Barbara in Mongolia

I recently discovered that some VSO volunteers found my website before coming and read many entries.  So that means that there are plenty of other people who might have found it and have read it.  Ooooooohhhhhh.  Creepy.  I'll have to get a password. 

I know. It's been too long between posts.  I've been loading lots of photos onto Facebook because it's so much easier.  I wish I could load a few on this website faster.  But I can't complain, I guess.  I have a forum for my views here, much more than the few lines allowed on Facebook.  And my friends won't get bombarded with notifications every time I post an entry. 
I've been in Mongolia now for 3 and a half months.  I guess I'm adapting okay.  I get frustrated at times because I will learn Mongolian words then I'll forget them shortly thereafter.  And when I'm really tired or am suffering horribly from allergies, my mind goes blank.  Fortunately, there's a Peace Corps volunteer here, Amber, who started taking language lessons with me.  At least that way I have someone else to motivate me to study and attend lessons. 
Speaking of Peace Corps, all of the new volunteers have arrived so there are 5 of them and 5 VSOs.  Two have partners and one's partner is coming next month.  Another new VSO volunteer's partner will arrive next month.  So that's 7 people associated with VSO.  Up until Monday there were only 2 of us.  Some Peace Corps volunteers might be a little jealous  of VSO because we are allowed to bring partners (boyfriend/girlfriend), as long as they pass the VSO training, but Peace Corps only allows volunteers to bring their spouse to whom they've been married for at least 2 years.
On Friday all of the VSO and Peace Corps volunteers will meet for drinks, which will be a good way to bond a bit.  I think we all want to make Mongolian friends but as an expat you need to be around other expats at times.
The variety of fruits and vegetables here is very limited. Very limited. There are about 7 to 8 vegetables that are readily available. The fruits are apples (I'm sick of apples), grapes sometimes, watermelon, and plums.  I just ate some cantaloupe yesterday that a farmer grew and is planning to sell at the Arvaikheer market.  He participated in the Agricultural Department's farming project and is now reaping his harvest.  He brought a cantaloupe into the office to give to my counterpart who oversaw the project.  So we all had some and loved it. When I see such great results from government programs, I really appreciate my counterparts and the work they do.  After all, I will definitely benefit from their work.
I have been vegetarian for about 4 years but never knew how to cook tofu.  So sometimes I had a difficult time getting protein, other than from dairy products. But a few weeks ago a friend, Eva, fried some for me in Ulaanbaatar (UB) and it was really delicious.  So I buy it often and fry it in olive oil (which is really cheap here for some reason).  Eva is so sweet.  She's not vegetarian but always prepares me wonderful vegetarian meals whenever I go to her place.  Now I stay there everytime I go to UB and I eat her wonderful food. Of course, there are so many more fruits, vegetables, and goods of all sorts available in the capital but she's a good cook regardless. Eva even serves me breakfast in bed, partly because she doesn't have a table but also because she's just really kind. When I was there last we always had other friends staying the night as well, so I raved to them all about Eva's hospitality. One friend, Vicky, couldn't believe it so she snapped some photos of Eva serving me. Hee Hee.  I recently dubbed her apartment Eva's ABC - Alcohol, breakfast in bed and couch/chair.  The C part refers to the fold-down couch that serves as her bed and the 2 chairs that serve as another bed when pushed together and folded down.  That's a typical Mongolian situation, in case you're wondering. 
 

I can't believe it.  After nearly 2 months of silence, I am back blogging about life in Mongolia.  Thanks, Nancy. 

I have been in Mongolia now since May 17, so that means that I've been here for 2 months and 3 weeks.  One more week will be 3 months.  I arrived in Arvaikheer, the capital of Uvurkhangai, on June 18,  I think, that means I'll be celebrating 2 months here pretty soon.

I guess the most important thing for me to say is that I am incredibly happy here.  Seriously.  Ecstatic.  I smile and laugh everyday and feel really content.  Despite the harshness of the life here and the challenges I face everyday with the language, food, and lack of most comforts, I feel so much happier here than I have in years past.  Every few days I get this thought in my head that my heart is expanding.  It's so interesting.  I feel that more and more that my capacity to trust and to truly feel full emotions is growing. At the inception workshop for my project at the end of June, right after I arrived in Arvaikheer, the Mongolian project officer from the World Bank who's overseeing my project said to me: "Trust Mongolians.  Trust them to do the right thing."  I keep reminding myself of what he said, and whenever I have doubts, I hear his voice in my head.  Everytime I let go of my need to control and just think that they want to do the right thing, I find out that they are very committed, involved, intelligent, and trustworthy.  It's a wonderful feeling.

A foreign guy told me a little while back that women are too emotional, so you have to be careful about having a casual relationship without emotions. (It was a generalization.  He wasn't talking about me!)   I thought that that was the worst thing I'd ever heard.  Too emotional?  How can anyone be too emotional.  Without emotions we wouldn't be human.  Why would I want to live or have a relationship without emotion?  So my motto is to feel great emotion all the time.  No more supression.  The great thing is that Mongolians are very warm, friendly, hospitable people so I always feel such positive energy coming my way.

