Barbara Johnson, Part 1, Transcript Section 9

Community Health Aide Program Project Jukebox

Barbara Johnson, Part 1
Transcript Section 9

Back to Interview Outline

Listen to Audio

Next Section

BARBARA: So.

KAREN: So is it hard to find people nowadays who want to become health aides?

BARBARA: Yeah. It is be -- mostly because of the stress, you know.

We've had to go through a lot of health aides, they'd start off really wanting to work, but then they couldn't handle the stress, so they'd quit.

So that I'd have to try to find some more health aides again and the same thing would happen.

And I'm finding that the health aides that were on board a long time ago have been working, you know, longer. Nowadays the younger ones haven't been able to handle the stress as well as we did.

KAREN: Yeah. Have you thought about why that might be?

BARBARA: I don't know. It's just maybe the way we were raised, too, I guess, you know. Because we were raised to respect our -- our elders and respect our parents and, you know, try to live a little better in our own life-style, I guess.

It has to do with our life-style, I think, you know. Because everything is not -- was not as easy as it is now.

You know, when somebody says, well, they spent all day doing laundry, you know, it's a little different than packing the water to put in a tub to wash clothes, you know, all those kinds of things. So we learned to be strong.

And you know, our elders always taught us about, you know, church and how to, you know, keep -- keep going to church and try to do better for ourselves and just to be strong.

And our communities, it all depends, too, if your community backs you up, you know, it makes a lot of difference. Because I know when -- when I first came here, I didn't really have a place to live. I rented a room or a house from my cousin, but he moved back and then I didn't have a place to stay.

I stayed out at the Yakutat Lodge for a while, you know. And they were just good enough to help me, you know, just charged me by the month.

That was during the winter months, fall time, winter, because they weren't as busy then.

But after that, I had to move out of there, and then I was just going to move away, back to Angoon, I guess, and then there was a house that became available.

So the Alaska Native Sisterhood and the Alaska Native Brotherhood wrote letters for me to the Tlingit Haida housing and told them that I was badly needed here. You know. So there was -- there was several letters that went out to them. So they let me --

KAREN: That's nice.

BARBARA: -- get that house, you know. So that's where I'm living now. And taking care of my two grand -- three grandkids, you know. They are teenagers.