Off-Topic /
Lovely Souvenirs Thread [11]
@GefreiterKania
I cannot share a photo, because I am not home.
My favorite souvenir is a painting of a whale hunt given to me by some Inuit orphans. I was working once for a month at a volunteer camp in Greenland, attempting to fix the fresh water supply situation to their little island in a fjord. The seasonal ice flows kept destroying the mast that held up the pipeline during the daily high tide/low tide volatility.
I spent most of my free time drinking, and bothering local fishermen for tobacco to roll. A couple times when I ran out of alcohol, I chartered a boat to come pick me up and deliver me to Nuuk (capital) and back. Basically, was acting like a complete degenerate. The costs of my little alcohol runs, were probably 10X the cost of what the entire volunteer project was about.
But the orphans knew nothing about this. They thought of me as some hero. Daily I was consumed by guilt. Then they gave me their gift, and it broke my heart. In an instant, all of their pain landed on the heart, and I knew what an ass I was.
Now I look at this painting often, and wonder how their careers are shaping up. Who they married. What they do.