My brain, as well, is working overtime, processing so much and learning new things so I'm sure I'm using more than the 10% people normally use, as I've heard.  For example: 

About 2 weeks ago I returned by bus from a busy 5 days in Ulaanbaatar.  The bus ride was the worst ever, very bumpy and dusty and super hot.  Half the guys on the bus ended up removing their shirts.  Then the second half was cold and rainy.  The bus driver had to stop the bus twice to wait out some violent hail storms.  So I arrived home around 10:30 pm, sicker than a dog.  I had caught a cold in UB, was wearing my glasses because my eyes had and still are very dry and infected from allergies, and I was really tired and hungover from all the partying I'd done in UB.  Then the next morning I had to leave for a two-day field visit to Bat-Olzii province at 6 am.  Then I had to suffer through the bumpiest 3.5 hours of backpain-inflicting road in Mongolia.  All that day I had to rack my brain to speak Japanese with a local government worker who speaks Japanese too.  She kept saying "Poor Barbara, you have a terrible cold, your eyes are all red, and you just travelled from UB, and you have to work."  I didn't tell her about the cold or eye problems: they were evident.  I was happy to speak to someone directly, without an interpreter, so I withstood the pain of having to dredge up my long forgotten Japanese.  For a few years I've felt that somehow my fluent Japanese got auto-archived by my internal computer and that I can't find the program where I can easily search for those words and grammar.  I've felt that they're hidden and only accessible by some outside administrator who didn't give me a username or password.  Fortunately, the more I come into contact with Japanese-speakers, and there are a few around, my memory gets jogged and I regain more of the language.

So all those non-tangibles are expanding in a positive way.  Fortunately, the tangible, my body, is shrinking quickly as well.  Last year, from December 2007 to May 2009 was my Year of Fatness.  I gained so much weight so quickly; it was shocking not just to me but to those who saw it happen. I couldn't stop the process and I felt terrible about it.  Thank goodness things have turned around.  I think that I will dub this new year, from May onward, my Year of Renewed Fitness (body and mind).    

Another week has passed here in Ulaanbaatar.  I'm still feeling weak and tired.  My teacher said that she had an American student stay at her house for 4 months and for the first month she was really tired.

 

I keep taking the Univera Ageless Extra, Regenicare and Aloe Vera gel that my sister gave me.  My digestive system feels pretty good most of the time, which is great.  And the more I drink the juice, the lighter my bags get. Two pounds down, twenty-five to go.

 

There's the 15 hour time difference, the pollution, the severe climate changes and the high altitude. Apparently, at high altitudes the air contains less oxygen; therefore, the body needs to create greater amounts of hemoglobin in order to process the oxygen-thin air.  I guess that's why athletes do blood doping with red blood cells.  That must also be why mountain climbers who go to K2 or Mount Everest have to wait at the lower base camps for weeks in order to acclimatize.  

 

Weather. The weather has been erratic, to say the least.  Monday was a hot day, around 30˚C, then Tuesday the temperature dropped to below freezing to about 30˚ F and it snowed.  We couldn't believe it when we saw the large flakes start coming down when we were at the VSO office in the afternoon.  So I told Navamani, who's never been in the snow, that we should go outside.  So we ran out there and starting playing around.  Then the "Filipino contingent," as I call them, three fun and crazy volunteers, came out to dance around in the snow.  We took photos and videos of ourselves.  Then, after about 15 minutes of folly, we all ran back inside and continued what we were doing.   It's been warm then freezing cold.  It snowed three days last week.

 

Language. We have been progressing well with the language, mainly because the teachers, Otonaa and Biamba, are excellent instructors with wonderful personalities.  They both speak English and can really explain grammar well.  Of course, knowing other languages helps me because I can find similarities at times, which helps me to learn.  The Survival Course is more about learning the essentials and not about grammar but Navamani and I ask a lot of questions so the teachers give us plenty of extra information.  Of course, we'd made a lot of funny mistakes.  I have mixed up dog with vegetables and husband, which could cause some really weird looks on people's faces.  Fortunately for me, Mongolians don't eat dog. When I lived in Cambodia, the Cambodians would say that they were more civilized than the Vietnamese because they didn't eat dog.  

 

Our teachers both enjoyed the course as much as we did.  Yesterday we were all so sad to end the course.  I think the other volunteers who arrived a few months ago might be a little envious, given the fact that we've had much better teachers and learned so much more.  I think Navamani will probably continue Mongolian classes at the school on weekends but I'll have to find another instructor out in the countryside in Ovorhangai.  There's probably a school teacher out there who could use some extra money.

 

Lucky for us, Bridge International School had arranged for us to take a tour of Parliament House on Friday so we all hopped on the bus and went there.  There are so many Korean students at the school that we had a Korean translator.  One of the teachers translated into approximate English, as well.   I felt very privileged to see Parliament.  We even were allowed to see a session in progress.

 

Telephone. I finally bought a new cell phone.  It's a really strange looking Nokia phone that looks like a child's toy.  I'm not sure if this model exists in the US.  I was contemplating bringing the cell phone I had in the US but I thought it would be a hassle, given that the electrical outlets and voltage are different here, so I left it.  Then I saw the outlets here, which are universal or have universal outlet extension cords attached to them. If I had brought my phone, I would have only needed to buy a new SIM card.  They only cost about four dollars and come with free minutes. 

 

The Little Things. There have been some really funny moments this week.  On Wednesday night, one of the Aussie Quartet, a group of 4 Australian women staying at our guesthouse, came into the living room very slowly with a look of concern on her face.  Her belt was undone and she was holding a roll of toilet paper in her hand.  With hesitance, she said to the manager, Aki, a Dutch volunteer, that she wasn't sure if it was the appropriate time to bring up the matter but, "this toilet paper is... rough."  I immediately added, "It'll cut you up. When folded it's got some sharp edges."  Then everyone made comments, like their skin was already chafed from the cold, dry weather and that they didn't need to get chafed "down there."  Someone complained about the internal injuries suffered and that litigation might be in order.  Then we started talking about how stretchy the paper was, despite it being so thick and rough.  You could keep pulling and pulling at it then it would just snap apart.  Whenever anyone entered a toilet stall, they'd see the stretched out roll of paper with finger indentations caused by the force required to pull off a piece.   One person commented that she thought she'd have to call for help because she couldn't manage to pull off a piece.   Needless to say, we all laughed hysterically all night long and even the next day, making extra comments here and there.  Aki got the hint and bought better quality toilet paper the next day. 

