Submit your questions!

                      


We will have been in Mongolia for one year on June 1st. We have been maintaining this blog since March of last year, and now, we would really love to hear from YOU and answer any questions you might have about Mongolia, Peace Corps, our work, our lives, etc.

We will gather your questions and post them in another blog post with our answers. Please send us your questions! You can comment with a question below or send an email to slarue19@gmail.com. The questions you send to this email will be read by both of us. If you are friends with us on Facebook, feel free to connect with us there as well.  Feel free to direct specific questions to either of us as you wish. We plan to post the questions anonymously, so no pressure!

Any feedback on the blog would also be appreciated, such as "Why don't you write more about Mongolian culture?" or "I want to know about the wildlife in Mongolia." or "Why aren't you posting videos of Caleb's advanced Mongolian throat singing performances?" We appreciate any and all ideas you might have, and we want to make this an interesting blog for you to read!

We look forward to hearing from you and answering your questions!
~Sally

We're in Hot Water

Photo credit: Kyra Lindstrom. This is Kyra's
water container that she keeps in her ger. She
uses a different, larger, sturdier container to
transport the water from the well.

I must preface this with the fact that I know Mongolia, for volunteers in apartments especially, is relatively nice in terms of living conditions compared to many other Peace Corps countries. We have electricity. We have refrigerators. We have running water and flushing toilets. We have heat in the winter. It is so easy to get internet access.

That being said, it wasn’t too difficult to get used to not having hot water, knowing that there are so many people out there who don’t have running water period, especially with so many of our fellow Mongolian PCVs living in gers. These real MVPs either have water delivered on a regular basis from someone in their haashaa family or school (if they’re lucky), or they must go to the nearest well to get water themselves. This means they either muscle it out and carry their water containers, or more commonly, they use some sort of wheeled cart.

Once they have the water in their ger, there is a lot of work involved. Most gers have a plastic device above their sink which holds water. From it extends a long spout. When you push up on the spout, it releases water. This is how ger dwellers wash their hands and brush their teeth and whatnot.

For drinking water, all PCVs are given a large water filter. Since we are not from Asia, our bodies aren’t used to the different enzymes. It’s not that the water is unclean or unfit for human consumption, but since we are from the other side of the world, we are used to different bacteria and whatnot in our water and our bodies aren’t used to the water here. Therefore, water filters. Using these filters isn’t so different between apartment and ger dwellers. We fill up a large bowl or pot with water from the sink and dump it into our filter. Ger dwellers do the same, but they get the water from one of their larger water containers usually.

Photo credit: Kyra. These are her tumpins she uses to bathe and
rinse clothing after washing them. 

Then there’s bathing. We might have written about this during PST, but ger dwellers bathe using a tumpin, which is a round plastic tub. Of course, it takes a while to get used to, with trying to keep all the water contained and not splashing water on the floor. During the summer, I would wash my hair, bathe, wash my clothing, then clean my floor with the same water. After bathing, ger dwellers have to carry the water outside and dump it out.

Photo credit: Kyra. This is Kyra rinsing her clothes in a tumpin.

And washing clothes. Kyra, our resident ger dweller, as well as all of us living in the aimag center are lucky enough to have washing machines. It is more common for ger dwellers to have to hand wash everything using their tumpins. Still, even with a washing machine, it is much more difficult to do this in a ger. We stick our shower head into the washer and turn it on until it fills up. Kyra has to do all the heavy water lifting without the help from running water.

With every trip to the capitol, I am always initially surprised when I turn on a facet and hot water comes out. Being able to adjust water temperature is truly a magical thing.

But now, thanks to our land lady, we have hot water!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

We don’t have hot water all the time, and it’s not unlimited. We have a 40 liter water heater in our bathroom. This means that we no longer have to heat up water using our stove for an hour before we want to bathe. We just have to plug in our water heater and give it about an hour to heat up. It’s much less work. It uses a lot of electricity, or else we would keep it plugged in all the time. It’s SO nice to have hot water coming out of the actual pipes. We are going to eventually rig up a shower curtain and figure out how to suspend the shower head so we can take showers. This will be a summer project.

