Our second son was born in Nuuk three weeks ago. At the hospital, I was given a document stating his social security number and date and place of birth. So I went to the council office to register his name – to convert him from a purely numbered to a named human. “Has he been …
Month: July 2020
Greenland is full of interesting characters and P is one of them – a Greenlander who has worked with my husband on and off on mineral exploration projects for many years. P is one of those rare guys who, with limited formal qualifications of any kind, is nonetheless utterly indispensible. Like toornaarsuk – a Greenlandic …
In the past two weeks, while awaiting the arrival of our second son, our first was finally learning a love of the outdoors. The local council in Nuuk runs a series of free activities and courses, particularly for kids on their summer holidays. So we excitedly signed him up for an ‘experience nature’ course run …
A shard of black rock hangs impossibly in the air, detached from its steep mountain slopes below by heavy grey cloud. I feel some of the same heaviness inside, wrapped in a cloud of expectation, uncertainty. The child waits silently for his time, like a stone in my belly. Years ago, I sat in a …
I frowned, pressing my fingers into the soft, dark soil. “They look a bit droopy, don’t they?” asked my husband, unhelpfully. “Yes, but they’re still damp,” I replied, though concerned about these slightly sad looking pepper plants in the windowsill. One of our neighbours had made the potentially fatal error of asking me to care …