Did I ever tell you the story of three holes in the ground?

Well, well, well

I am currently interning for the Millennium Challenge Account/Mongolia Peri-Urban Rangelands Project, Project Implementation Unit. So now you will know what MCAM PURP PIU means. The aim of the PURP [condensed version] is to improve the livelihoods and environmental management practices of herders in peri-urban areas through land-leasing contracts and infrastructure investments for herder groups. Land degradation and over-grazing are serious problems that are tricky to solve because the traditional Mongolian practice of open access to pastureland is actually enshrined in the constitution.


One element of the project is well construction and rehabilitation. I had the chance to go to six well-opening “ceremonies” in the peri-urban area west of Ulaanbaatar. This involved driving across fields to each well where we met the leader of the herder group, the well-construction contractor, and representatives from the local government. Those three parties and MCAM PURP signed contracts handing responsibility of the well to the herder group and ownership to the local authority for a period of 15 years, until the herder group has repaid a portion of the investment in the well to a local development fund. 


At each well they turned on the pumps and we made sure the water came out. It did in all 6 cases. They checked to ensure everything worked, gave the herder group leaders instructional books about the well operation, discussed land issues and disputes, signed all the documents and the transfer was official.  They also got signs to put on their new wells that let it be known this was an MCC/MCA project with funding from the US. I later got thanked for paying my taxes. It nearly brought tears to my eyes.


From my perspective, it appeared to be a successful day of well openings.

We finished the evening with one of the herder group families. This was my first time in a family’s ger and my first chance to experience a lot of the things I had heard about.


I drank some milk tea, made with a bit of tea, milk, water, salt and perhaps a touch of butter. I also tried airag, the fermented mare’s milk which is just coming into season. A bit fizzy, a bit sour; I did not overindulge. They had killed a sheep so I got to try some boiled blood and other innard-y delights. They then made khorkhok (see the picture from the previous post). This involves heating up rocks in the fire, placing the pieces of meat and some potatoes and carrots in a large milk jug with the hot rocks, and sealing it to steam the meat. Except for a bit of stray wool, not bad at all. Frequently people will eat this with pickles. This family actually had a sort of pickled cole slaw which I tried when someone was instructed to “give the foreigner some vegetables.”


After the meat we moved on to toasting with the vodka cup that gets passed around. One of the herder group leaders, who appeared to be the mother of the extended family, filled up a cup with some vodka and proceeded to pass it around to each person in the ger, one by one. In most cases it is acceptable to just take a sip, or put it to your lips, or dip your ring finger in it and flick it around the room as a blessing, and then hand it back, at which point whoever is passing will add some more vodka and pass it on to the next person. People made toasts to all of those involved in the project and the cup went around until the bottle was empty.  Lucky for me (envisioning the road back to UB, which has made me finally understand why we have SUVs) this was not one of the occasions where I was told “bottom’s up.” In those cases, you can’t just sip and pass back.


I had intended to write about a couple of those occasions, but apparently I can talk about wells for longer than I thought, so I will save those for another time.

A few photos

Zaisan Memorial to Mongolian and Soviet soldiers who died in WWII

Buddha

Me and my horse

"The first customer"

The well opening and ownership transfer for one of the herder groups

A herder group leader at his well opening

Baby friend

Khorkhok in the ger--they put all of the meat in the milk jug with hot rocks and sealed it shut, steaming it



What a day

Saturday is a great day to represent why I find the town so bizarre.

In the morning, I got up and walked to a place called Grand Khan Irish Pub. Myself and a number of other foreigners living in UB got picked up by van to go about 40 minutes outside of town to ride horses through the hills.

 They saddled up 12 horses for us and they went through a selection process that was not particularly transparent to choose which rider would ride which horse. One by one they pointed at one human, then one horse and helped us mount. Sometimes then telling us to get off because the horse wasn’t quite right. It was a bit Harry Potter sorting hat and a bit Goldilocks. But I certainly had no idea what was going on. Finally everyone was on horses of varying degrees of spirit and stubbornness and we made our way into the steppe.

My horse could be described as a homebody. I was trailing behind the entire ride out as he had no desire to go in that direction. My kicks and calls of “CHOO” (which is what we were told to yell to make them go) did nothing. When we would move a few feet, he would start veering off a little bit and then when I pulled on the reins to try to correct him, he would attempt to do a 180 and head in the direction of home. We rode through some hills and past a couple ger camps before turning around. On the turn-around, I suddenly pulled into the lead. The kicking and choo-ing and yanking a meandering horse back onto the path turned into pulling on the reins to try to slow his gallop and prevent him from running too fast downhill.

We all eventually made it back safely and ate some tasty vegetable hushuur (fried dumplings, somewhat like hot pockets) before heading back into town.

The next activity for the day was getting cleaned up and heading to see the Barber of Seville at the Mongolian Opera House. I mistakenly forgot to look up the plot to the opera, so for the first act we were terribly confused and not gleaning much from the Italian songs and Mongolian dialogue. Luckily, at the first intermission, we came across programs in English for sale with plot summaries. I’ll admit, even with the summaries it took me until the second -to-last song to actually figure out who the characters were and what they were doing, but I got there. It wasn’t quite La Scala, but it was worth the experience.

Post-opera dinner brought me back to the Mexican/Indian restaurant, this time to try the Indian food and a margarita. Only in UB.

Arrived!

After a much longer journey than expected, and help from many wonderful people,* I have made it to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  I’ve been here a little over a week, and I’m starting to settle in a bit.

