The two ships are Healy and Renda.

Renda is a Russian oil tanker loaded with fuel. It is trailing a US Coast Guard ice breaker named Healy.

This US-Russian expedition is bringing much needed fuel to Nome, Alaska, where diesel and gasoline supplies are running low.

This sea separates the Kamchatka peninsula from the Aleutian Islands and freezes up in places this time of year, making passage difficult.

The Bering Sea is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Ben Matheson of KNOM Radio(Nome, Alaska) about the unusual cooperation to bring fuel to the Alaskan coastal community this Winter.

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At the dock at the Sno-Pac fish processing plant in Dillingham, Alaska, boats deliver thousands of salmon per day. American college students used to stand along these assembly lines. But now, you’re more likely to hear people speaking Russian, Spanish or Chinese.

Here in Bristol Bay, globalization has transformed fish processing plants over the last couple of decades. Most of the workers now are foreign students, on J-1student visas, designed for cultural exchange and training.

Many people probably wouldn’t put fish gutting into those categories, but the workers are allowed in under the work-travel option of the visa.

Mache Kazubovsky, a student at the University of Warsaw in Poland, said he paid around $3,000 to a recruiting agent to set him up with the job at Sno-pac. When the salmon are running, Kazubovsky works 16-hours a day with time-and-a-half for overtime. He earned minimum wage, but his room and board are covered. Kazubovsky hopes to double his initial investment, and then take a cross-country trip.

Another worker here is Hoy-Juhw, from Mainland China. She is studying applied linguistics back home and plans to be a teacher. Like Kazubovsky, she’s here to travel.

“I want to see New York and Washington, DC, the most famous cities, everyone has to see,” Hoy-Juhw said. “Most of all I want to experience what is real American life. I mean, not the one in a factory in Alaska, but the real American life on the mainland, in the big cities.”

The J-1 student workers have been a godsend for Nancy Blakey, co-owner of Sno-Pac.

“They’re educated, they’re bright, and they’re working really hard, long hours,” Blakey said.

Alaska fish processors started hiring J-1 students in the 1990s when unemployment was low and they couldn’t find American workers. The J-1′s are not just hard workers, Blakey said; they’re also really interesting.

“We had a young man come through who was studying nuclear physics. And we were talking, and he loved the beauty of nuclear physics. He was passionate and he was explaining it to me, in his limited English and doing very well. And he was going to be going out to gut fish. I think that’s pretty fantastic!”

Brad Gillespy does not think the J-1 program is fantastic. He’s regional manager for the Alaska Department of Labor in Anchorage.

“It just doesn’t appear to me the program is working the way it was intended,” Gillespy said. “If it is working the way it was intended, it’s having a negative impact on US and Alaska workers. If you’re in a rural community that’s got a plant or two and that’s one of the major employers there and they’re bringing in all outside workers, there’s got to be an impact on those individuals not being able to get on at those plants.”

Blakey said Sno-Pac has hireed locals for skilled positions, like truck drivers and heavy machinery operators, but few locals apply for the jobs that the J-1′s do. Sno-Pac also recruits on a website aimed at American college students. But she said she doesn’t get many responses.

Back at the plant, Alexander Esbinoff, from Ukraine, who’s back for his second year, told me this year he has a new job, working in the laundry.

In Esbinoff”s mind, he’s moving up, which is something he said is hard for a college kid to do in Ukraine.

“In summer in my country we just party, drink and smoke and that’s all,” Esbinoff said. “Here you can work up to the scale you are, I can earn money and I can improve my knowledge.”

Esbinoff hopes to clear $8,000 this summer and then take a trip to Hawaii before heading home to Kiev to finish his degree. But he’s thinking of coming back for a third season next year.

No-one in Britain seems satisfied with the state of the nation. There’s finger-pointing galore: at the looters, the police, the Murdoch press, the politicians, the footballer-celebrities. And, of course, at the immigrants.

As of late 2010 the UK requires applicants for some immigrant visas to take a proficiency test in the English language. If you want to settle in Britain, the logic goes, you should learn the language. Cities should not be multilingual mosaics. Everyone should speak the common language.

