Saturday, November 3rd, 2007
SO, I’ve updated the research page with my final ISP proposal, as well as one of the previous iterations. The last week has been completely INSANE, trying to finish up all our “regular” work on top of finalizing ISP topics and arranging all our travel plans/translators/budget/etc… So I finally have a wikiplan for the month.
I’ll be studying animal skin and meat changers (mongolian: chenjuud), they’re raw material traders who travel around buying stuff from herders or other changers, then selling to other changers or factories or whomever. My plans right now are to hang out in UB for the next few days, spending some time at these two huge raw materials markets on the East and West outskirts of the city (1hr drive with bad traffic); Emeelt is on the West, and is where all the traders from Western aimags come to do biznizz; vice-versa for Nalaikh on the east side, which trades with the Eastern aimags. I’m hoping to get some contacts with changers in UB that I can meet with and chat, get an idea how things work. Then I leave on Monday for Darkhan, the third largest city in Mongolia (not saying much, 76,000). I’ll spend a couple days there (staying with the uncle of one of our language teachers, along with another student and her translator) visiting a sheepskin coat factory, and hopefully talking to some changers while I’m there. Then back to UB, and onwards to Kharkhorin, the ancient capital of the Great Mongolian Empire (known in the West as Kharakhorum). In Kharkhorin I have a homestay with a changer! Which is gonna be awesome. So he’s super busy right now because all the farmers are slaughtering their animals, since there’s been predictions of a harsh winter coming up. So there’ll be plenty of activity for me to tag along and watch. I’ll spend a week or so there, then onwards to Tsetserleg where I’m staying with the family of one of our teacher’s wife. Their whole extended fam lives there, so they know pretty much everyone, and can hook me up with contacts and such. Then on the 18th its back to UB to write, and visit some factories here since I prolly won’t have time before I leave.
Phew. Well I gotta run since its 1am and I still have to walk home (or is it worth 50 cents for a taxi…). Anyways, sorry about not getting any recent photos up, but its super slow where I have wireless, and when I don’t its just too confusing putting photos on my flash drive, then only getting some uploaded, but not being sure which ones… blah blah. So y’all will have to wait until I get back to UB… or maybe the states. heh…
Hope all’s well. And by all means, send emails or drop comments here! And I’d be happy to respond to questions and stuff too…
Monday, October 29th, 2007
So Halloween fast approaches, and with it, our ISP period. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
I haven’t written much about the last few weeks, which I should, but I’m thinking I’ll probably just type up some of my journal entries, since they give a pretty good picture of some aspects of life here. We went on a whirlwind trip down to Khamrind Khiid (Monaster) in the Gobi, and saw the shambala (108 stupas, and a place to cleanse your karma), a museum dedicated to Danzanravja, the Gobi Saint (he was a lama who lived in the Gobi in the 19th c. and built Mongolia’s first theater, among other things), and some dinosaur bones and petrified wood. The train ride was wild, we spent more time traveling than we did in the Gobi!
Otherwise, I’ve been living with a family here in the city, in the 13th microdistrict (I’ll have to post a map of the city at some point as well, and some photos of the neighborhood are forthcoming). My father is an Evangelical Christian pastor, who has his own church; he also runs the Mongolian Bible society, which is responsible for maintaining a Mongolian language version of the Bible (its NRSV I believe, which is pretty progressive). He was actually one of the lecturers during our religion week, so we all knew who he was when I found out I was living with him. He’s not so extreme, but still, it was pretty insane at first. Anyways, I have 3 host bro’s 13, 11 and 20, and one who’s 25 or so and lives in a ger district by himself (he’s a starving artist, which is awesome). My mom works at the Bible society as a translator, and likes talking to me in English that is only barely better than my Mongolian, which is frustrating. Our apartment is actually pretty nice, it’s on the ground floor of one of the 80’s stalinist apartment buildings, and has 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and living room (where I stay). They have a TV, a pretty nice computer (and digital camera etc…) and lots of German stuff, since both my parents studied in East Germany. My host father was actually studying to become a vet at first, but he decided to switch to theology. I’ll write more about church later, maybe. I’ve been twice, once to the adult morning service, and once to the youth (teenager) service, both led by my host dad. The youth service was much more interesting because my eldest brother, Sotou, helped us follow along in an English language bible, as well as translating some of the most important words so we could at least follow the main ideas of the service. I had a friend, Kevin, who came too, so I guess it was due to our accumulating a critical mass, but a few times my father paused to give a quick English synopsis of what he’d been talking about. It was a little unnerving to be the focus of attention, but it was worth having a clue what was happening. My mongolian isn’t bad, but it’s not quite sermon-level…