 

Before three of the four Australian ladies returned home the next day, we all agreed that they should buy some of the toilet paper to place in their homes when guests come over just to see their reaction.  We also thought that they could sneak the toilet paper into their children's bathrooms so that they could share in the Mongolian experience.

 

Food. During our In Country Training we are able to eat lunch for free, courtesy of VSO, at the Ananda Café, which is a vegetarian restaurant very close to the guesthouse. On Monday we ate there then I didn't go on Tuesday because I'd eaten something at school. So Navamani went alone.  She said that as soon as she entered, one of the waitresses said something to her in Mongolian that she didn't understand.  So someone came to interpret and said very loudly to Navamani, in front of all the customers, that when she came to the restaurant with me on Monday, we left without paying. Navamani was so embarrassed!  There was another staff member - absent that day - who understood that our meals were paid by VSO but the waitress wasn't told!  Navamani explained the situation and was eventually allowed to eat.  I'm so glad I wasn't there that day! 

 

The next day I went to look at cell phones with a school acquaintance, a Catholic missionary, so I didn't go to Ananda Café.  Apparently, everything was okay.  Then Friday we went together to eat.  Navamani told the waitress we both wanted the set menu as usual then waited a long time for our food to arrive.  Twice Navamani went to ask what was happening with our lunch and was told not to worry as the waitress rubbed and scratched her back.  After the second time of being inappropriately handled, Navamani asked me to go see what was up because she didn't want that woman to touch her again.  I was a little scared of receiving the same treatment.  Then the waitress showed up and told us that the set menu food was all gone.  So she said that they were preparing some noodles.  Navamani wanted to leave but I was starving, not having eaten breakfast, and said that I would wait a few more minutes.  10 minutes later, the waitress showed up again to say that even the noodles had all been eaten up.  We were furious.   Some people who were served had arrived after we did. 

 

We had to get to the office for some meetings at 2 o'clock so we bought some drinks and cookies along the way. A very nutritious lunch, indeed.  Of course, we kept laughing about the "scratchy" lady.  As we were walking down the street, just as I had taken a large gulp of my juice, Navamani said something hilarious about the restaurant, which caused me to laugh really hard and spit out my juice.  The juice also sprayed out my nose and whatever I spat out landed back on my face, hair and clothes due to the high winds that day!  

 

Finally, that night we got home and bought some instant noodles at the corner market, after much discussion with the shop staff whether the noodles were vegetarian.  We came back to the tiny guesthouse kitchen and joined some others there.  Jorgi, a German acupuncturist who has lived in Mongolia for 9 years, was preparing some vegetarian food. The day before, he had so kindly prepared us a whole list of vegetarian foods, written in both English and Mongolian. So we took it to the Mercury Market when we went shopping, which was very helpful.  Jorgi had some vegetarian soy meat there and told me that he'd let me taste it. He even gave me the package so that I could take it with me when I went shopping. Very helpful guy. Then he made up a whole batch of his food for the entire guesthouse.  Navamani wanted to run away, then she tried to pass off her bowl of food to everyone else with no success.  She was a crazed woman. The food was very weird tasting but we were all gracious to Jorgi and ate as much of it as we could.  I was glad to learn how to cook the soy meat for the future

Moving out.   

At 5 pm on Friday, while we were out touring the various medical facilities we're allowed to use - SOS Medical Mongolia and the UN Dispensary, we received a call and told that we were scheduled to move on Saturday morning.  Apparently, the owners of the apartment we were moving to would come to pick us up at around 2 pm.  So much for advance warning.

 

When told that we would stay at the apartment for 2 weeks, I mentioned that I was scheduled to go to Ovorhangai Province at the end of next week. I was told that those plans were changed too.  So I may stay in Ulaanbaatar for another 2 weeks, minus the 4-day Summer Conference we're going to somewhere out in the countryside.  We have to take sleeping bags and sheets because we'll be roughing it out there with open pit outhouses and one cold water shower for all 40 people.  Looks like I'll be giving myself a few "wet wipe baths."   I should buy wet wipes in bulk like my sister does for her kids.

 

Saturday morning we packed and waited for the owners of the mystery apartment to arrive.  Finally, a Mongolian lady we've never met shows up at the guesthouse with her husband and whisks us away to an undisclosed location.  I'm learning to trust just about anyone and everyone here.  I had to wait for the second trip because I had too many bags.  Navamani went ahead and got first choice of the rooms.  Hers has a double bed and a closet.  Mine has a child's bed and no closet or hooks of any kind to hang my clothes.

 

The owners dropped us off and left us with only one key to share and a really stinky apartment where almost nothing worked.  Only one of the stove's burners works, the wobbly fridge wouldn't stay upright, and the very old washing machine (designed for the developing world) didn't work.  The bathroom stank so badly that I gagged twice and nearly vomited. 

 

That night I slept on the bed but didn't get under the blanket that looked like a thin mattress so I froze.  I had to get up, find my wool coat and use it as a blanket.  Navamani's double bed has only a twin-size extra-thin mat on top of it.  The other side of the bed is wood.  No room for guests.  She has been so uncomfortable.  But she has the closet.

 

Sunday we went to eat breakfast at the "luxury apartment" of two VSO volunteers then we all went shopping at the Purple Market (it's a purple building) and the Green Market (a green building) with a Dutch lady who arrived on Saturday to volunteer at the Lotus Children's Center.  Then we went to eat and relax at the Stupa Café.  Their vegetarian bootz are so delicious.  When we brought the others back to our place, we went into a building, got confused, kept changing entrances to find our door then finally realized that we were in the wrong building altogether.  We eventually made it back to Building N.4.  I'll remember it now because the word "WoW" is graffitied in red on the side of the building.  