However, whenever a good thing happens, it feels like there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Spring in Mongolia means rain and snow. The same day we got the great news of the new water heater (back in early May), there was a lot of snow which caused the ceiling in our bedroom to leak. It’s slowly falling apart. We told our landlady. Last weekend, I heard some people working on the roof right above out bedroom, so maybe they fixed something. We won’t be able to know until the next rain. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem like a big concern to our landlady that our ceiling looks like it’s experienced an earthquake. Oh well.

In other news, I recently cut my hair. I decided to do it myself, since I didn’t want anything fancy. I just wanted to get rid of the split ends and add a little bit of layering. See for yourself! My first ever attempt at cutting my own hair. 

Before

Before

After

After - Not a big difference here, just a little shorter

~Sally

What Green May Come

            On my way to work today, I was reading my notes on Mongolian and had just arrived at the weather chapter when I read the phrase, “Харин 5-н сараас жаахан дулаарч өвс, ногоон ургаж эхэлдэг.” (But in May it gets a little warm and green plants start to grow.) As I read this passage, I took my eyes off of  my paper and glanced about. I had been walking through a field with two trees and an abandoned school building which might have once been a courtyard. The field was broken up in unofficial dirt roads where cars had taken shortcuts to get to other buildings or roads. Between the dirt roads on the drifts of sand, a fine growth of green grass was striving, and the trees were finally budding. The color was so fine, so fresh and new that it seemed almost iridescent. After months of walking through the snow in this field and then some more months of just dusty sand, it seemed like spring had finally come.

            Work seems to be picking up and going well in these final days before the summer break. I started helping Sally teach a class at the education department to the English teachers of our city. The teachers seem really excited to learn new methods to improve their English. I have also had the opportunity to present an anti-smoking demonstration to a number of students and classes at my school. This side project is my final push before the summer; the idea being to reach as many students as possible to help them understand the risk and danger of smoking. The World Health Organization has statistics for smoking in Mongolia. 20% of boys age 13-15 smoke; 49% of men ages 15-64. 8% of girls smoke with 5% of women. With these numbers, it becomes obvious that the main risk is boys smoking, and that this habit once started will lead to almost 50% of men smoking.  Mongolia has a population of about 3 million people.  Over 4000 die each year from smoking related diseases. How does this compare with America? I was actually surprised to find the tobacco usage in America is about 25% of both men and women, so if we assume the sexes are close to equal than the smoking rate is the close to the same as Mongolia! More than 480,000 people die each year in America from smoking related diseases. It remains the single highest preventable death rate in our country…

            This year marks the 25^th anniversary of Peace Corps in Mongolia. To celebrate this success, our national office asked that the volunteers in aimag centers organize a tree planting event with 25 trees. Kyra took the lead on this project and worked hard with local organizations to purchase the trees and arrange for the place to plant them. Once she had established a day for the event, I went to work recruiting volunteers. My biggest fear was to arrive at the event with only 6 PCVs and 25 holes to dig. Fortunately, the event was a big success. On Saturday morning, I arrived at my school with Sally and Dylan to meet the volunteers. Naturally with Mongolian Standard Time, it wasn’t until two hours after we were supposed to meet that everyone arrived to help out.  One becomes accustomed to this, and I was deeply pleased to see that 25 teachers and students came to help. The students were from the schools’ scout club and also from one of my English teacher’s home room. With the help of some teachers with cars, we managed to get the students out to the planting site at the edge of town. There, the project inertia took on a mind of its own. My students (mainly the testosterone filled boys) seemed to really enjoy seeing who could dig holes the fastest. Not 30 minutes passed before I was rushing to slow them down. They had dug 27 holes. The volunteers were helpful and the project moved so quickly that before we knew it 27 trees had also been planted. Our best guess is that two of these are dead saplings, since we only had 25 live trees!