On another note, we had our final language exam today, which went amazingly well. I’m not sure what “level” I’m at officially, but I can hold a pretty decent conversation about anything not requiring special vocab. The key is that my grammar has gotten good enough that I can figure out at least an awkward way to say most things, and finding the vocab is easy since most people I talk to speak some English (yeah, kinda lame, but I think it’s actually helped me learn to some extent, since they can explain what we do wrong). Sooo, ISP…
I went through about 4 different topics in the 36 hours leading up to our proposals being due (thursday), and met with three different people, all of whom have agreed to advice me on different topics… O_o I settled on studying regional development, with a focus on the far western aimags (provinces), specifically Hovd. I plan to travel out west for two weeks or so to chat with the aimag governer, as well as some of the soum governers (smaller division than a province), and regular people. The lady I will hopefully be bringing to translate (my Mongolian isn’t nearly good enough to conduct an academic interview… but I’ll be able to follow along decently) is actually from Hovd herself, and used to be a language teacher at SIT. I’m meeting her this afternoon, so we’ll see how that goes. But overall, I’m still pretty mixed about my topic, since it feels a bit like a compromise. But at this point I really need to move on and just get started researching. I’m hoping that especially once I’m out west, I’ll be able to find some neat angles from which to look at things to make the project more interesting and engaging. I hope.
UB is getting colder, much colder. It’s pretty much below freezing all the time, though midday can be a bit warmer. Also, the smog that hovers permanently over the city in the colder months is rapidly accumulating, turning once lush views of surrounding mountains and hills into a hazy, sulfurous blur, even at night. The air doesn’t feel too bad yet, but we’ve been told during the coldest months you can taste coal in your mouth by the time you get to school (20-30 minutes), provided you’re walking outside. The cause of the pollution is mostly the scores of gers that blanket the land surrounding the city center for kilometers in all directions (except the areas with cleaner air, where the rich people build their mansions and keep their many landcruisers). Since there’s no wood left, people burn mostly coal in small metal stoves, that aren’t very efficient, and are running constantly to keep the frigid Mongolian winter at bay.
Gotta run, time to meet my new translator… more later
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
I find myself agreeing with what I heard from Ueli Minder, CEO of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition in Mongolia, that the most important development issue in today’s Mongolia is its crisis of identity. Much like the representatives we met from an Evangelical Christian, a Catholic and a Russian Orthodox church, Ueli spoke of the receding tide of communism leaving a people stripped of their inner strength and belief system, thus lacking an identity in a harsh new world. To make matters worse, Mongolians are now suddenly open to the barrage of culture and information from which the Iron Curtain had shielded them, “its not just the lifting of the pressure, it’s the moving of a completely different world, with all the television, with all the Western, European, American values and which come in a completely unrealistic way.” Eager to fill this newly created spiritual vacuum, missionaries from various Christian sects have descended upon Mongolia; according to Father Aleksei, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Mongolia, some are actively destroying the Mongolian identity. He cited an example of the result such destruction brings: the suicide of several young Mongolians in the name of Jesus Christ.
The basis of the identity and moral crisis in Mongolia is in the psychological effects of a people under dictatorial rule. With the ever-present eye of the government dominating one’s life, it becomes easiest to simply yield ones thoughts and beliefs to control from above: “How fear can destroy the human mind: trust and communication, everything.” Ueli gave an example from a Christian friend of his who was holding discussion groups, and discovered trust no longer had any meaning to young Mongolians; in Ueli’s words: “They didn’t know what it means. Trust… that hinders so much people to grow internally. Because they even don’t trust themselves.” Moreover, Mongolia’s ability to navigate a path into the future is dependant on her relationship to this dark history, “Here in Mongolia… I think only with dealing with the reality, also admitting what went wrong, they can really find out again what they are, and what they want to be.” This theme was echoed in a modern context by Mr. Ganbaatar, head of the CMTU, who lamented the rise of “crazy capitalism”, and expressed his wish that Mongolians take ownership of their country, and thus of their own destiny. Instead, a growing number are turning to outsiders to shoulder this burden, blaming the country’s problems on foreign businesses.