Try telling that to the 58-year-old Indian husband of Rashida Chapti. Chapti, a naturalized British citizen, was born in India. Her husband still llives there. Before the language requirement came into effect, securing a resident and work visa for her husband would have been virtually automatic, as it is in the many nations that have family reunification immigration policies. But in Britain, Chapti’s husband must now prove that he has a basic command of English.

Chapti’s husband lives in a remote village, more than 100 miles from the nearest city, where he could take English lessons. In any case, she says, he wouldn’t be able to afford the lessons. Chapti is suing the British government under the European Convention of Human Rights.

Also, in Britain, the town of Barnsley has starting fining people for swearing in public. Heck, yeah. Not sure how widely that’s being enforced amid the riots and looting (which, I hasten to add, have not spread to Barnsley).

In Alaska, meanwhile, no-one’s too worried about swearing. (I briefly lived in Alaska, where I learned a great deal about American English expletive usage.) Some Alaskan children are learning a language. But not English, which they already speak.

These kids are the American-born children of Sudanese refugees. They are learning their parents’ native Nuer language. Some may end up speaking it at home. Some may use it if they visit their parents’ homeland. Some may never use it outside their Anchorage classroom.

Finally in the pod this week, a conversation with Greg Barker, director of Koran by Heart.This is the story of three children who take part in a competition to memorize and publicly recite the entire Koran.

Hearing the interview reminded me of an encounter I had a few years ago in Bangladesh. I visited a madrassa, a religious school. The school building was essentially a countryside shack. Inside were a few tiny classrooms, each with a dozen or more students crammed inside.

I talked with several students, including one who told me of his primary educational goal: to memorize the Koran. He recited a lengthy segment of it for me– in Arabic, not his native tongue, Bengali. He’s the student on the far left in the picture below.

I also talked to the head of the madrassa. He said that although this was a religious school, most parents who sent their kids here weren’t especially devout. The choice, like in so many parts of the world, was between underfunded, sub-par government schools and religious school like this one.

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[photos: Wiki Commons, Annie Feidt; Patrick Cox]

Mading Bol taking a class in Anchorage, Alaska(Photo: Annie Feidt)

By Annie Feidt

In a small classroom in a Baptist church in Anchorage, Mading Bol asked for volunteers to read a short passage in Nuer, his native language from southern Sudan. Three kids up front leapt out of their chairs to get Bol’s attention.
“Me! Oh, me!” they yelled.

But Bol called a quieter student sitting in the back. The student began to read aloud a short story about a man and a woman who milk a cow. The story painted a picture of a life the kids had never known. They were born in the United States, most of them in Omaha, Nebraska. Their parents were re-settled there in the 1990s after fleeing civil war in Sudan and enduring 10 to 15 years in the refugee camps in Africa.

Bol has seven children, all born in the U.S., and he said none of them is really comfortable with the Nuer language. He said his 12-year-old daughter Nyagoa used to speak Nuer, but when she started school here, she lost it.

“Now, I cannot communicate with her well in Nuer,” Bol said. “She forces me to go and speak in English.”

It is a common story among the Sudanese in Anchorage. So, last summer Bol and other leaders in the Sudanese community decided to start the Nuer language classes. Daniel Gatkuoth, another teacher, has six daughters, and he said they all have trouble communicating with his wife.

Kids in a Nuer class in Anchorage, Alaska(Photo: Annie Feidt)

There are now about 1,000 refugees from southern Sudan living in Anchorage. Gatkuoth arrived in the city in 2008. Like many Sudanese here, he left Nebraska when the economy went sour, hoping to find work in the oil fields on Alaska’s North Slope. But the oil companies weren’t hiring, so Gatkuoth found a good job with the Anchorage School District, as a language and cultural liaison.

Gatkuoth’s real passion, however, is teaching Nuer three nights a week. On this night, there are about 30 students, divided among three classrooms. The oldest kids sit at long tables in a bright room at the front of the church, repeating Nuer phrases that their teacher calls out.

Thaech Wal, a fifth-grader, was born in New York, a few months after her family arrived in the U.S. Thaech said the classes are helping her communicate better with her mom.

“When I talk, I talk in Nuer and English mixed up; like if I were to say a word, or a sentence in Nuer, I would put a little bit of English in it.”

(Photo: Annie Feidt)

“I don’t like snow because it’s cold and freezing,” Thaech said.