            After a quick hour of work, we were done. Overall seven Khentii PCVs helped with the event in collaboration with the students and teachers from my school. We even ended up on the local news station! However, Saturday was a cold windy day, and the small saplings seem so minute in the vastness of the Mongolian steppe. I can’t help wondering if they will be able to take root and fortify themselves for the winter that will surely come.

            A word on Mongolian culture: First, Mongolians follow many traditional Buddhist views. One of these is that the act of planting trees is good for one’s soul in a sense that reincarnation may be more positive because of this. Secondly, Sally and I have mentioned in other posts that Mongolians have a different view on feet and foot-to-foot contact. If you step or touch someone’s foot, it is important to apologize and shake hands with the person whose foot you have touched.

            Sometime during the tree planting, I realized that a 10 year-old boy in a scouts uniform was following me around saying “Уучлаарай Багшаа, би ....” (“I’m sorry my teacher, I…” rapid fire Mongolian that I couldn’t understand.) I located my English CP who translated that the poor boy had stepped on my foot earlier in the project and was eager to apologize and receive my forgiveness. I had no recollection of this, but I quickly removed my glove and shook his hand with a reassuring “Зүгээрээ” (no worries/problem). Because of the wind on my hearing aids, it is hard to say how long this child had been following me around begging for forgiveness…

Khentii PCVs at the Tree Planting

            Last weekend was also a sports competition for all the teachers in all the schools in the aimag. I had been enlisted last Thursday for the tug-of-war competition. I like to think that this seemed like a sport that I could do the least amount of damage too and was selected for this reason. I didn’t know it, but the team practiced every night of the preceding week, because they were eager to get first place. I made it to the Thursday night practice where I pulled on ropes anchored to basketball poles. At one point, the gym teacher, a large broad man, and I found ourselves competing against thirteen 12 year-old boys. We held our own for a while, before slowly losing ground. 

            The competition on Sunday started at 11, but I was called to come to the field at 9:30 for reasons that are still unclear. From there, my team played against seven other teams before being declared the first place winners. I was allowed to participate in two of the matches. I don’t mind that I was benched for the other five, since I didn’t come to practices that I didn’t know about and have only a fraction of the competitive spirit of my colleagues. These seemingly unimportant festivities are actually a really big deal in the prestige of a school. For cultural reasons that seem alien to non-Mongolians, it is vitally important that schools teachers can beat other school teachers in tests of agility and strength. I certainly didn’t want to be placed in the final match up only to possibly lose.

Perhaps the most epic moment of the tug-of-war competition was when a large Mongolian man with a sumo wrestler build managed to single-handily win a match. He was the lead for his team, and had been dragged to a point where his foot was level with the crack in the pavement that marked the deciding line. Aware of his situation he tensed his massive arms and dug his trunk like legs into the ground. The tension was palpable. This large Mongolian man pulled with all his weight, and for a moment it seemed like he was the only person against the team of eight men and women. Slowly the rope began to move in his favor, and he shuffled his feet back in an oddly delicate toe to heel manner. The other team, who had been so close to success, realized with despair that the psychological and physical triumph was no longer in their favor and found themselves pulled swiftly over the crack in the pavement. As I sat on the ground in the sun with my team, I looked down at my feet and saw the light green of sage sprouting through the sandy soil.

~Caleb  

An Ulaanbaatar Work Trip

A few weeks ago, I planned a trip to the capitol city with my supervisor and Caleb. A few months ago, I was searching the internet looking for organizations that would be potentially helpful to our school. I came across Library for All. http://www.libraryforall.org/ This is a great nonprofit that provides e-readers to schools across the world to encourage reading. One of the best things about it is that they provide content in the local language! This is huge, seeing as how most places that donate books usually provide them in English. From what I’ve observed, reading isn’t really a huge thing among youth in Mongolia, so having e-readers with Mongolian books might be a great way to encourage reading.