Ueli, much like the representatives of the three other religions, sees his role in the solving of this problem as primarily educational. In addition to teaching about Mahayana Buddhism, Ueli has taken advantage of his background in teacher education to affect some real positive change in the education system. After holding a seminar with several other religious groups on the family, alcohol and values, several teachers approached him pleading, “Do this more with us! We need help with how to teach the kids values, what to do!” Not only is he teaching about values, but also how to teach values, a more sustainable, though skill-intensive approach.
Buddhism also has a role in both the reclamation of Mongolia’s history, as well as the laying of a foundation for the future. By learning about Buddhism, Mongolians are rediscovering a vital aspect of their culture, one virtually eliminated during the socialist era. With the Buddhist education comes also a moral and ethical structure, which with history are vital to the building of a robust Mongolian identity. Ueli has no problem with Mongolians converting to Christianity, if they feel it will help them, but he is distressed when this conversion prevents them from fully reclaiming their history, since Buddhism is perceived as a threat to their new Christian identity. Without truly coming to terms with their history, these Mongolians are building a new identity on a partial foundation, and this results in an identity that is fragile and incomplete.
The phenomenon of growing extreme Nationalism is related to this crisis in identity, and aided by the growth of widespread corruption. During her talk on Democratization, Ms. Undarya talked about the growing fascist movement, with its emphasis on history and a biologically purist, male-centric national identity. Perhaps these young Mongolians are reacting violently to outside encroachment, which they perceive as a threat. Their insecurity and emptiness is activated by the presence of foreigners, which inflames and catalyzes the creation of an über-nationalist identity; this nationalism feeds on the strength of Mongolia’s ancient history, creating a sense of invincibility that is even less compatible with the reclamation of a dark period in history.
For the FPMT and Buddhists in general, their efforts are limited by any stigma associated with the name Buddhism. Even Ueli levels some criticism at the historical status quo in both Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism, and their disconnectedness from society. Especially the mixing of opportunistic capitalism with Buddhism, which he believes has alienated many from looking further. But he also sees Buddhism changing, learning from other religions such as the service-minded Christians. The ability of Buddhism to change with the times, under the guidance of the FPMT and Gandan Monastery (the closest thing to a central authority in Mongolian Buddhism), will determine the future of Buddhism in Mongolia, and the extent to which Christianity is able to fill Mongolians’ identity vacuum before people have a chance to rediscover their historical faith.
Thus, Mongolia faces many challenges on its quest for a new identity. Mongolia must learn about and come to terms with its past, whilst staying afloat in the flood of imagery and culture that has especially deluged its media-saturated youth. Likewise, the poisonous appeal of fascist nationalism threatens to further radicalize the most severely disaffected. Like Ueli Minder, and his colleagues from other organizations said, civic and historical education, whether from schools or religious institutions, is clearly important to the success of this transformation. While each organization has its own particular approach, they will also all gain from working together, as the successful collaboration of the FPMT with other religious organizations showed. This will also foster dialogue between religious groups on other issues, helping to avoid a further polarization of the religious climate. However, in the end, Mongolia’s future rests in the hands of its people, most notably its large demographic of young people; if they succeed in acquiring a stable and secure identity, Mongolia can turn its attention to more technical issues of development. Otherwise, no amount of development studies or technical reports can fix the torn psyche of this people, caught in a flux between multiple worlds.
Friday, October 12th, 2007
So, it’s been a while since I’ve written, and I’ve got a lot to catch up on. I’ll start with a post on our week of Politics lectures, with some general impressions on the plight of Mongolia and some visions of its future. Then I’ll write a few more posts in the coming days about our excursion, and our time in UB. The basic course of events as it stands now has been: return from homestay, in the city we had a few free days, then a week of lectures on politics followed by a 2 week excursion to Erdenet and Khovsgol. Now we’re back in UB for a week of religion lectures before our quick trip to the Gobi. Lastly, we have a 3 week homestay in UB, followed by our ISP.
