DAY 14, Sunday July 22, 2007
We spent the morning cleaning up the clinic and repacking all of our left over medical supplies into their suitcases. We were told a spay was going to be brought down in the morning for us to do but it didn’t show up.
Today was very windy, rainy and cold and even looked like it was trying to snow. We didn’t spend much time outdoors today. We hope we can fly out of here tomorrow morning and that the weather will cooperate.
Chris, Annette and Uschi took the puppy to its home. It turns out the puppy belongs to the mayor, and the puppy’s name is “Rainbow”. The children in the home were so happy to see her again, and the puppy ran up to them so excitedly. It was a very happy reunion. We explained to them that she may have some permanent damage to her head but without more diagnostic tools we really don’t know for sure. She has improved greatly from when she was brought in to us, and we explained how she needs to stay on antibiotics. It was very comforting to realize that the Mayor and his family were the owners of this wonderful little puppy and that it has a great home and will live indoors.
We received a phone call this afternoon that the team was invited to come to one of the resident’s homes, Marie and Lukie, to have a taste of Arctic Char, similar to salmon. Marie is the lady who came to Igloolik Point with us the other day to be our interpreter, as well as the lady whose dog had the terrible neck wound. She wanted to thank us for saving her dog’s life (her husband would have shot the dog if we had not been here, we were told). The team arrived at her home to a very warm welcome from her family, Cynthia, Linda and two smaller grandchildren. She had baked us fresh bread, rice and Char which her husband had caught earlier in the day. She had the team play games and there were prizes to be won. The prizes were some of her personal possessions which I’m sure had much sentimental value to her. The team sat in a circle and played several games. Marie also shared stories about hunting and how hard it is to hunt walrus. She said the walrus are very scary and smell very bad. Her favourite hunt is a Narwhal whale but they are only allowed four a year. After a very enjoyable, fun and educational two hours, the team headed back home to finish packing for their departure tomorrow morning.
Barb cooked a delicious turkey dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, turnip, mixed vegetables. Isabelle cooked her first pumpkin pies ever and they were very tasty.
We will call First Air in the morning to see if our flight will be departing or not. Hopefully the weather clears and we are able to go. Mark explained to us all at dinner that sometimes planes cannot come in or go out of Iqaluit for days and even weeks, let alone in Igloolik, due to adverse weather conditions. The sophisticated technical instruments are not available in the North at the airports or on the planes as they are in the south. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for better weather tomorrow.