Little Bo Peep and Other Lies

Ten hours into the twelve hour car trip from Moron to Erdenet, the driver of our Russian van noticed an animal running across a hillside.  The low sun stretched the figure‘s shadow, and we started to argue: Wolf! Dog! Wolf? Dog!  The animal looked too small to be a wolf, and we continued along the dirt road until our sharp-eyed driver noticed a herd of sheep and goats swell, tighten, and then flee the encroaching shadow.  Wolf! We tumbled out of the van to get a better look through camera lenses, and against the dried grasses covering the hillside a wolf crouched over a freshly killed sheep.

Sheep and goats in Mongolia are indispensable to herding life.  They provide herders with wool, cashmere, leather, and food, and I have to admit this: I hate them.  The endearing stories of Little Bo Peep’s little lambs and Billy the Goat are lies.  These dirty creatures complain constantly, bleating late into the night, and they emphasize their complaints with gaseous intestinal tracts that seemed to mock me every time I had to herd them back towards the ger.  After putting up with the challenges of these animals, I thought that I would enjoy eating them out of spite, just to prove that I had the ultimate upper hand.

I began to question that upper hand the moment I started helping my family butcher a goat.  My family would butcher their goats on the floor of their ger- peeling off the animal’s hide, separating organs, severing the head- without spilling a single drop of blood.  I helped my mom and sister clean the organs.  This means I ladled water down and through lengths and lengths of intestines, cleaning out any grass that was not “fully processed” and held the stomach (turned inside out) so my sister could scrape off its weird, papery membrane with a knife.
My upper hand grew weaker when I saw exactly what parts of the goat I had to eat.  Stomach lining, liver, heart, kidney, intestines, intestines stuffed with other organs, other organs wrapped with intestines all jumbled together in a large bowl.  Thankfully, it was dark.  I sat eating, nibbling on some liver here, some stomach there, occasionally stumbling over a treasured piece of actual meat, and morbidly, I imagined the animal I was eating.  I was already intimately acquainted with it, inside and out, and I remembered poop clumps that had dried into the fur that would have been processed into a cashmere sweater.  I thought of the pitiful bleats and constant farting that I could hear as I tried to fall asleep, and slowly (very slowly) the gerdis (what I was eating) started to taste a little less awful.  Spite works in mysterious ways.
However, the smell had soaked into me, and everything I smelled or tasted had slight hints of goat.  This pervasive smell was only compounded after I spent four hours wrestling, dragging, and throwing sheep and goats into a muddy, de-tick and de-flea wash.  In some ways, it was beautiful; the sun sank below the horizon and after a nearby pond reflected the sky’s fiery array of colors, the stars began to sparkle against the night.  But, as with everything in Mongolia, those beautiful moments were contrasted by the less beautiful as each animal had to be individually dunked in this concrete canal which they all actively resisted by kicking, bleating, and running away.  And, as if the memories alone were not sweet enough, I will carry the scent of goat with me everywhere, as the smell has soaked through my boots.
Whenever we drive through a grazing herd of goats and sheep, I don’t see a hint of Bo Peep or Billy.  Instead, I glare at the weak crook of the sheeps’ necks and their weird, floppy tails, and I grimace at the sound of bleating.  I remember stray hind legs landing and hoof shaped bruises, ribbons of intestines and bowls of blood.  Sheep and goats are not warm cotton balls that will lull you to sleep; they are beasts to be sheared, herded, and eaten with a small side of accomplishment. And needless to say, when I watched the herd flee from the wolf and saw the wolf’s fluffy, woolen victory, I cheered for the wolf.

                                                       

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.

It is hard to describe the vastness of the Mongolian countryside.  Nothing provides perspective; the valleys sprawl for miles, the mountains grow into the horizon in the distance, the plains betray the curvature of the earth.  The land’s vastness is only compounded by the sky; by day the clear blue reflects the land’s width and by night the stars reflect the land’s depth.  Human presence on the land leaves little impression on nature, and unlike cities which dominate the natural landscape, the few gers, round white spots against the steppe, emphasize nature’s greatness.
Those gers, however, reveal man’s ability to live lightly on the land, and I think these nomadic people’s relationship with the land is what makes the steppe so easily romanticized.  Throughout history, man’s relationship with nature has centered around the environment.  We moved with the seasons, with the pasture.  In the modern world, that relationship has shifted to center on humans as we have exploited and extracted more and more from the environment around us.  We have cut down mountains, overturned plains, manipulated plants and animals.  As we shift this relationship from its historical focus, I think that we industrialists yearn for past ways of life at some level.  Mongolia’s nomadic herders have been slow to shift their relationship with the land- they have done what we did not- and I think that the modern world is jealous.  I know that I am.
Nomadic herders still leave their mark on the environment, and with each year, they embrace more and more aspects of modernization and globalization.  Herds of animals graze the land, people litter and burn plastic, and today, cars and motorcycles carve ribbons of roads into the steppe.  But, they eat the foods they grow, or that their neighbors grow, with the exception of sugar, oil, rice, and flour.  They are expert reusers- my mom used the ribbon I tied a present with as a belt to tie her deel, and then it became a toy for a cousin.  They generate little trash and besides gasoline to fuel motorcycles (that get 100km per liter) use renewable energies to heat their gers and power their few electronics.  Dried cow poop fuels the stove that feeds them and warms them, and solar energy charges reuseable batteries that are channeled into televisions and cell phones.
I think that humankind is filled with greatness; we are powerful beyond measure.  We have bent the world to our will.  But we have also abused the earth that has enabled our great civilizations and societies, and we know it.  We know that soon, if not already, we will face the consequences of our heavy foot prints.  Mongolia’s nomadic herder’s of life is harder and quieter than the modern world’s, but it is more sustainable and long lasting. It has already proven the test of thousands of years, while the modern world’s way of living has only proven itself against hundreds of years.  They have manifested their greatness in a way that does not exploit their relationship with the earth, but rather respects it.