I contacted a representative from Library for All, and we set up a Skype meeting. I met with her around 9pm my time to accommodate the time difference from the east coast. We talked about the program, and she informed me that Mongolia currently had a pilot program in place at several schools in UB and suggested I do a site visit. So we set up a date, Thursday April 28.

A while back, I also initiated communication with a local organization, the American Center for Mongolian Studies. http://mongoliacenter.org/ They have a really great book donation program for schools, Books for Mongolia. These books are only in English. My supervisor and I applied for books for our school, and we were accepted. The only difficulty that might come with this program is that you have to pick up the books yourself, so while we are relatively close to UB – a 6 hour bus ride – many of the further aimags might have issues coming to collect their donation. We were able to set the date for pick up the day after our Library for All site visit.

Our neighbor is a taxi driver who drives back and forth to UB, so we enlisted him for our purpose! His wife also came, so it was him and his wife in the front and Caleb, my supervisor – Bolormaa – and me in the back. The best thing about the drive was that just an hour or so outside of Chinggis Hot, our driver had to slow down and honk the horn because there was a HUGE eagle sitting contentedly in the middle of the road. He was quite bothered when he realized he had to move, but he finally took flight, almost scraping his giant talons against the hood of the car. He was huge. After doing some research, I think this was a golden eagle, which had a wingspan of up to 6.5 feet! Here’s a picture from the web of a golden eagle attacking a wolf, for perspective on size.

Our meeting at the Library for All pilot school, school #87, was scheduled for around 1:30-2. Our driver was nice enough to drop us off at the school. Most taxi drivers just take you to the closest big bus station when you get to UB. We got there just in time for the meeting, where we met several school teachers who gave us a presentation about the kind of things they do with the program, such as having students put on plays, write their own stories, and give awards for who reads the most. One student had actually read everything there was to read on the e-readers, and so she is now patiently waiting to receive more content from the organization that is facilitating Library for All in Mongolia, which is the Asia Foundation. http://asiafoundation.org/

During the meeting, we got to meet some students and take a look at the e-readers. After we left the school, we rode with Asia Foundation employees to their office, where we met with the person in charge of Library for All. It was a good meeting, and we learned a lot about the program, including that fact that pilot program had just started in January. Until this point, I hadn’t realized it was so new. The pilot program won’t be finished until December, and after that, it might be possible for us to apply for the program in January 2017, or more likely, spring 2017. I was a little disappointed, because while I can still try to apply when the time comes around, I won’t be here much longer after that to see the program through. Time will tell, but hopefully, we will get a new PCV in our aimag center who would be interested in picking up this project if need be. I am still hopeful to continue with this project next year, but for now, it’s definitely being put on hold.

After the meeting, Caleb and I parted ways with Bolormaa and were happy to check into our hostel. It had been a busy day, and we hadn’t eaten lunch. By this time it was about 4pm, so we were hungry. Since I haven’t had fast food since being in Mongolia, Burger King was the perfect choice.

One of my favorite books we received

The next day, Friday, after a nice breakfast at a place called Limewood, Caleb and I went to the Peace Corps office to check our mailboxes, and I spent some time working on a grant. My English teachers, supervisor, and I are in the initial stages of a project to reestablish our English room. This means applying for funding and writing about how it will build the school’s capacity. My English teachers wrote a lot of sections for the grant, so it’s now up to me to put it all together. I still haven’t finished it yet, presently, but I hope to submit it by the end of this week.

After spending the morning at the Peace Corps office, we went in search of food. All the PCVs talk about the Soup Bar, a place owned by a French guy, but until this day, it had eluded us. Finally, we found it and had some amazing paninis. Then, we headed off to the American Center for Mongolian Studies to meet Bolormaa and pick up our books. It was so easy. We just walked in, signed some papers, and left with 150 books. Bolormaa’s sister had a car that we loaded the books in, and that was that! They took the books and kept them until we travelled back to Khentii on Sunday.

