's not like they can just take a longer morning bus ride and go to school in the neighboring town. So the choice will be home school or boarding school or going to live with relatives or moving off the island. Not exactly easy choices, especially in a small isolated village with a high rate of alcoholism. The pastor's wife actually has been the school teacher for the past 4 years, but she's having a baby in October and is no longer going to be teaching. I believe the school is desperately looking for a new teacher, and ideally one with a few kids, to boost the numbers.



There's also a library, with a mini-museum and a post office. We like to take post office pics for Dawson's mom.
Yes, those are bars on the windows. What valuable commodoties do you think sit behind those bars??

Safety first when it comes to Folgers and non-dairy creamer.

And, of course, there's a local store. Yes, that's 99 cent Fritos going for a whopping $3.00!

Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of the Trident facility. We tried hard to get a tour of the plant, but were ultimately unsuccessful. It's quite a place though. Trident is a vertical-organization (not sure if that's the exact correct term). But basically, they own everything in all phases of production. From the fishing boats to their own power plant, they own it all. Workers come from all over the world to work insane hours for minimum wage and save up lots of cash due to the fact that room and board is included and there is nothing to spend your money on! I really love the FAQ section for potential new Trident workers. Do you want to be a fish processor? Well, do you want to work in a physically demanding, cold, wet, and repetitive work environment where the weather can be expected to be "miserable" most of the time, you have no guaranteed hours yet will probably work 12-18 hour days, and you get to live in cramped facilities with a common toilet and erratic mail delivery? Mmm, sounds great. Of course, you get room and board....the rooms are bunk beds with 6 people per room and the board is a mess hall where the average meal price comes out to 39 cents per person. Whew. Think of that next time you order some tasty fish and chips!

We went on a great morning hike to the ridge top of the mountain behind town.


What a fun mini-vacation! After a thorough tour of the town, a nice hike and a bit of bacon and coffee from the local restaurant, we were feeling quite thrilled with ourselves.

We took a little walk down to the place where the plane comes in. There was a lady standing there, scanning the horizon. "Waiting for the morning plane?" we ask with naive excitement over the prospect of seeing the float plane land on the water. "Just hoping that there'll be one," she replies. We look around. The weather seems OK to us. She goes on to explain the many factors that have to align for the plane to get to Akutan. "My honey's on the plane. I sure hope he gets here, but probably not today," she states with a sigh. "What's that....not today?" Hmmm......