Country Living

 I have spent the last two weeks in the countryside southeast of Ulaanbaatar near a small town (population 900) called Delgerhaan living with a nomadic herding family in a ger.  It was filled with bright colors, vast expanses of land, eagles, horses, goat, sheep, and cows, yurts, dairy products, animal organs, sunsets, and stars.  It is a romanticized place, filled with dreams of freedom and adventure, and it deserves much of its praise.  It is also a place filled with families who work hard seven days of week, with people who collapse into a hard bed or onto the hard ground nearly every night.

Best sunsets ever

Inside of the ger

 I would wake up every morning within a few minutes of 7:00 and usually walk to a disconcerting pond filled with grasses, algae, and animal dung to get water to boil for our daily milk tea, which my mom would make in the morning and keep hot in thermoses all day.  After a bowl of tea and homemade yogurt sweetened with sugar, I would help my mom and sister milk cows.  They would do the milking, and I would shovel cow poop (called argol), keep the cows from wandering away, and occasionally round up the herd of goats and sheep.  I would do homework and some chores until the afternoon, then walk through the steppe near our ger to gather dried cow poop to fuel the stove.  I would just spend time with my family in evening as it got darker, listening to them talk and laugh together, talking (or giving it my best attempt) and laughing  with them more and more as  I became more and more a part of the family.  Everyday had plenty of do and also plenty of time to rest and reflect, although somehow I still found little time for homework.  

My family!

 My family was kind and caring, and they welcomed me into their family graciously.  I lived in a ger with my mom and 26 year old brother, and my sister, her husband, and her baby lived about 20 feet away from us in another ger.  My mom would yell from our ger to my sister’s, and somehow they could understand each other through the layers of felt.  In the last few days, my younger brother came to visit from UB, and although he seemed out of place in his collared shirts and sweaters, he could still jump on a horse and gallop across the steppe bareback.   He and my older brother constantly teased each other, and every wrestling match ended in laughter.  My older brother was a competent herdsman who is respected in the family and community.   He could sleep through anything, and he was one of the most patient language teachers I’ve met.  My sister had been a cook in UB until she had her baby, and she was always checking my Enligh-Mongolian dictionary to communicate better.  My mom had a sparkly smile, and she was always working, always busy.  She was almost always in front of the stove, but she was also one of the few women I saw on horseback.  She was constantly telling me to eat more and was proud when I stomached gerdis, boiled intestines and organs.  

Basecamp Rainbow

  Now I am back in UB and I feel like I have been plunged into a cold shower (actually we had cold water in the apartment last night so that is just as much fact as metaphor).  I no longer see the open steppe but rather apartment buildings and construction.  I no longer wake up to my mom starting the morning fire but rather to the beep of my alarm.  I no longer wander around the ger looking for argol to burn but rather walk to school on the busy streets.  Compared to almost anywhere in the world and especially the chaos and bustle of UB, the countryside is a beautiful and inspiring place where daily life is earned in quiet moments and hard work, and I hope I will keep some of that same spirit for the rest of my time here.

 

UB Living

I have been here for just under a month, and so far, I have experienced a little bit of both city life and country living.  In Ulaanbaatar, I live on the top floor of a 16 story apartment building with my 13 year old sister and her two grandparents, as well as her mom who splits her time between our apartment and her own.  The apartment has two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living area with a kitchen, dining table, and large couch and tv.  The building is new (there is even a combination code to get into the elevator), and I have a fabulous view of the city from my window.  Apartment buildings stretch out through the valley, transitioning to a colorful ger (yurt) district  on the hill sides to the north while two coal factories border the view to the West.  Two other SIT students live in the same apartment complex, and sometimes we walk the 45 minutes to school together.

This is the view from my window.

UB

 The city itself is manageable so far.  The traffic is terrible, and the dust and pollution are already noticeable.  I always see a few people wearing masks when I walk outside, and I always wonder if I should be wearing one as well.  The people here don’t smile as much as Americans do, and not speaking the language makes everything a little harder.  But that makes everything an adventure.  The people don’t smile much, but they are kind and helpful.  The weather has been a nice fall with cool mornings and mostly dry hot afternoons.  I have enjoyed the weather and cherished every walk, knowing that soon I will be so bundled up in layers that it will take me ten minutes to take off all my jackets.  The buses and trolleys are not too intimidating, and I haven’t had anything pick pocketed yet.  I am even enjoying the food here which is an accomplishment in itself.

