KAREN:  Were there ever times when you wanted to quit the job, quit?
 
CLARA:  Well, then, you know, when they want to start training the health aides, I wanted to get off as a volunteer medical aide, I didn't want to go on. 
We had all our kids and -- but a lot of times when I ended up working alone, being the only health aide, it was hard to -- it's hard in the villages to get someone that's interested in it for the work. 

Pretty much now is they need the money, they need to -- you know, if you don't have the money, you have no living. 

KAREN:  Yeah.  What about -- the best thing about being a health aide, what did you like best?  Why did you --

CLARA:  Best thing I liked about being health aide was helping the people, see them recovering from -- you know, you see some pretty sick people and babies, especially.  And seeing them recover and they up and running around again. 

That's -- and delivering babies, new life.  Yeah.  That's -- that's the -- I just, you know, it's just in me.  It came naturally that I -- and I -- that's the only job I'd have, you know.

KAREN:  Yeah. 

CLARA:  I never looked for a better paying other job.  This is what I knew and this is what I wanted. 

KAREN:  So how would you say having been a medical aide and health aide, all that work, how that affected your life? 

CLARA:  It affected my life.  You know, it's not easy for a man to stay home and watch kids and cook for them after coming home from work, and for four weeks, it was hard.  We had a lot of arguments.  But I hung onto it. 

KAREN:  How did it affect you personally?  Who you are as a person? 

CLARA:  I never thought of it.  I don't know  as a person.  I don't know.  I liked what I was doing.  A little fight now and then didn't stop me from doing it.  I always wondered how it affected the family and the kids, you know, being -- being gone all those times. 

KAREN:  Have the kids ever talked about it? 

CLARA:  No.  No.  Until our last -- last -- last child, I was in Bethel for a week of meeting, and then from Bethel I -- I was one of them picked to go to Atlanta, Georgia, for a worldwide Public Health gathering they had there. 
And she said -- and I didn't go home first and then leave, I left from Bethel.  So I was gone for two weeks. 

Before I left from Bethel and I called home, she said, well, do you have to go?  I said, I guess I don't have to go, but they picked me to go, so -- and this is something I, you know, I'll never be able to do.
 
I said, I could ask my supervisor if -- if I can just cancel it and come home.  And she said, but it's your work.  So she survived. 

KAREN:  Yeah.  You mentioned going on medevacs to the villages? 

CLARA:  Uh-hum (affirmative). 

KAREN:  Can you talk a little bit about that. 

CLARA:  Just starting the clinics in the villages, even before they had clinics in the villages, they didn't have the supplies needed, you know, like the stretchers and stuff. 

So at our clinic in Aniak, we had stretchers, they say what kind of condition it is, what we are going to get is put a stretcher on there and a trauma box, everything that's needed, blankets, or sleeping bags or, you know, whatever you need to -- to take care of the problem and medevac them out of the village, you know, warm and things. 

Those planes are small.  185, 175 -- 185 I think they called them.  Just the pilot and the passenger, and then two more seats in the back, they take those out if we need to do a stretcher.  And a stretcher would just fit in there.  So had stuff there at the clinic to -- to take out.

KAREN:  So did you bring those to Aniak? 

CLARA:  Bring the patient -- uh-hum. 

KAREN:  Bring those straight to Aniak?

CLARA:  Depending upon the condition, bring them to Aniak, or just go direct to Bethel from -- from the village.