My first impression of UB was how different it is from anywhere I’ve ever been.  The city is laid out in large square blocks, so it’s easy to know what direction I’m going, but the streets names are all written in Cyrillic, if there are street signs, and no one really knows the street names anyways, so I don’t know much more than what direction I’m going.  It absolutely sprawls from east to west, and a bit less so from north to south because the hills begin to get in the way.  The architecture is an interesting mix of modern, Soviet, post-Soviet (all of which I’m sure are loaded architectural terms, the meanings of which I don’t actually know). The outskirts of the city are full of ger districts (ger being the Mongolian word for yurt).  

UB is bustling right now with construction and public works projects, I’m told because it is too cold most months out of the year to do such work so they cram it all into the summer.  There are different roads closed off every day and occasional, scheduled power outages to deal with power lines and such.  All of the digging makes the city really dusty.

Crossing the street is similar to Cairo in that the one thing you know is that the car will not stop for you.  So at least the drivers here are more predictable than those in Boston.

There are little Mongolian fast food restaurants everywhere which serve tasty things like buuz (steamed meat dumplings) and hushuur (fried meat dumplings).  There is also an enormous selection of restaurants serving food from all over the world; my favorites being the ones with the weirdest ethnic food combos.  The Mexican at the Mexican and Indian restaurant was not bad and I haven’t yet had the chance to try the Mongolian and European restaurant.  I have had good Korean, decent Ukrainian and am looking forward to trying the Uzbek place.  There are about 5 or 6 different places that have “Irish” in the title and a chain of vegan restaurants called “Loving Hut.”  I don’t think I will run out of new things to try.

Grocery shopping is still a bit tricky.  I think in the last week I’ve probably spent about 25 minutes standing in front of the dairy sections of various grocery stores and still have little idea what I’m looking at.  Spices aren’t too common and I haven’t found any fresh herbs yet.  The chocolate selection is AWESOME. 

This evening I’m off to try some pub trivia with my roommate.  I promise more updates as I figure some more things out!

*Many thanks to all of the extended Baloch family, Heidi, mi lovely madre, and all who kept me sane during my 3-day, surprise layover.

New Title! New Country!

As of the end of May I will be residing in Ulaanbaatar (also: Ulan Bator, Ulan Batar, Ulaan Baatar, or UB) , Mongolia for the summer! I will try to update at least every couple weeks about my adventures in the mostly sparsely populated country in the world.

And, for those of you who read about my time in Morocco, I would like you to recall a post from September 2008 in which I described working at summer camp: For one camp session the campers were divided into teams to celebrate the Summer Olympics. My team was, coincidentally, Mongolia and this is the incredible song that my girls wrote:
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the beautiful girls
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the serious girls
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the united girls
Mongolia! Mongolia!
We are the best
Mongolia! Mongolia!
Fantastic! Fantastic! We are

Words to live by.

Cooking adventures

I recently not only had the chance to cook rabbit for the first time, but was blessed with fabulous company to eat it with. A Dutch friend of ours who lives in town wanted to get rid of some rabbits she had. I do not want pets. However, always wanting to try new things in the kitchen, I said that I would love to cook rabbit. A few days later I was invited to come cook three of them for her and her Moroccan husband, another volunteer and her host mother. I was a little nervous that there would be people waiting hungrily for the results of my first attempt at rabbit. I ended up cooking them in a tajine, Moroccan style, then serving them with tagliatelle (which I found in town!). I will say for myself that they were pretty tasty.

The best part of the meal, however, was the amazing mix of language and culture at the dinner table. Among the 5 of us we had 5 different first languages (Dutch, English, Japanese, Arabic, Tashelhit). Conversation among myself, the volunteer and our Dutch friend happen in English; between the volunteer and her host mother in Tashelhit; between our Dutch friend and her husband in French; between myself and her husband in Arabic; between myself and the volunteer’s host mother in mixed Tashelhit and Arabic; between her host mother and our friend’s husband in Arabic. It’s a bit complicated keeping track of who can understand what others are saying in what language, but in the end everyone was understood.

We also made ice tea, which was a hilarious first for my friend’s host mother. We were brought small tea glasses, and then we put ice in the glasses and poured the tea. She just laughed and laughed. Tea is critical to Moroccan culture but to put it on ice is unheard of. (It seems a bit surprising in a place that has probably been over 100 degrees for the last 5 weeks). It wasn’t sweet like Moroccan tea, but I think she liked it nevertheless.

I got invited back have a go at a duck too.

Knock on Wood

This summer is fantastic compared to the last one. The town got some real rain this winter for the first time in about 11 years and it has helped make the summer tolerable. Even if it eventually becomes as hot as last year, the unbearable part of the summer will still be 2 months shorter. And the water doesn't appear to be turning off, either.

Although activities in the Dar Chebab tend to wind down as summer approaches, we tried to liven up the last couple months. On my birthday in May, the women in my English class threw me a birthday party! It was wonderful. There was cake, soda and dancing. And of course, because it wouldn't be a party otherwise, dressing me up like a Berber bride. The women were so sweet and it was a great way to spend a birthday away from home.

Then as an end of the year activity I put together the First Annual Dar Chebab Olympics. There were 5 events: bean bag toss (I sewed bean bags!), three-legged race, bowling, world map labeling (mild disaster--one map was labeled unside-down, Russia labeled as the European Union, etc.) and a ping-pong tournament. I think the kids really enjoyed it and it was a chance for some kids who wouldn't normally come to the Dar Chebab to come. We do definitely have some geography to work on though.

Bean bag toss and bowling

Three-legged race

Awards Ceremony

The rest of the summer will consist of a host-family wedding, a soccer leadership camp for girls, English Immersion camp, climbing Toubkal, and some travel if I have time left. Time is flying by. The end of August is our close-of-service meeting and then there will only be a couple months before I get on a boat and head back to the states.