 

On Monday Navamani went to celebrate Children's Day with the children of Lotus Children's Center and I stayed home.  I was planning to go to the VSO volunteer room so that I could use the internet but the landlord's mother-in-law showed up with a clothes drying rack and an extension cord for the washing machine.  Then she showed me how to use it.  I stayed home and washed several loads of clothes in one of those semi-automatic washers.  You have to pour the water in yourself on one side to wash then take the clothes out and put them in the spinner to rinse and spin dry.  I was happy until I pulled my pants off the drying rack and they practically stood straight up.  I hope my underwear aren't crunchy too.

 

So that means that most of the problems in the apartment have been resolved except for the smell.  I think we'll be throwing out some old rags and bleaching the place down.  

May 17 – May 24, 2009

Wow, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been here a week already.  I am already speaking some Mongolia so I feel a lot better mentally.  Physically, my body is still adjusting to the time change, extremely high altitude, and terrible pollution.  It feels like I’m chewing the air at times.   The temperature has fluxuated considerably, from freezing to about 90F. 

 

Day 1: Sunday.

My first day in UB (which is what the locals call Ulaanbaatar), George, a retired American from New Jersey, was kind enough to take me on a walking tour so that I could orient myself and see where all the major landmarks and shops were. 

We ate lunch with Hugh, a volunteer from Scotland, near the humongous Russian Embassy complex at a Malaysian / Thai vegetarian restaurant called Banana Mali.  Then we went to the VSO office so I could go the vol room (volunteer room) where we can use the internet, check out books or just hang out and relax.   One of VSO’s goals is to reduce HIV infection, so the volunteers made sure to show me the condom stash – a cookie tin labelled “tasty treats.”  Perfect packaging, I thought.   I met Vickie, an Armenian / Lebanese woman who has been living in Ireland.  Typical volunteer - an international citizen.  We all walked around and went to the State Department Store where I found out that bathrooms don’t have toilet paper so George and Vickie suggested that I buy and carry around at all times a bag of wet wipes and tissues or toilet paper. I also checked out the market to see what other necessities they had.  George and many others have told me that if I see an imported product at a shop, I should buy it right away before the supply runs out.  Apparently, continuity of product supply is a big problem.

 

Then we went to the Stupa Café, a great little café located at a Buddhist center that offers meditation on Wednesday nights.  We ran into Brian, a volunteer from the UK.   I later went to an Indian / Mexican restaurant for dinner with George, Hugh, and Aki, a Dutch volunteer who helps run the guesthouse where I’m staying.  We all thought of our travels and all agreed that we had never seen an Indian /Mexican restaurant anywhere else in the world. 

 

Day 2: Monday in Ulaanbaatar

 

Monday morning I woke up to find another volunteer from India at the guesthouse.  Navamani is a physiotherapist from South India, although she has been living in Delhi for a few years.  She is going to work for the Association for Parents of Disabled Children.

 

We both had to get up to catch a bus at 8 am that would take us to the Bridge International School where we would start two weeks of Mongolian lessons.  Poor Navamani arrived around midnight then had to wake up early for school!

School was an interesting experience.  The majority of the students are religious missionaries, mostly Catholic.  They’re from Cameroon, Korea, the Philippines and Austria.  Then there are other Christian missionaries from Canada and the US.  Finally, there’s a group of Korean volunteers who explained their service as the “Korean Peace Corps.”  One girl asked me if I’d chosen Mongolia or had to accept the assignment.  I gathered that she’s finding Mongolia a bit tough. 

 

Navamani and I are the only students in our class so we learn at a faster pace than larger classes.  We also get tired faster.  The Mongolian alphabet has 38 letters, 36 are identical to the Russian alphabet and 2 are unique.  The first day our teacher made us go outside to practice our first greetings on some elementary school children and construction workers.  After class we rode the same bus but were told by Andre, the Cameroonian Catholic missionary, that the driver probably wouldn’t drop us off at the same spot in front of School #5, so he told us to get off at his stop where he would lead us to our place.  When we got off there was a big commotion from the driver and some other students but we just stayed with Andre.  He has such a pure, honest quality to his character that I knew that we could trust him.  So he walked with us through the dusty, hot city and helped us dodge cars (pedestrians don’t have the right of way).  He showed us where he lived but then continued on, a long way, to our stop.  Then he returned to his place.  Very kind gesture on his part.  I’m finding that the foreigners really trust each other and help each other out here.  It’s a very good feeling.  As the Japanese would say, kimochi ga ii desu.

 

We ate at the Ananda Café, a vegetarian restaurant run by the Lotus Children’s Center, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), that also runs the Lotus Guesthouse where we’re staying.  We get to eat lunch for free everyday.  VSO supports the guesthouse and children’s center, so they pay for our lunch there everyday.  

 

In the afternoon, Navamani and I had to go to the VSO office for In Country Training (ICT) where the country director spoke to us. We met the national staff, as well.  One of them asked us about the bus.  Apparently, the school called VSO to tell them we’d gotten off at the wrong stop.  Someone’s looking out for us. 

 

Today we went to a country briefing on culture at the Gender Center.  One of the staff told us we were going to take a taxi.  We walked outside the VSO building to a main street and she raised her hand.  Two young guys in a Hyundai stopped, she asked how much for a kilometer and we got it.  Basically, in Mongolia, everyone with a car operates as a taxi to earn extra money.  n the way to work, during lunch, on the way home, etc. In fact, people stop for us all the time, asking where we want to go.  It is very strange but quite convenient.   I have yet to use one on my own.  Today we just learned all the words and phrases for using a taxi or bus.

