This week, we’re going to Tuluksak, a community of almost 400 people near the Kuskokwim River. George Lamont is a resident of Tuluksak.
“I’m George Lamont and I live in Tuluksak. We’re about 30 miles away from the Kobuk Mountains. We live in a vegetated area…quite flat…about a mile and a half away from the Kuskokwim River up a river called the Tuluksak River.
Right now, there’s a possibility of another flood since 2009, I think.
The conditions are quite bad right now since the snow has been melting, we have a lot of puddles and we have no road maintenance or anything like that. We have no water and sewer. We still live off what they call a ‘honey bucket,’ and we still have to pack our own water.
Electricity is around 65 cents per kilowatt-hour. And our fuel prices, well, last time I heard, it was $10 a gallon and then it went down to $9.50 a gallon.
People mostly play bingo and most of the time there’s what they call ‘fiddling.’ And what fiddling is, is they have a band in the meeting – the group meeting – most of the people in the village go to that fiddling and plus there’s some basketball games
It’s pretty hard living out here in this remote village here.”