All the Small Things

My time in the countryside was not one of sweeping epiphanies and life changing experiences.  Going into the homestay, it was hard not to have those high expectations because of the nature of the environment and the lifestyle.  I think I expected the sky to cleave in two and Mongolian spirits to descend from mountaintops to personally tell me the meaning of success, man’s relationship with nature, and what I should do about it.  I tempered those expectations with doses of reality, and unsurprisingly, it was the day to day life of the steppe that shaped my experience there, not thunder nor lightning nor shamanic spirits.  Undoubtedly, it is part of a life changing experience, but I don’t think I will realize extent of its influence for months and years

A short list of little things:

My mom boiling milk on the black wood stove in the ger.  The stove has a built in hole in the top that large metal pans, like woks, can fit into.  After the milk boils, it has to cool, and so my mom would stand over the milk with a pink, plastic ladle, scooping up milk and pouring it back into the mix, a white ribbon releasing steam into the ger.  The steam would curl over the pan and up and around my mom, softening the bright colors of the ger.

Slurping milk tea out of bowls.  My mom would make the tea every morning, boiling water and adding an unnoticeable amount of tea leaves and just enough milk to color the water white.  It was delicious and comforting, even though hers had little taste, and we kept it hot in thermoses all day.  The Mongolians are not quiet eaters, and something is wrong with the food if you don’t loudly slurp it up.  And the thermoses were very effective at keep the tea hot, so slurping was the most effective cooling method.

My brother wrapping himself in his deel every day.  Urban Mongolians don’t really wear deels, but herders do, and my brother had two he would alternate between.  He would put the deel on over his street clothes and then wrap a golden, dirty sash around his waist.  He would wrap the sash a few times, locking it into place, and then he would twist and turn clockwise, adjusting the width of the sash with each turn.  His method was expert, the product of thousands of days on the steppe.

The stars at night.  With no light pollution, they sparkled like a million pieces of glitter, with the milky way slashed right down the middle.

My brother and sister standing on the small wooden stools used in the ger for just about everything, relaxing, cooking, milking, eating, and talking, and text their friends on their cell phone.  The service on the steppe is very poor, so the cell phone would be tied to a rafter in the ger, with a small piece of wire rigged to the antenna for slightly better reception.  The cellphone’s blue light would illuminate their faces, in stark contrast to the warm yellow light of the ger, as they looked at the screen.  When someone would call, they would put the caller on speaker phone so the phone could stay as high as possible and talk loudly into the speaker.  Still, the caller would fade in and out of static, and most calls were dropped a few times.

Heating leftovers in the morning.  Usually for dinner we would eat simple flour and water noodles with meat, and sometimes potatoes.  When we didn’t everything,  the next morning we would scoop some noodles into a bowl and then pour in some milk tea.  It was surprising ling effective and delicious, and as I ate, I couldn’t help but imagine reheating an American dinner in the same manner.  American food has too many flavors, few of which are complimented by a weak tea, and American kitchens have so many amenities that we would have never been forced to reheat with tea in the first place.