 

Before hunkering down for the evening, I ventured out to the little market in front of the guesthouse, the dilguur, and bought a bottle of juice.  I was a little nervous because I didn’t know how to say “how much?” and hadn’t yet memorized all of the numbers I’d learned earlier in the day.  No worries.  The shopkeeper just held up 8 fingers to indicate 800 tugrugs.  I paid for the juice/soda and left.  Long day.

 

Day 3: Wednesday in Ulaanbaatar

I woke up at 5:20 am again today without an alarm.  Breakfast at the guesthouse is plain white bread, jam, hazelnut spread, and tea.  Fortunately, I bought eggs so I’ve been boiling them.  And I’ve been taking my Univera supplements that my sister gave me.  I’ve been taking Ageless Xtra for my daily dose of fruits and vegetables, aloe vera for good intestines, and RegeniCare to lubricate the joints.  I must say that I’m feeling pretty good.  I will have to become a daily user for life.

A group of Aussies and Europeans showed up at the guesthouse.  The Irish guy, like so many Europeans, assumed I was a stupid American who doesn’t travel or speak languages so he asked me if this was the first time I’d left the USA.   Another British guy that morning gave me a good show by walking back and forth between his room and the bathroom wearing just his tight red boxer shorts.  Navamani would have fainted. 

 

Days 3 and 4: Wednesday and Thursday in Ulaanbaatar

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty similar.  We woke up early, around 5:30, prepared breakfast, studied a little and walked to the bus stop.  The teachers, we have two who alternate teaching days, have been teaching us many things that aren’t in the textbook because they think we’re good students.   They both speak English and can explain grammar, although it’s not the main focus of the Survival Course.  It’s great to be forming sentences.  They say I have good pronunciation but I find it rather difficult. I guess I’m just really hard on myself and impatient.  I want to become fluent quickly.  These things take time…

 

The best part of Wednesday and Thursday was that I met with my programme officer, Erke, and talked with him about my project and my position.  I am very excited about starting work in the cashmere and wool industry.  The project objective is:  “To increase the domestic value of livestock production by providing better marketing opportunities and services to raw material producers and processors, establishing three grading laboratories and building marketing and design capacity of the producers and processors.”  

 

“Expected results of the project are:

·         300 herders and traders trained in basic market principles by international volunteers

·         100 traders at soum level have increased skills in the grading and sorting of fine and semi fine quality fibres by Foundation for Development of Wool & Cashmere Enterprises (FDWCE) NGO trainers

·         3 grading laboratories established and being used by herders and traders to certify the quality of their fibre

·         10 herders and traders trained in laboratory use and maintenance by the FDWCE experts

·         3 marketing contract development workshops attended by herders, traders and processors implemented at soum level

·         5 cashmere and wool processors trained in marketing skills and are actively assessing the market for new designs of cashmere products.”

 

I won’t bore you with more details. 

  

The assignment will only be 9 months, which is very short, so I’ll have to work extra hard.  Since I don’t have a direct employer other than VSO, I will be an official consultant to the World Bank, given that they’re funding the project.  That’ll give me a leg up on landing my next job, I’m sure.

 

Erke said that I will get my own one-bedroom apartment in Arvaikheer, Ovorhangai province.  I don’t have to share with anyone else.  I’ll go to Arvaikheer on June 6^th, after VSO’s summer conference.   Can’t wait.

 

A group of Aussie ladies arrived at the guesthouse.  Three of them are sisters and one is a friend.  Along with their local Rotary Club back in Australia, they’ve been helping out the Lotus Children’s Center for about 10 or 11 years.   They’re here now for 2 weeks volunteering.  They’re very friendly and talkative.  However, when I mentioned that I was having difficulty remembering the numbers but that Navamani seemed to have them down, one of them said that she probably had the advantage because she had already had to learn English.  In other words, the lady was assuming that I was having a hard time because Mongolian was my first foreign language.  I get those kinds of comments from most Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders. I didn’t ask the ladies if they spoke any languages other than their native tongue.

 

Day 5: Friday in Ulaanbaatar

Today I went to school again with Navamani.  I’m getting to know the other students who are really extremely kind and helpful.  I talk a lot with André, the Cameroonian, Christine and Eric, the two Americans from Wisconsin, and a Canadian guy from Nova Scotia whose name I can’t remember or was never told.  They’ve told us about the good markets and even where you can get pretty good pizza, according to North American standards. 

 

There are a few girls who work at the guesthouse who helped us study tonight. That really helped a lot.   However, their accents are different from our teacher’s. 

 

Later in the day Navamani met with Brian to talk about the upcoming summer conference and other volunteer issues.  Since Brian is assigned to work at Mercy Corps, we talked about my assignment with the textile project.  Mercy Corps is very involved in the same field so I will need to meet with people there.  That should be a good contact for this assignment and in the future.

 

Day 6:  Saturday at the Ger Camp outside Ulaanbaatar

Doug, our country director, invited us out to a Ger Camp near the old Manshirkid Monastery.  He’d originally planned to take us out to Terelj, another camp, but wanted to join a bunch of volunteers who’d already organized a trip to Manshirkid.  Navamani and I rode in Doug’s SUV with his wife, their two kids, and George, my compatriot.  The ride was less than an hour, I think, as the monastery is very close to UB is nestled at the base of some mountains.  There is no road through the mountains so the road goes way around.  I think that must have something to do with the Buddhist belief that the ground is sacred and shouldn’t be torn up needlessly.  In fact, traditional shoes point up so that they don’t dig into the earth. 

