Hello everyone,
When I visited the Reindeer People for their celebration of Reindeer People’s Day on August 2nd, they invited me back for a winter visit. I took them up on this invitation and on November 14th Nina Salikova, Jenny Seleznova (12 year old daughter of my Deputy), and I, flew to a remote herding site by MI8 helicopter. We arrived there at 10 AM and of course immediately had to go into the tent (Chum) for tea and a very large lunch, and to get dressed in the same winter clothes that the Nentsy people wear. We then went by reindeer sleigh on an 8 km trip with 4 teams of 4 animals each, to a lake where the men had previously set out 20 fish nets. This trip took about 1.5 hours and I was very surprised at the stamina of these reindeer, they never stopped running; up hills, through deep snow and right over or thorugh willow groves, downhill and over open steams.
We would like to announce that one of our ex-KAO employees, Anna Ovcharenko, got married on Saturday, November 15th, to Sergei Scurfield.