“I want you to spread outside that we exist”

Just another indescriptible time in this lovely town (once I told village and have been corrected instantly “this is a town not a village”). Using the right words is not an easy task for an outsider, as I am. Telling the right stories is even harder. I do believe that it’s only when Ittoqqortoormeermii (local inhabitants) talk for themselves and share their own stories that we’re really showing respect. It’s hard to show through pictures the kindness that dwells the place. It’s not even possible to capture the smiles that walks the streets. Well, on my first week back here, I even didn’t payed attention to the landscape, almost bored by the magnificence. The smiles of last year begins to be talks and sometimes closer relationships. Some people were missing from my last time here, some were finally met at the airport, because this landscape will be nothing without them, without the warmness at the interstice of the shyness (including mine), without the laugh hidden up the barrier of language (my progress in East Greenlandic are so slow). Three weeks here feels so short, but short enough to nurture the wish to be back. One day I picture myself staying for a while, the other I miss my world. I tame this alternative lifeworld, while I admire the coexistence of many worlds I can navigate in, often without understanding them. Those worlds are not that impermeable, they all deserve to exist and to be shared. Many people told me “I want you to spread outside that we exist”. Quite a lot told me it’s a easy life up there, far from our imaginaires of the North being inhospitable and harsh. I don’t know if the outsider I am would say so.