Politics Week
The politics week was fascinating, though a bit depressing. We got to hear from all kinds of people with different perspectives on Mongolian politics. The speakers were of varying quality, though only one lecture was through translation (the rest in English), but all the speakers had interesting stories to tell, and the Q/A sessions were generally the most interesting parts. A few lectures were attended by students from the University of the Humanities, with whom the SIT program is affiliated. We got to chat with them, and hopefully they’ll be joining us tomorrow night when we celebrate Kevin’s 21st birthday at one of UB’s more ridiculous discos (more on that later. maybe…)
A summary of Politics week speakers: an independent consultant on Civil Society and Gender Analysis on Democritization: Challenges and Opportunities; a former journalist working in corporate media relations/communications at BHP Minerals Asia on Development of Free Press in Mongolia; an MP and leader of the Citizen’s Will Party on Burning Questions of Politics and Social Development; Secretary of ruling MPRP party (former Communist party) on Strategic Choices of Mongolia in the XX Century; the grandson of purged PM P. Genden and founder of the Memorial Museum of Victims of Political Persecution on the Political Purges of the 1930’s, an American responsible for all community relations aspects of the new Oyu Tolgoi mining project from Ivanhoe Mines Mongolia Inc. (my favorite speaker) on an Outsider’s Perspective, he has a strong and sober conceptualization of what is happening in Mongolia; the President of the Confederation of Mongolian Trade Union on From Civil Society Movement to Trade Union, the General Secretary of the Millenium Challenge Account (a $150m 5 year development grant from the US) on The Millenium Challenge Account: What are the Projects?; and lastly another representative from Ivanhoe who is an SIT Mongolia alum (and works under our first Ivanhoe speaker) on the details of the new Oyu Tolgoi project, espectially regarding community relations and public image.
The general perspective I came away with is that Mongolian politics is at a crucial crossroads in its evolution. Democracy is going strong, but pervasive and rapidly growing corruption is threatening to disenfranchise a public already weary of politics from the Soviet era. Economically, the insane amount of revenue that Oyu Tolgoi will generate (if it is approved) will either provide the engine for Mongolia’s development and eventual economic feasibility, or like in so many other resource rich countries, it may simply turn the smoldering corruption into a firestorm engulfing and asphyxiating this young democracy. As my colleague Kevin wisely said “Yeah, I’m both super scared and super excited.”
Whether the civil society movement can get its act together and pressure the government to clean up its act seems to be the big question. Yet the woman who came to talk to us from the forefront of the civil society movement almost left Mongolia out of depression at the state of things two years ago, and says that now, if anything, things are getting worse. There is an election approaching that will decide the country’s fate; if the corruption has reached a critical level, then electoral fraud will be rampant and MPRP will stay in power and the light at the end of the tunnel will dim; if the election is fair, and the MPRP monopoly is broken, then there is hope: Mongolia’s fate will then depend on the opposition groups’ ability to rule maturely and restore the public’s faith in democracy.
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
The following is a paper I wrote following our homestay in Delgerkhaan, as a reflection on the experience, as well as a summary of the results of our two interviews, which we had to complete during the stay. Note that a bit of this is redundant since I borrowed a few pieces from my previous blog post, but it’s mostly new stuff.
I rested my hands on my legs, perched solidly on the footrests of my host father’s motorcycle as we sped through the night. The cool air soothed my skin, each molecule a reminder of the authenticity of the moment, and my very mortality. The motorcycle’s lone headlight danced its way across the steppe; I leaned back, resting my hands on my knees, and gazed up at the endless starry dark. My stomach full of ?????? (boodog, Mongolian roasted goat), ?????? ??? (suutei tsai, milky tea), ????? (airag, fermented mare’s milk) and ???? (arhi, vodka), I smiled at the uniqueness and beauty of this experience, and drank in the Mongolian night.
My time in ?????????? (Delgerhaan) was laced with solitary gems such as this motorcycle ride, amidst a number of much less outwardly positive experiences. Even that very night, I had convinced myself that my host father ?????????? (Enhamgalthan) had gone to the goat roast without me. He had left without warning a few minutes before 9pm, when the event was supposed to start; by 10:30pm, I wrote an angry journal entry and began readying for bed. Yet he returned just as suddenly as he had left, bursting into the ger and declaring, “????!” (Yavii!, Let’s Go!). I wrote another journal entry the next morning, in which I laughed at my own predictability. I was so paranoid at being left out, that I had talked myself into a frustrated rage; counter-productive behavior by any measure. Yet in my defense, I had little reason to take my father at his word, for I had already seen the Mongolian penchant for spontaneity. I don’t know now what I could reasonably have done, other than live in the moment, and take things as they were without angst or drama. Which is easier said than done.