Roads on the Far Side of the World

Sometimes it is easy to forget I’m on the far side of the world.  When I spend time in the school, which is a two story renovated house, with my fellow students and the staff, speaking English and laughing at our paltry attempts to speak Mongolian, it seems like a normal pattern.  We play ping-pong and talk about life at home, getting to know each other.

But sometimes, it is impossible to forget I am on the far side of the world.  The streets distinguish themselves from any I’ve seen in the world, and so far, they have shaped what parts of Ulaanbaatar and Mongolia I have experienced.  For instance, the air here is (for now) warm and dry, filled with dust and exhaust kicked up by the vehicles battling the congestion.  When I walk on the sidewalk, my throat becomes dry, and I spend the walk thinking about the water in my backpack, which is locked to discourage pickpockets.   The sounds of the street fill every building, including my hotel room.  Honking from cars, whistling from police who try to manage the traffic, engines shifting, brakes squeaking.  It is quite engaging, although I can’t say it lulls me to sleep at night.

The roads themselves look like they have been abandoned halfway through a construction project- some potholes are halfway filled with gravel and the sides of the road are torn up, as if someone is about to put down some piping.  But I haven’t seen a single construction worker on the streets. Perhaps they are all been hit by the cars jockeying through the streets, and are unable to continue their work.

People here drive like I have never seen before.  The amount of traffic is similar to that of Indonesia, but there are no motorcycles, only cars, and the bravest and biggest vehicle has the right-of-way.  There are lines on the road, but no one seems to pay attention to them, and there are as many lanes of traffic that need to be.  Today, I saw an uncontrolled intersection with two or three lanes coming from each direction, and there were a lot of cars trying to turn left.  The way they turn left if simply to start turning in front of the oncoming car which either darts around or screeches to a stop with a loud honk, sometimes inches away.  Needless to say, I am thankful not to be driving here.

Walking has its own hazard.  Of course, there is always a threat of being hit by a car, but so far we have walked in a large enough group that vehicles are forced to stop for us.  It’s also a matter of being aware and looking both ways several times.  There is a system.  I haven’t mastered it yet, but with my Bali experience, I’m not too worried.  My favorite trick is to shadow a local person, standing down-traffic of them, and just walking whenever they do.  There are plenty of ways to be safe; its really just a matter of being stupid, because the streets and sidewalks will get the stupid people.

As if traffic weren’t enough, the sidewalks are filled holes, shattered glass, overturned bricks, uncovered manholes, metal sticking up out of the dirt, and spit.  They sound a little dangerous, but Mongolian women rock the sidewalks in one to three inch heels.  They are fearless.  So I watch them, put on my purpose walk, staying vigilant, and think to myself, Here I am, walking down the street in Mongolia.

The Great Khan

Move over Alexander and Napoleon, Genghis Khan is taking his rightful place in history’s consciousness, or at least mine.  Genghis Khan was a badass, to use the technical term.  He rose from an outcast family to unite Mongolia, and then with innovative strategies that took few mercies and a powerful cavalry he built an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean in 1260.  Whether measured by the number of people defeated, countries annexed, or area occupied, Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any man in history, and at its height, the contiguous Mongol Empire was about the size of the African continent. 

And the great Khan could not only fight, he could govern.  He created a system of government based on merit and achievement, created history’s largest free-trade zone along the Silk Road, established the world’s first international postal system, guaranteed religious freedom, lowered taxes (abolishing them entirely for doctors, teachers, and priests), conducted a regular census, abolished torture, and instituted diplomatic immunity for ambassadors and envoys.  Quality of life for conquered nations could improve while cultures were still able to retain their traditional way of life, and this flexibility and success made helped strongly establish Genghis Khan’s empire; so much so that after Genghis died, the Mongol Empire continued growing for another 150 years.  This is rather remarkable because while Genghis spent his life developing an empire, he was not one for family values, raising a family of alcoholics to take his place who would almost all struggle as leaders. 

Genghis Khan succeeded in conquering and connecting.  He built systems that allowed culture, business, and government to thrive because of a foundation based on merit and achievement.  These systems were international in scope and thought.  Always proactive and strategic, the Mongols captured craftsmen, educators, translators, anyone who had an ability that would enable them to improve some aspect of their empire.  In that quest, they spread ideas and technology throughout the world as they learned and incorporated other society’s skills, strategy, and thought into their own empire.  They were the ultimate delegators and connectors, led by one of history’s greatest leaders.

If you are interested to learn more about the great Khan, I recommend Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, who shores the history textbooks shortcomings to give a well-rounded, informational, and engaging account of Mongolia and the great man responsible for its success.  I am currently reading Modern Mongolia by Morris Rossabi, so hopefully you can look forward to a summary of Mongolia’s more recent history.