 

A ger is a traditional tent that is built on a wooden foundation with many wooden rods for support, covered in wool felt and canvas.  More felt layers are used in winter than in summer.  Our ger had 5 beds and a stove in the middle.  I was the lucky person who got stuck lighting the fire at night and in the morning.  Thankfully, another volunteer from the UK, Chris, had a lighter and helped me out at night.  He got so drunk and even took a header down the stairs Saturday night that he couldn’t remember helping me light the fire when I mentioned it on Sunday morning.  Despite the fact that his forehead was cut up and he was in pain, he hiked 8 hours and 15 km back to Ulaanbaatar with three others to traverse the mountain and visit some sacred sights.  He’s a trooper.

 

At the camp, we had a lot of fun.  A group of us hiked up the mountain we were camped on.  I was huffing and puffing and had to stop a few times to catch my breath.  The altitude is really high for someone coming from near sea level.  Also, to be frank, I have been a bit of a couch potato the last year, much to my chagrin.  So I didn’t hike all the way to the summit with the others but took my time and made it past the steepest section then waited around for the others to return.  I found a walking stick that I used on the way down.   Doug’s wife, Sarah, also found one and used it.  We zigzagged our way down, downhill ski style.

 

I’m hoping that I can get into better shape in the coming months so that I can hike up more mountains.  There are also some long distance races in the country.  I read in the UB Post that there is a 75 km and 100 km race up in the north soon.  I won’t be doing those.  However, I think that I will try to train for the 20 km/ half marathon race coming up in September.  That’s a good distance for me. 

 

Sunday, we came home around noon, napped, showered and read books.  That's it.

LAX – PEK CA 984 and PEK – ULN CA 901. 

 

It’s 6:28 am in Beijing, China where I’m sitting at The Lucky Shamrock Café in this incredible airport – an architectural wonder.   I can’t believe that I actually managed to fly out of LAX at all.  Trying to wrap up my life in the U.S. and pack for a year in Mongolia wasn’t an easy task.  Everything was pretty much in limbo for a few months until I got the final acceptance from the Mongolian Foreign Affairs Office just last Wednesday, a mere 7 days ago.  Then I had to wait for my visa to be approved, processed and sent back to me before leaving.  So I missed the May 15^th arrival date but just by a hair. 

 

I will start by thanking everyone who helped make this adventure a reality.  First, CUSO-VSO for having accepted me as a volunteer (with pay) and for being a fantastic organization.  They covered medical exams, vaccinations, airfare, training (wonderful training by the way), and future support, I’m sure.  Special thanks to my advisor, Sarah Pentlow, and Gesa Harmston, visa and travel coordinator.

 

Let me not forget those who wrote recommendation letters for me:  Michele Ots, my former boss from UNDP Cambodia – and a friend whom I haven’t seen in ages, sadly;  Anne Maria Tafoya, a friend and former LA County inmate… I mean co-worker; and Debbie Franklin, a friend and city councilmember in Banning.

 

Next, my sister, Nancy, and her family for having housed and fed me for a few months.  It was good to live in Seattle for a while and to see Nancy’s life.  I think I could have been pretty content there had I landed a job.  I tried to start doing freelance work but since it was in a city where I’m not known, it would have taken much longer to work out.  I’d like to thank Finnegan “The Finnster” for getting me hooked on Sesame Street and for playing all those imaginary games with me.  I have to thank Elijah Bear for teaching me some sign language and for all that cuddling.  I apologize to Elijah for spending so much time everyday putting him through the paces to stand and walk.  I’m no physical therapist.   I have to thank Doug for setting up this website and for fixing my computer after Finnegan messed it up.    My sister, Nancy, deserves a gold star for providing endless tech support and for loading me down with 27 lbs of Univera nutritional supplement provisions.  She was worried that a vegetarian like me would suffer in a meat-centric Mongolia.  I am already suffering… from carrying around 27 extra pounds of luggage!

 

My Madre, Teresa, and stepfather, Mike, deserve thanks for housing me for a few months as well. My mom later provided excellent mail delivery of thinks like checks and my passport.  Oh, and she drove an hour to pick up a year’s supply of my preferred allergy meds from Kaiser right before I left.  That’ll help.

 

My brother, Robert, and his girlfriend, Roseanne, deserve thanks for letting me stay with them for about 2 months, up until I left last night.  Unfortunately, I am highly allergic to their cigarette smoke, so I couldn’t socialize too much in the living room, preferring the less smoky back room.  I hope they understood.  I have been suffering so much from allergies, which led to bronchitis, sinusitis and otitis.  Not fun.

 

Terry, for being a fun, adventurous spirit who is always game for an adventure, even on the spur of the moment.  He’s the friend who’s been left to deal with terrible tasks such as putting my remaining belongings in storage and looking after my car.  Oh, and I’m grateful that he accompanied me to the airport so that I could hand him over my car.  Of course, I made him wait around too to see if China Air would allow me to check those big bags too.  I was prepared to start sorting through everything, pulling out the unnecessary objects for Terry to cart back to my storage unit.  They were 2 kilos under the limit. No need to show everyone at LAX my dirty laundry.

 

The flight from LAX to Beijing was twelve and a half hours.  It’s a great setup.  You leave at 1:40 am, sleep a full night, then wake up for breakfast and land in the morning at 5:20 and in China.   The interesting part was on the tarmac before exiting the plane.  We were told to all sit still to wait for a Chinese agent to board.  He was a health officer, wearing gloves and a mask, carrying a Star Trek-like gun.  He pointed it at each passenger’s forehead to read their temperature!  It was totally freaky.  I was too warm and sweating a bit so I was a little nervous when he came around.  But we all passed.  I told the passenger next to me that I have had terrible allergic reactions lately and have been coughing, so I was really glad I didn’t cough.  He confessed that he too has allergies and sneezes a lot, so he was relieved to have controlled himself.  What a relief for us both.