A lot of the kids — and adults — at the language class feel this way. But even with their complaints about the climate, none of the Sudanese families has any plans to go back to its newly independent homeland. They say it is still too unstable. Mading Bol said he would like to return some day with his seven children. In the meantime though, he says he’s focused on building a strong Sudanese community in Anchorage.

Hugh Neff's team (Photo: Yukon Quest)

The race retraces snowy routes that were used well before the age of snowmobiles during the Gold Rush. “Well I’m here at the halfway mark for the Yukon Quest and we have had our top ten mushers arrive in the early hours of the morning and we have 100 people hanging out at the checkpoint waiting for our mushers to come in its very exciting here, ” says Wendy Morrison, one of the race organizers.

So where is that halfway point between White Horse and Fairbanks?

Well, the answer is a northern city that was once a bustling mix of mining supply shops, camps and saloons during the Klondike Gold Rush. As the mushers drive their sleds into the checkpoint, they come in along the Yukon River.

“Often we’ll see headlights coming along the river and towards the checkoint in it’s a real sense of anticipation people can’t wait to see the team to see the dogs and we’ve been up into the wee hours of the morning watching each team come in”.

Now you might still be spreading out your maps to locate this old gold town. But we’re going to cut to the chase. The answer is Dawson, or Dawson City, the halfway point of the race. Mushers have come from as far away as Australia, France and Norway to compete.

When a musher arrives in Dawson, Morrison says the team has to take a break. “As soon as the official part of the checkin is done, he goes and greets all of his dogs and gives them a big pat, and thanks them for a great run, and then gets back on his sled and heads over to the campground where he’ll bed down his dogs, they’re here a for a 36-hour mandatory layover, so its a really good opportunity for the dogs and the musher to get a really good rest”.

It’s a much deserved rest to be sure. The sled dogs have been running more than 200 miles since the last check point. And a chilly rest. The temperature in Dawson this morning was down around minus 22 F and windy. Mushers and dogs still have another 500 miles to go before they reach Fairbanks. Next stop. Eagle, Alaska.

We’re looking for the name of a region in Canada that gave its name to a gold rush in the late 19th century. This region — in turn — is named after a river.

All of this is within Canada’s Yukon Territory — east of the border with Alaska.

So — which part of Canada gave its name to the Gold Rush that started in 1897?

We’ll reveal the name — and hear about current gold mining there…

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Except the top of the cone is cut off — and sports a crater lake. The volcano literally exploded… about a year ago… on August 7th, 2008.

Summit crater and crater lake of Kasatochi volcano, August 6, 2008, the day before the eruption. The crater shown here is about 4,000 feet in diameter. Photo by Chris Ford, USFWS.

Kasatochi shown October 23, 2008, three months after the eruption. Photo by Jerry Morris

The eruption sent an ash plume almost five miles into the sky over the surrounding Aleutian Islands. It also covered the entire island in several feet of scorching ash, incinerating everything alive. Now, some scientists are paying the island a visit — looking for new signs of life on the barren terrain.

We’re just looking for the name of the island.

For today’s Geo Quiz, we’re looking for a volcanic island… roughly halfway between Alaska and Russia. An eruption a year ago coated the island in a thick layer of searing hot ash. And as far as scientists knew at the time, nothing survived.

Now people are returning to explore the island. Among them is University of Alaska entomologist Derek Sikes… and he joins us by satellite phone. He’s among those searching for new signs of life on Kasatochi, a volcanic island that is part of the Aleutian chain. An eruption there last year incinerated the island’s plants and animals.

Listen to the interview:

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Scientists say Arctic ice is retreating because of climate change. Sailor Cameron Dueck wants to see how climate change is affecting Arctic communities. So he set sail in June from Vancouver with a crew of three others… headed all the way for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Now, he’s just rounded Point Barrow, the northern most point of Alaska. And is heading east past Prudhoe Bay and across the sea that lies north of Canada’s Northwest Territories.

We want you to name THAT SEA.

Cameron promises to email us some pictures of this sea, but don’t hold your breath.

“There’s one small problem, we umm, our computer got soaked by seawater, so we’re having to swap computers around and tuck, so we have no email at the moment.”

We’ll talk to Cameron by satellite phone and get his location…

Listen to the interview:

Download MP3

More information:
http://www.openpassageexpedition.com/images.htm