My family consisted of my father, ??????????, mother, ????????? (Ochirchimeg), two seven year old sisters, ??????????? (Dolgorsuren) and ????????? (Lhamsuren), and one year old ??????????? (Lhagvasuren) (nicknamed air-raid siren partway through the homestay). Our ger was the most remote, with no visible neighbors in any direction. We had a solar panel that powered a light at night, as well as a small flat-screen TV and its satellite receiver. The TV was usually on. For transportation we had a Chinese motorcycle, a Toyota sedan with a cracked windshield thanks to curious goats, and an old pickup truck that guzzled gas and was used for mainly for storage and meat drying, as well as moving. My host mother’s parents lived in the ??? center. After a few days, school began, and everyone except ?????????? went to live in town. They returned briefly for the weekend, but otherwise it was basically just ??????????, the herd and me.
Daily life involved lots of sitting around while ?????????? went out and herded his flock of several hundred sheep and goats, and a few dozen cattle. Or going out with him to herd the sheep and goats, or cows. Every morning he would drive them out onto the steppe to graze for the day while I ate breakfast. Then at night we’d ride out on horseback and herd them home. The calves were kept in a pen to prevent them from nursing during the night. In the morning, ????????? would milk the cows, then let the calves out. Other duties included gathering ?????, which is the primary fuel source, either with my two seven-year-old host sisters or alone (after the first few days they went to the district center for school); fetching water, which meant riding on the back of ??????????’s motorcycle to the river, filling up the water jug, then riding back with it perched precariously between my legs; cooking dinner (once ????????? and the kids had gone to the ??? center), which meant peeling potatoes, rolling out the dough for noodles, and slicing onions; and sweeping up the ger. I also appointed myself resident fly-assassin, and spent many minutes pacing in circles around the ger, long underwear in hand, hunting for flies to eliminate. As the day warmed, they would work into a frenzy, turning the inside of the ger into a hellish swarm (see poem). Somehow my family was able to ignore these winged menaces, but I admitted defeat in this regard as soon as I began my quest to eliminate as many flies as possible. I thought about this at the time, but didn’t reasonably believe I could achieve this during my two-week homestay. So the flies had to go. I couldn’t really stand to be in the ger during the mid-day frenzy, so I’d often sit outside on a rug and do my homework. This was another concession as I let the silence of my family, the language barrier, and the flies limit my immersion and connection to the family. On the other hand, most days I was home alone, or with my seven-year-old sisters, who were often playing outside anyways.
As the homestay progressed, I was given more and more responsibility herding the animals. This was at least partly due to our mother being gone, meaning one of us had to stay at the ger to cook dinner. Herding was definitely one of the highlights of the homestay for me. Herding the animals was meditative, especially when I was sent out alone. Trotting behind the jostling mass of animals, I would watch the sky melt into a rhapsody of color as the sun set behind me. I also quickly dispelled any romantic notions of life as a ??????, when I helped separate our herd from another, sometimes twice in one day. Yet the tiredness I felt was far different than that produced by the grind of academia at home; it was physical, and much more satisfying. I could look outside the ger and see the animals I had herded in from the steppe. I knew I was making a contribution, and every ache reminded me so. Also, by the end I had a much less romantic view of the animals themselves: one day I made a note in my field journal, “Poem title: ‘I Want to Kill You, Goat’” (Field Journal, 9/12/07, p.127).
My kinship and family history interviews showed little difference between my host-father’s family tree and one I might construct of my own family. On first thought this was unremarkable to me, but then I realized it really is quite strange. For a people that have lived in the same land for 2000 years to have so little connection to their past is unusual. I think now it may be due to the Soviet policy of eliminating family names and discouraging family heritage. It’s sad to think such a policy would be effective, but from the family tree I saw it appeared to be the case. Then again, my father also didn’t appear distraught at his lack of knowledge, nor eager to find out more. He seemed quite content simply knowing that he was descended from ??????? ???? (Chinggis Haan). No further detail or origin myths were needed.