 

Since having taken hard hits with the avian influenza and SARS, the Chinese are very vigilant.  Many airport employees are wearing masks.  All the immigration agents are wearing them. At the immigration checkpoints, there are heat-sensing cameras to detect people with high temperatures.  There are signs everywhere to walk slowly.  We even had to fill out a health questionnaire directly related to the swine flu.  What cities and countries have you visited in the past 2 weeks?  Have you had contact with anyone with influenza?  Do you have any of the following symptoms?  Coughing, sore throat, sneezing, fever, headache, diarrhea, or vomiting.  It says that they will take legal action against anyone who lies on the form.  So I truthfully checked the coughing box then made special notes that my doctor cleared me to travel.  I managed to stifle a few coughs while walking through immigration and security. 

 

Status update.  As I arrived at Gate E01 around 7:08 am to board flight CA 901 to Ulaanbaatar, I was asked to go open one of my suitcases that had been pulled from the mass.  Apparently, I had packed a suspicious looking metal object.  I knew exactly what it was when I saw the x-ray they showed me.  That flask of Canadian maple syrup I purchased in Ottawa specifically for this trip!!  Fortunately, the Chinese allowed me to keep it.  I was sure it would go confiscated just as my cough syrup was by a masked man in security wearing surgical gloves.   

 

Eight hours later.  3:30 pm Beijing time.  I feel like Tom Hanks in “The Terminal” who spends hours pushing around luggage carts and wandering the terminals of his airport.  It has been sweltering.  I was dripping sweat earlier this morning because the air conditioning was not turned on until about 9 am.  Fortunately, I was given back my checked bag that has my clothes and toiletries in it so I was able to give myself a wet wipe bath and change into clean clothes. I felt super dry on the inside and sticky on the outside.  Despite having brushed my teeth three times and rinsed my sinuses out twice, I still felt gross.  At least I managed to find some reasonably cool spots to sit in at times.  The lounge/ hotel area where Air China took us to wait in so stuffy and extremely hot that I can’t stay in there too long.  They’ve fed us breakfast and lunch so I’ve gone in for those meals but have had to leave to walk around and cool down. 

 

I did manage to bond with two friendly Mongolians: Bill, a young guy returning from studying in Malaysia for a few years, and Buu, a guy who’s lived in Ireland for five years and is just going home for vacation.  We talked about Mongolian food, culture and language.  We went through my guide book and they helped me pronounce words from my phrase book too.  We talked about foreign films, vampire films, and James Bond films.  If you want to know anything about product placement in films, Buu is your guy.  He knows what car James Bond drives in every scene of every movie.  He can tell you what brand of whiskey people are drinking in American movies.  He wonders why actors in old films drank Johnny Walker but in new films they drink Jack Daniels. Or is it vice versa? The three of us have exchanged email addresses and categorized ourselves under the title: Flight CA 901, Terminal 3. 

 

Two hours later.  The revised 7 pm departure date was changed to 8 pm.   At 5:50 pm now. Argggggghhhhhh!!!!!  I just finished my third meal here.  I told the others that I hope we aren’t all eating breakfast together tomorrow morning.  Unfortunately, Buu thinks that the flight will be scrapped altogether because there are too few passengers.  

  

Arrived.  The flight finally took off at 8 pm.  Apparently, the wind in Ulaanbaatar is so bad that flights are often postponed until the evening after the wind dies down a bit.  There was a lot of turbulence but we arrived at around 11:00 pm Ulaanbaatar time, 15 hours ahead of Los Angeles.   I somehow lost Saturday somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  I hope to recover that day, maybe when I finish my assignment.

 

 

I sure hope that I receive my passport and visa back from the Mongolian Embassy by Monday.  Otherwise, CUSO-VSO will have to postpone my travel to Ulaanbaatar.  I am a little nervous.  Of course, there are also tons of details to take care of here before leaving.  I feel so unprepared. 

I keep thinking that I won't have enough room for all of my necessities.  And how do I fit even a few winter garments into one suitcase?  It gets to -50C/F there. Another volunteer advised me to bring plenty of warm clothes.  But how many parkas and thick sweaters does a Southern Californian have or need?  And since I'll be paid a low local wage while I'm there, I won't have money to buy much.  I'm hoping my 2 wool coats and an overabundance of fat reserves will suffice.

 

 

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I returned from Canada.  It took that long for my left arm to heal after I fell on it extremely hard.  Between the bad arm, horrendous allergy problems, and getting jabbed regularly for vaccinations, I have felt like the walking wounded.  Good news is that my blood test results were great - negative for a myriad of horrible illnesses.  I wasn't worried about having any major disease or STD but it is reassuring to be 100% certain. The Mongolia government requires HIV and TB testing so I know they won't reject me for health reasons.

The Skills for Working in Development (SKWID) training was a mindblower.  Four long days of learning and applying the participatory approach to working.  Since I fell down on Saturday morning, the second day, I kind of faded in and out regularly.  Couldn't be helped.  I did okay with my faciliations until the final one, where I partnered with Alastair, a Briton who's been living in Canada forever.  We had worked something out beforehand than he changed it when we started.  Unfortunately, I was unable to be flexible and keep up with him. (I'll blame it on my arm pain.)  I could see myself crashing and burning in front of everyone.  Horrible.  The funny part was that the more I withdrew and the quieter I got, the more he talked and took control, and vice versa.  We had to laugh about it in the end.  Alastair was surprised he got his certificate of completion, given our horrible final performance.  But as Mike the facilitator said, sometimes you just miss the boat. 

The group was small, there were only 8 of us and 4 of us had attended the previous four-day Preparing for Change training.  Steffen, a Canadian anthropologist, Judy and Stephen, a married couple destined for Cameroon, and me.  The other 4 were pretty interesting: Melanie, a nurse from San Francisco, Pauline, a Quebecoise, Sarah, an environmentalist working for the Canadian government, and Alastair, a retired Briton who's lived in Canada forever. He also had already volunteered for a year in Bangladesh.

