It's cold....and it's only August :(

A lot has happened in the past two weeks...

We successfully completed TWO trips to the grocery store!!! Trust me, that’s a big accomplishment! Each person (we have 7) has a monthly food stipend of $72! Yes, that’s per month. I easily went through $72 a week at school and now I’m trying to stretch that out over four weeks. My roommate John calculated that we’re spending a whopping $2.66 on each person a day for food. Not bad considering that milk is $9 and a bag of Tostitos costs $10! Guess we won’t be having chips and dip anytime soon. The 9$ milk is the real killer. My diet at home consisted of at least a couple glasses of milk a day. Now….well I mix some powdered milk, pinch my nose and chug… The high prices in Bethel are due to the fact that everything has to be shipped in. Since Bethel is not connected by road to any other city everything is either flown in or shipped in by boat up the Kuskokwim River. As frustrating as the food situation has been at times it has definitely been a good learning experience. We’ve really had to get creative with our meals. They’re not always good…. Our fridge was looking a little empty yesterday so we had to get real ‘creative’…I was in charge of the pasta dish. Being the master chef that I am, I used my expansive knowledge and skill set to make a pot of pasta-roni, spaghetti, and tuna. John then expertly cooked some corned beef hash and spam in oil (because obviously we don’t have butter).
Tuna Pasta roni + corned beef hash + SPAM = wholesome JV lunch

Another really interesting thing about Bethel is that it’s a “Damp” city. Alcohol sales are illegal in Bethel. However, it is legal to possess and consume alcohol. So, to get alcohol people have to order it from liquor stores in other cities and ship it in or stock up when they leave Bethel. As you can imagine this is a point of huge controversy. Coming up in October the city is actually having a vote to make alcohol sales legal. Rates of alcoholism are extremely high in Bethel. Many of the crimes that take place are a direct result of the alcohol. The alcohol gets shipped in periodically (there are only 4 planes into Bethel each day) and when it does get shipped in people drink almost immediately it seems. Because of shipping costs, hard alcohol is the most price efficient (a bottle of 'cheap' vodka might still cost 80$) to have shipped in. What comes as a result of only having hard alcohol, and alcohol that gets shipped in periodically....is serious binge drinking.

Ok, so on to my job… I am working as a client advocate at the Bethel Public Defender’s Agency. A 'public defender' is a lawyer who is paid by the government and gets assigned to clients in the Bethel area who can not afford their own attorney. As a client advocate I’m helping both the lawyers and the client. I’m working specifically with CINA (said like ‘China’) cases. It stands for Children In Need of Aid. In these cases Child Services has removed children from the home because they determined that the parents weren’t fit to care for the kids. Most times this is a result of reports of domestic violence, abuse and alcoholism. Unfortunately, the Office of Child Services in Bethel is not exactly known for being the best run office in the state of Alaska. Many times our lawyers are arguing that the kids never should have been taken in the first place. Basically I, along with the lawyer, am helping parents get their children back from the state. That also means that in our position we are not necessarily taking into account what is "best for the kids." We are simply assigned to defend the parent's rights. My role in the whole situation...mostly I work with the clients to get them into AA programs or other treatment centers as needed. Essentially, I help them make the necessary steps to get their children back. I could rant on and on about these cases all day so I’ll spare you…for now

I’ll try to be more consistent with the blog posts in the next couple weeks! Miss you all. Lots of love from Bethel!

PEACE