My free choice interview was about Nationalism and Mongolian Identity and was one of the most frustrating afternoons of the homestay. The quiet nature of my host father made it difficult to get anything more than a few words in response to even general questions. Partly this may be due to the fact that as a herder, he rarely has to think about such abstractions as what it means to be Mongolian. Also surprising was his lack of opinion on most matters, whether it be the future career of his daughters, or city life. Regarding modernization, he showed a very different conception of Mongolian identity. He was clear that clothing, music, even language were unimportant, and modernization’s effects in the city to that regard were not alarming. The one change that he saw as a threat was one of belief; namely, the growing Christian influence. He mentioned his fear that religion changes people’s thoughts, beliefs, and acts as a divisive force in Mongolian society.
Also, the interview gave an interesting view of ??????????’s nationalism and sense of Mongolian identity. He had already mentioned the importance of descent from ??????? ???? in his family history interview, and this resurfaced again during the second interview. In response to the question, “What does it mean to be Mongolian?” he answered that it was to be descended from ??????? ????. As discussed in Johanna Twersky’s ISP, this shows the importance of lineage over citizenship, supporting the primordial definition of nationalism over that of civic responsibility. This is supported by a quote from Twersky’s interview with Lhamsuren, “Mainstream thought is still that a nation is determined by citizenship [as introduced into the Mongolian consciousness by the Soviets], however the Mongolian instinct seems to be to return to lineage” (Johanna Twersky, “Highlights and Shadows: The Development of a Country Fixed in Tradition”, Spring 2005, p.13).
Regarding modernization, ?????????? also had the view that “it is good”. This combined with his sense of nationalism, in his desire to take part in the reawakening of Mongolia, and its eventual return to the greatness of its past. I was a bit confused by this at first, since he seemed to be extolling modernization, yet living the anti-modern lifestyle. Finally, I learned that he intended to pursue education in UB and establish a dairy farm. Yet he maintained the importance of the nomadic life, and expressed his desire to somehow create a hybrid of sedentary farming and nomadic life—a new nomadism. He clearly exhibited a flare for the meritocratic aspects of democratic life, as he mentioned in our interview that Soviet times were better for the lazy. Now, those willing to work can see reward for their efforts, and according to ??????????, can feel proud to be helping make Mongolia the great nation its people still remember in their hearts.
The mapping exercise showed a stark difference between my father’s idea of a map and my own. The most obvious difference is attention to detail, and varying types of accuracy. Clearly, the language barrier prevented a more thorough communication of my request for him to draw a map. While I was instructed to include a scale and proper symbols, he was merely told to draw a map of 150m around his home. Thus, the resulting pictures can’t quite be compared directly. Yet I know I would have drawn a very similar map even without such specific directions, thus much of the analysis still holds. I spent the majority of my time calculating the map scale, and ensuring that my drawing conformed to such a scale. My father excluded a scale, and spent much more time symbolizing the entities, rather than placing them in space. That is, I made sure the square I drew to represent the truck was in just the right place, and was about the right size; meanwhile my father made sure the truck was detailed enough to be clearly identifiable as his truck, as well as differentiable from the car parked nearby. This showed our vastly different perspectives. My map was a vertical perspective, highly abstracted, and highly accurate to ensure the transferability of its information to other contexts. My father’s map was much more human-scaled, and directly relatable to his life, rather than to the world standard of what a map should look like.
My time on the steppe was real. Among other things, it had the important function of dislodging any romantic notions I had of life on the steppe. Much as I hypothesize in my ISP proposal, I believe those who have urbanized often conjure a rosy view of the rural life, especially where such a life is so important to national identity. ?????????? showed that he appreciates the importance of this lifestyle, yet also has a strong desire to modernize, and make a better life for himself and his family. More importantly, he sees this as completely within the realm of possibility, and does not share my fear that the nomadic lifestyle is under threat (except from climate change). Personally, I was tested in many ways, and forced to adapt to a completely new, and sometimes hostile environment. Most difficult of all was checking my expectations at the door, the most nefarious of cultural baggage. I repeatedly found myself frustrated when what I expected to happen—even if that expectation was completely reasonable—didn’t. Learning to cope with these unfulfilled expectations would make life in any culture more pleasant and peaceful, even in the United States where ambiguous expectations may not be culturally accepted, but are still a fact of life.