With that, our work in UB was finished, and now we had the weekend to enjoy other things. We did a little bit of shopping after picking up the books. A great place to shop in UB is a place called Mary and Martha’s which specializes in “fair and ethical gifts,” and it’s all things Mongolian. Check out their website here: http://www.mmmongolia.com/ We picked up some postcards a keychain with a shagai (ankle) bone (from a goat).

Coming soon to a mailbox near you!

Friday night, we went to a movie theater and saw The Huntsman: Winter’s War. I wasn’t really impressed with the movie, but it was really nice to watch a movie in a theater. This movie was in English with Mongolian subtitles. This is usually the case with blockbusters like this, I think. Sometimes, there will be Mongolia dubs, but the subtitles are more typical. In the basement of the theater, there is an arcade, so we played in the arcade for a little while afterwards. It was a really nice arcade and had a ton of good games. Caleb beat the high score on the punching bag thing, and he also won me a pig after throwing darts at balloons.

Traditional Mongolian snuff bottle pouch

On Saturday, we slept in and had lunch at Millie’s where we got philly cheesesteak sandwiches. It was incredible. We realized then that we could probably make philly cheesesteak sandwiches at home. We still haven’t tried this yet, but soon we will, I’m sure. Afterwards, we went to Naruuntul, what the Mongolians call the “Black Market” in English. It’s not illegal or anything, it’s just a huge open air market with endless stalls and vendors. Think of the French Market in New Orleans multiplied by 10. I got sunglasses. Caleb got a hat for his birthday. We did pretty well at haggling with the hat people. Caleb also got a pouch thing for his snuff bottle.

Saturday night, we met with another PCV for drinks, and then Caleb and I went to dinner at the Blue Sky lounge. The Blue Sky hotel is the tallest building in Mongolia, and the views from the lounge at the top were quite beautiful. We even got to listen to live music there! The food was also good. It was a nice time.

The Blue Sky Hotel

On Sunday, we met Bolormaa and our taxi driver neighbor and his wife at the bus station around 11, and guess what? On Sunday, May 1^st, it was snowing. It took us about 7 hours to get home due to the snow on the road. By the time we got home, we were so relieved.

Overall, it was a successful trip, despite spending too much money on food. But sometimes, you just have to treat yo’ self.

-Sally

Foreign Language Competition and Birthday Stuff

            A few weeks ago my English teachers and I had a foreign language competition at our school. My role in the competition was to judge various events. It was a fun week. I got to watch six graders put together small plays on English fairytales. The innovation and sass of the Cinderella’s wicked sisters was hilarious and enjoyable. On another day we had two spelling-bees for 9^th and 10^th graders. The 9^th graders went first, and suffered because of it. I was asked to officiate the spelling-bees as a native speaker, and it wasn’t until I had taken out 6 students in a row with words starting with “F”, that I realize they were not used to hearing “F” pronounced the way I spoke it.  On the final day was the singing competition where students in all grades competed in foreign language. The highlights of the event was an 11^th grader’s rendition of a popular Russian song that I still can’t get out of my head, and another high school groups’ performance of “Uptown Funk” with choreographed dance routines that were just awesome.

My teachers and I handing out an awards for the a spelling bee.

Some of the Russian food that students prepared.

One of the high school bands for the singing competition. 

            My teachers and I celebrated the competitions success with slices of Mongolian style sausage and beer. It is possible that this or the Russian food competition that the students prepared earlier in the day gave me my first true Mongolian food poisoning. The luck of the draw was that Sally was also sick with a sinus infection during this time. The next few days were pitiful for us. I don’t regret the food poisoning. It was bound to happen, and I am lucky to have only really had it once thus far. Still… it will be awhile before I can stomach the sausage.

            The following weekend was my birthday. I had invited Dylan to join us for the weekend, because I planned a trip into the countryside to Ondorkhan Mountain. (Check out the post from February titled Өндөрхан Уул.) It took a great deal of work to arrange transportation, but eventually we were able to go with a Mongolian friend whom Sally and I had been helping with English.