The group was great because we went out to eat together every night then went to the Mayflower pub afterwards.  We had a lot of laughs and mighty interesting conversations about Komodo dragons, marmots cooked from the inside out, and various maladies that have occurred to some of us in various countries.   I definitely enjoyed myself more during my 2 weeks in Canada with such like-minded individuals.  I really felt extremely happy.

So I have been back in SoCal for a month, working on filling out tons of paperwork, getting all kinds of medical tests and vaccinations, and trying to get a criminal background check without doing the Livescan fingerprinting process.  That was impossible.  Finally, CUSO-VSO accepted a county court records search for me.  Hallelujah!  So once I go to the dentist, I'll be set.

I wrote to a volunteer who's in Araikhveer, the town where I'll be stationed.  He works with a water project there.  He said that nobody speaks English there so that I should really study the Mongolian language.  How much can I learn in less than 2 weeks?  I guess I'll have to buy language software.  Nareej also told me that the place is extremely boring so I should bring plenty of movies.  Hmmm... In addition, he's vegetarian too, and is having a hard time.  Hello hardship, I say.

 

 

 

 

 

I must say that I was extremely impressed by the caliber of volunteers at the training.  There were Canadians, Americans, and a Nepalese. All are highly educated, extremely open minded people with extraordinary experiences to share.  I learned something from each and every person there.  Most, probably all of us, were extremely moved by the experience.  I'm hoping to keep in touch with as many of these amazing individuals and to hear about their volunteer experiences, wherever they may be. Some of the participants have already accepted positions in places liked Cameroon, India, and Indonesia.  I'm still waiting for paperwork from Mongolia so that I can write back and see if I receive final acceptance. If Mongolia doesn't work out then they'll look for another placement for me. I encourage everyone reading this to go the website: www.cuso-vos.org. I will be asking for donations soon to help fund my placement so don't donate anything right now.  Wait until I set up my page on their website later. 

I wanted to add hotos of some of the characters I met and hope to get to know better in the future; however, I am having major issues uploading them. I'll try to add them ASAP.  The above photo shows me chewing the rim of a Tim Horton's coffee cup to see if I'd won a prize.  Very Canadian.

 

A week ago I convinced my friend Terry to accompany me to Twentynine Palms.  Actually, he didn’t need much convincing.  He’s always game for a new adventure. 

 

On Saturday I met him out in Banning at 9:00 am, parked the car, then got into his roadster and away we went.  Twentynine Palms is a little over an hour’s drive from Banning, which meant that we would have plenty of time to make it to Chamber of Commerce for the 11:00 Tour of the Murals. 

 

Along the way we enjoyed the desert view and reasonably cool weather.  Terry saw a house near the road and asked me how I’d like to live there.  When I turned to see what kind of home he was talking about, I saw a deserted, dilapidated, one-room lean-to.   Typical Terry joke.

 

We arrived half an hour early at the Chamber of Commerce so we ate some of the snacks we’d brought and waited for the bus.  As the time approached and no tour bus showed up, I double checked the brochure to find a phone number to call.  That’s when I saw “Call for reservations” written at the bottom.  Whoops.  Our bus tour just became a walking tour…

 

Neither of us got upset and just decided to roll with the flow of the situation. Of course, I couldn’t get upset because I was the idiot who didn’t make the reservations. Fortunately, I had brought along a map of the murals, which meant that we could see them by ourselves on foot.  As we were walking along the mural route, Terry noticed an Army surplus store and wanted to go in.  Twentynine Palms is located right near a military base so there are a few military supply stores in town.  I wasn’t too interested in the wares until Terry pointed out a really interesting wool coat – a gray Swiss army coat that was my size.  He thought that I might be able to use it when I go to Ulaanbaatar, the coldest capital on the planet. Since it’s a man’s coat, it was a little small in the chest.  Terry said that it might work depending on what I was going to wear underneath it.  I said that I’d just put it on right out of the shower… because not much would fit between my skin and the coat!  Then I told him that it would be even better if I put it on before showering so that I could mold it to my body as it dried.  Terry wasn’t too convinced that my plan would work but bought me the coat as a gift.  He said that I could buy him lunch later.  So that’s how I ended up acquiring a wool coat out in the high desert.

 

We ended up seeing quite a bit out there: the Schoolhouse Museum; a funky, low-grade art gallery; an authentic Art Gallery; and the Twentynine Palms Inn.  Terry and I both considered buying pieces of art.  I liked a beautiful photo of a fabulous desert flower with a bee inside it.  Terry appreciated a digitalized photo that looked like a nebula.

 

We finally made it out to the original twenty nine palms that made up the original Oasis of Mara, a vital water stop for travelers.  My brother calls them “twenty nine stumps” because some of the palms have died and others are not exactly flourishing due to the loss of water caused by earthquakes.   There are other former oases called 49 Palms, really close by, and Thousand Palms, but we didn’t go see them.   We went to the Joshua Tree National Park visitor center, picked up a few brochures and talked about planning a camping trip to the park before I go to Mongolia.

 

We planned on seeing Pioneertown, a fabricated ghost town, on the way back but got sidetracked at the Cactus Mart.  I got poked by a few cacti while turning around and while trying to pry some baby cacti out of their containers.  Pulling the needles out of my skin was not easy. Terry was much smarter and used the long tongs that were available.  I didn’t notice them until after having drawn blood a number of times.

 

At the end of the journey, we stopped for a cherry pie before parting ways.  Terry, the “pie man,” as I call him, long ago started a tradition between of us of eating pie to celebrate, commemorate, commiserate or just plain savor.  Basically, Terry believes that pie is the answer to everything.   So another adventure ended on a sweet note.