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
The day before yesterday we returned from our nomadic homestay. Two weeks out on the steppe, living in gers with nomadic herding families. Each of us lived with a different family, and met every day or so in small groups for language classes (I was in a group by myself). Otherwise, we helped the families with their daily lives, and watched the world revolve and the grass grow. Wrote a lot, studied Mongolian, watched crappy TV (my family was the only one with a TV). Ate lots of mutton. Also, a constant theme of much overseas travel, our group was wracked with gastrointestinal chaos periodically. Somehow I managed to not get food poisoning or bad diarrhea, not sure how/why, but I was certainly the only one to escape relatively unscathed. I wouldn’t say I was healthy, but compared to the others, I was in excellent shape. The food was quite rough… basically the same thing for all meals. Some form of soup made with dried meat (sheep or goat), potatoes and lots and lots of salt. Maybe a carrot. Maybe. Also, there were often noodles made of flour. And LOTS of fat. LOTS. Also, following a slaughter, there’d be a bowl of boiled organs on the center table with a knife. To eat, one merely takes knife and organ in hand and slices some delicious morsels (riiight). So now I’ve eaten… sheep heart, spinal chord, liver, blood sausage (intestines filled with blood, then boiled. Like blood-jello?), lung, and probably some other things that I couldn’t identify anatomically. But that wasn’t a regular occurrence (though it was my first meal on the steppe).
Daily life involved lots of sitting around while my host-father (Enkhamgalan) went out and did stuff. Or going out with him to herd the sheep and goats, or cows. Every morning he would drive them out onto the steppe to graze for the day. Then at night we’d ride out on horseback and herd them home. The calves were kept in a pen to prevent them from nursing during the night. In the morning, Ochirchimeg (host-mom) would milk the cows, then let the calves out. Other duties included gathering argal (dried cow and horse poo), which is the primary fuel source, either with my two seven-year-old host sisters or alone (after the first few days they went to the district center for school); fetching water, which meant riding on the back of Enkham’s motorcyle to the river, filling up the water jug, then riding back with it perched precariously between my legs; cooking dinner (once Ochirchimeg and the kids had gone to the Soum center), which meant peeling potatoes, rolling out the dough for noodles, and slicing onions; sweeping up the ger; also, I appointed myself resident fly-assassin, and spent many minutes pacing in circles around the ger, long underwear in hand, hunting for flies to eliminate. There were SO MANY. Being woken up by flies landing on you is quite the experience. Also, as the day warmed, they sorta went crazy. I couldn’t really stand to be in the ger during the mid-day frenzy, so I’d often sit outside on a rug and do my homework.
I’ll write another post with more details and reflections, but for now here are some poems I wrote during the homestay. (Disclaimer: These are all rough, and still need revision. Comments and critique are encouraged.)
These first two were from the first week when I was still getting used to things, and getting frustrated at the pressure to chronicle that often accompanies journaling. Things got better with time, though. And they’re meant to be tongue-and-cheek.
When to Write?
Never write in the morning, for it will ruin the rest of the day.
Write only before empty short
meaningless existential
times.
When depressing frustration suffocates only the small
electric potential of
empty space.
Mood
fucking writing draws me into
the black abyss of fuck-all moods.
A fly crawls across my neck and
I welcome its retching and sucking
with dark, sado-masochistic pleasure.
The sun warms my skin, slowly
twisting blueprints into a
carcinogenic state of chaos
Alright, now for the nice, normal poems 
The Herd
One mass, assembled
A stream of fleece
Flowing, bound by ground
Horse and voice
Ger
An architecture whose elegance
Could only emerge from Time’s
Eternal forge, casting
Function, form, philosophy.
Swarms of flies, driven mad by midday sun
Melt silence into winged static.
Timelessness embodied in its chests,
The malchins’ mournful voice serenades his herd;
A wood-framed home in a woodless land.
Ode to Pepto
O Pepto, how gracious thou art
Calming the stomach’s sea
Thy fair complexion glows as a rose in Spring
Thy taste, as sweet as the finest chalk.
Mongol Khel
A slurry,
frozen sounds cascading from blurred lips;
A blank stare and painful silence hang.
The mind reels, frantic
In its parsing, permutating,
Semblance-searching, stirring
The soup of memory,
Murky in its endless depths.
Lastly, a quote from one of my fellow voyagers:
“What a fucking ridiculous place.” -Kevin James Close
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
So I’m alive. And in Mongolia.