Dylan and I 

            The morning started joyfully with Sally, Kyra, Feebee, and Dylan serenading me with whatever song happened to be the whim of the moment. It was great to be bouncing across the Mongolian countryside on a pleasant spring day, when winter seems a distant thing of the past. The immensity of earth is ever present in Mongolia, where one can easily see 30 miles into the distance.

            As we drove into the valley where the trail to the top of the mountain started, we noticed that there was one other car present. Two women brewed some sort of meal in a pot that was resting on a tripod of rocks over a small fire. When we joyously climbed out of our car, the women shouted to us in Mongolian. They wanted us to know that women cannot summit the mountain. I had been aware of the traditions regarding this mountain which was considered sacred to our city, but we had planned on not seeing anyone on the mountain and thought it would be okay to climb most of the way to the top.

            Still the prompt, if busy bodied, warning started our trek off on the wrong footing. We climbed up the slope to a nice midway point where we could eat and wait for the men of that group to descend the mountain. Eventually we saw them leave, and continued our journey. The Овоо (sacred site) on top of the mountain had been such a neat experience for me when I had climbed it with some teachers in February. Now it was exclusive. Dylan and I climbed to the site to take pictures, while Sally and the others waited a hundred yards downslope. I couldn’t shake the bad taste from my mouth or conscious. As PCVs it is our duty to respect culture and tradition, but here was an instance where the sexism of this particular tradition dampened the joy of our journey. We spent only a few minutes at the овоо before descending to a lower summit to enjoy the air and eat a pleasant lunch of PB&J. 

The Овоо

            We had been respectful of the Mongolian traditions. None of our female members approached the sacred site or summit. Still the shadow of wrongness continued to haunt us as we descended the mountain. For me this feeling, loss of joy because of an inhibition of liberty, is a feeling that I haven’t had much. I have never felt cheated out of civil rights or freedoms. As an upper middle class, college educated, white male, I have rarely felt discriminated against. The irony is that even now the discrimination wasn’t directed at me, but at my wife and friends.

            I have nothing but deep respect for Mongolian culture and am not condemning any part of it, nor would I have you believe that my birthday was unenjoyable. The trip to the mountain was great, and I would happily repeat the experience. Still this sensation that haunted me for several days is worth analyzing.

            I sum it up as this. Anytime any group of individuals is denied any sort of right, then any experience related to that right is sapped free of joy. One cannot just reach out and claim the experience or right without the sanction of social powers for then it is still joyless. Only by acceptance from the community at large through laws and integration that provide civil liberties can the slighted individual hope to regain joy in previously denied right.

            Sometimes as an ethnic/racial/sexual majority it is easy to scoff at a group that is demanding something that might seem trivial. The reality is that until this slighted group can gain equality will they continually be haunted by the shadow of wrongness or just a nasty taste in the back of their throat that constantly reminds them of their disadvantage.

            Later that evening, we all went out to the local Chinese restaurant and enjoyed good food and fellowship. I had invited my English teachers to join us. They surprised me at the meal by giving me a snuff bottle. Snuff bottles are a common traditional accessory that men carry around during festive times or at social gathers. Usually the bottle is presented to everyone present, and the guest can chose to either take a small pinch of snuff (finely ground tobacco) or merely sniff the bottle politely. There are nuances of how to present and hand the snuff bottle in a traditional fashion. During holidays like Цагаан Сар, it is not uncommon for multiple bottles to be passed around for                                                                                               everyone present.

            Snuff bottles are also hand carved from stone making them expensive and delicate. I had planned on buying a snuff bottle, but to receive one as a gift is even better. Overall, between the wind, the mountain, good food, and good friends, it was a really nice birthday celebration.

~Caleb

P.S. The content of this post in no way express political opinions or condemn thousands of years of tradition. Merely it is an attempt to understand discrimination.