Tuba City, Arizona (Day 7)

The Painted Desert, a strange combination of pinks, blacks and reds.

There has been some confusion. Driving into Utah from Nevada resulted in us crossing a time zone, but then travelling south into Arizona resulted in a second time change. To make things worse, the Navajo Reservation (about an hour's travel south) is also on a slightly different time to the rest of Arizona. So when we wake up we're all out of whack and we make the hotel's free breakfast by only 10 minutes, which means we get to eat a muffin each, some cubed bits of potato, and a strange dark blue sauce that doesn't taste like anything recognisable. I put some maple syrup on my potato to try and spice things up a bit. 

Unfortunately, as we are so rushed in getting to breakfast, I somehow lose my key back into our room. Retracing my steps, I realise that I must have chucked the key into the breakfast room's bin. This bin is piled high with plates of pushed-around scrambled eggs so I decide to un-retrace my steps and feign ignorance. The hotel staff let us back into our room.

Today, we're only driving two hours south. The plan is to visit Tuba City, a township in the middle of the Navajo Nation. Some background to this visit:

About 4 or 5 years ago, my wife Nicole did some volunteer work with Amizade. This took her to Arizona where she worked as a teacher's aide in a Navajo school. She kept in contact with May, a Navajo language/culture teacher who befriended her, and on our honeymoon 2 years ago she returned, this time bringing me with her. We stayed with May and her husband Floyd for a few days and they showed us around their community and shared some of the sights within the 'Golden Circle'. The Golden Circle is an area of national monuments, parks, culturally significant sites for the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni peoples, and tourist attractions that is situated around the Grand Canyon. There is so much to see in this area, hence why we have returned to it (a second visit for me, the third for Nicole). 

Our plan today is to surprise May at her school. 

A 'Chapter' is the administrative body that looks after sections of the Navajo Nation

Driving into the Navajo Nation results in the aforementioned time change (daylight savings). This reservation is the largest of all the lands held by tribes in America, and it stretches across more than one state. Everything within the reservation (or 'rez' as the locals often call it) is run by the Navajo people. Land is not bought but granted or temporarily settled, so it is not uncommon to see kit homes or traditional hogan-shaped buildings dotted alongside the highway in a scattered configuration that stands in opposition to the rigid organisation of European or western settlements. Unlike some of the neighbouring tribes, such as the Hopi, the Navajo are nomadic so permanent settlement is not part of their tradition.

Navajo stalls alongside the highway sell handmade crafts like rugs, jewellery, art and local food.

When we get to Tuba City our plan gets snagged on something we didn't know: today is a parade day. Navajo police have blocked off the road that leads to the school and hundreds of people line the streets with umbrellas to keep the sun off. 

Nicole and I instantly begin to panic. What if May isn't at school today? What if school isn't on at all due to the parade? What if May and Floyd aren't even home? Have we wasted our trip to Tuba City by not contacting May first?

Luckily, Nicole's memory of the area is near-photographic, and she takes us in a wide loop around the main part of town and then drives up into the back of the parade. We park our rental car with all the huge pick-up trucks and walk through the crowd towards the school. I don't know about Nicole, but as one of only two white people amongst the hundreds of Navajo onlookers (and dressed in my favourite hawaiian shirt), I feel the intense gaze of a lot of curious and suspicious eyes. Maybe I'm just being needlessly self-conscious, but then again - from the outside we don't look all that different to white Americans, who I can imagine aren't always hugely popular with the Navajo. 

The school is quite large, servicing families from a large radius and catering to grades Kindergarten to Year 8. We sign in and wander around the quiet hallways for a bit... the school is completely empty as all the kids have gone out to the parade. Nicole remembers where May's room is and we catch her walking into it.

"Surprise!" After a moment of realisation, the look on her face is great. Totally worth our earlier anxiety. 

She explains to us that everyone has come into Tuba City for Homecoming. I have this American tradition explained to me several times over the course of the next few hours but I have to admit, I still don't really get what it is. From what I can gather, it's when two high school football teams play a grudge match against each other. May takes us out to the school's fence so we can watch some of the pick-up trucks slowly come down the street. Each one has a teenage couple sitting on the roof, and they throw candy out to all the people. Some street vendors have also set up alongside the road, selling traditional snacks such as pinon nuts and tamales.