Yeah, I’m in Mongolia… still hasn’t quite hit home. I mean, I’m getting used to the idea, but walking down the street and looking around feels more like a vivid dream than reality.
The group I’m here with consists of five other students, 5 guys (including me) and one girl. All are complete losers. Just kidding. By far the most positive aspect of the trip so far has been the incredible group dynamic. As Kevin said the other day, he feels like we’re all old friends from school (after only a week), a sentiment I can echo wholeheartedly. We’ll see if things are still so rosy after a few months of close contact… but I have high hopes. A quick run-through of the group: Kevin is the red-head, and one of two from Carleton. He’s a religion major, has a girl waiting for him at home, and is completely obsessed with frisbee. Oh, and he’s from Salt Lake City, so we look to him when we need tips on fending off raucous mormons (just kidding). The other Carletonite is Adam, a chemistry major, also with girlfriend, who hails from the bourbon-soaked land of Kentucky. Andrew is a Swarthmore linguistics major who will hopefully provide us with his throat-singing debut during the ISP presentations at the end of the semester. He is also the resident hilarious-quote-generator. More of those to come later (if you’re lucky). Ethan is the quietest of the group, but when he speaks his dry sense of humor usually sets the rest of us into hysterics. He, also, has a girlfriend. (3/6?! Yikes). Last, but most important is Allison, the lady of the group, a biology major from UC Boulder. She keeps the rest of us from misbehaving too badly, and tolerates our juvenile humor.
We arrived on the first leg of the plane trip to Beijing, at around 5 am on the 21st. We decided we’d try to get into the city itself since we had 12 hours to kill until our flight to Mongol-land. I’m running short on time so I’ll make this short… and add more in later posts. Basically we scurried around the airport trying to find Kevin’s laptop, which he left while filling out a customs form. I tried to dredge some Chinese from the dregs of my memory, with a small degree of success, but our efforts at computer-finding were fruitless. Then we had to figure out a) where to go in the city, b) how to get there, and c) how much it would cost (so we could change some money). After meeting some random people who helped us find the right bus, we made our way into Beijing. First stop was the mighty Tianamen Square, which was cool. Not mind-boggling, but definitely worth the effort we put in to get there. We walked around and enjoyed a 50cent 1L Tsing-Tao at 10:30am. Which was fun. Then we went on a quest for food, as I was about to eat my arm. I managed to ask a security guard where we could find restaurants, and he directed us into the heart of a smaller neighborhood. Tianamen Square lies on a busy 4 pseudo-highway, which is sort of odd for somewhere that the bus calls “city center”. I was imagining a densely packed, bustling network of streets and shops and life. Instead it was open, expansive and completely lacking in food (at least along the street). Which at the time was high on my list of concerns. Once on the back streets we passed more than a few restaurants, and ended up deciding on one with nice lions and latticework outside. The ordering of food is a story in itself, one that I’ll save for another time, but once the food came, it was amazing. We had a whole roast Peking duck, a cold beef dish, some “cakes made with fish” (tasty, but we have no idea what they were), and some other stuff I don’t quite recall. After eating we walked back to the bus-stop and caught the airport shuttle back to… yep, the airport. We checked the lost and found one more time, then headed to our gate. Five hours later we were in Mongolia!
Mongolia has been pretty cool so far. Administratively, I’ve been less than pleased with certain parts of the program, namely the language classes. I was hoping that taking two weeks of lessons, for two hours a day (and $25/hour) would allow me to get a head start on things, and hit the ground running. Instead it seems either a) they don’t have a clue what they’re doing, and have no ability to assess what I already know (even though I took a placement test), or b) I learned much less than I thought, and wasted lots of money on lessons. Neither option is heartening. But we’ll see what happens, I’ll have faith in… oh, who are we kidding… I’ll continue to sing doom and gloom and hope events prove me wrong.
Otherwise we’ve spent most our time getting aquainted with the city, and preparing for our first homestay in Delgerkhaan, out on the steppe. We’ve been to Narantuul Market, a dance and music performance, several dinners, and had a tour of the city from our language teachers, a group of young students from the area. I’ll be sure to add more about UB and related happenings when I have more time.
And I’m posting the latest 100 or so photos to my flickr, so head here to admire them!
