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 25th 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…
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| 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
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