May's classroom

May then quickly takes us back into her classroom so we can beat the kids back. We spend the next hour and a half talking to her Year 7 and Year 8 classes about Australia while the kids fidget with bags full of candy that they filled from the Homecoming parade. We talk about language differences, introducing Aussie terms like "G'day", "canteen", "dunny", "lollies" and "biscuits". The kids ask us a whole range of amazing questions about Australian fast food, sport, animals and pastimes. I draw a funnel-web spider on the board while Nicole tells them about one she transported to a spider drop-off centre. At least one student in each class cheekily tries to ask us about snakes, but Nicole and I are already aware of the Navajo taboo surrounding them, so we quickly move them on to another subject. One boy asks us to say something in our language and I awkwardly explain that we're already speaking in our language. Another boy reprimands him, "They're not aliens!"

Each class also sings us a song in Navajo. May has the second of these classes sing us the morning song, a song that we learned on our last visit. Some of the girls in the middle row stare and laugh at us when they see us sing along.

It's a whole bunch of fun and I thank May for the opportunity to see her classes. 

The school is currently gearing up for Native American Awareness Week

Navajo language is one of the most unique and difficult-to-master languages in the world. In WWII, the American Army famously enlisted the help of the Navajo to come up with a code that the Japanese would be unable to break. Many of the Navajo code talkers come from this area of the Navajo Nation but, sadly, despite its significance to American history, the language is now in decline. There are fluent speakers within May and Floyd's generation, and Floyd is often required to use the language in his political work, but many of the younger generation do not speak the language outside of school. It's a beautiful and musical-sounding language, with several sounds that are completely unknown to English speakers, and perhaps even more difficult to write than it is to speak.

A Navajo Code Talkers colouring book.

Navajo painting

We have dinner with May and Floyd at the Cameron Trading Post, where we are also staying the night. The Trading Post has a great array of Navajo food, the best of which involve frybread - a deep-fried kind of flatbread that tastes a bit like batter and is often served with a liberal helping of salt.

Blue Bird flour is one of the key ingredients in frybread. The Trading Post sells a lot of it. 

I had Chili Beef with frybread, it was pretty great. I removed the packets before eating the bread.

Nicole had Hot Beef Frybread, which was recommended by a nice science teacher we met at the school.

After dinner, when the almost-full moon is high in the night sky, May and Floyd take us out to their clan's land.

We take a quiet, unlit dirt road into the desert, across a dry creek-bed that they refer to as a 'wash', and arrive at a large circular clearing ringed by sagebrush. This is a place where May's family come to meet. In the centre is a traditional oven and a pit that has been dug to slow-cook meat. One of the most common meats in Navajo cuisine is mutton (which is unusual when you consider that you don't see lamb or mutton anywhere else in America), but May is excited by the prospect of slow-cooking a whole beef in the pit in two weeks from now. 

There is also a large cleared area where a 30 ft teepee gets raised on special occasions, and two permanent hogans. The hogan is the traditional building for the Navajo, and there are two sorts - the male and the female. The male hogan is a spherical building with a landing that juts out of it, and the female hogan is a octagonal or circular building with an apex roof. Both buildings always have their doorways facing east, for the sun. 

Floyd takes us into his male hogan and shows us how it was created using only wood, mud and bark. The hogan is evidently very special to him and he tells a very touching story about its construction.

As we stand outside afterwards it becomes clear to me that I am in contact with a culture and history that predates my own by many thousands of years, and I feel very lucky and humbled. This land is so far from anything in my own personal life in nearly every way.

Floyd tells us about the journey of the Navajo people into creation (what they call the fourth world) and I hear a coyote howling in the distance.

Cameron Trading Post

Our room at the Cameron Trading Post, easily the nicest place we have stayed at so far.

Garden at the Cameron Trading Post.

May and Floyd return us to the Cameron Trading Post and give us some tips for our travels tomorrow, and then we bid them farewell - a little sad that we can't spend more time with them but also thankful that we got to see them again after our last visit.