From the Steppe to Singapore, and back

What must it be like to study abroad in Singapore and come back to your family in a ger on the steppe?  It's the question I asked my new host-brother friend at my last homestay.

While the Communists did a lot of things wrong when they took control of Mongolia in the 20s, one helpful initiative was their focus on education.  Because of how spread out all the kids are, the government runs a bunch of boarding schools in towns across the country, free of charge.  Most kids go to one of these, and at 98%, the literacy rate is impressively high for a country's at Mongolia's stage of development.

And speaking of development, Mongolia has to be one of those places on the happiness vs. income 2x2 that is weirdly above the expected line.  Economist have noticed that as countries develop people tend to report themselves as happier, more satisfied with life, etc.  But Mongolia is well below that line, yet people I met were incredibly cheerful, and it felt different from other developing countries I was in - especially places like Peru and Bolivia.

Why is that?  Maybe it's because most Mongolians have everything they need, even if what they need wouldn't fetch very much on the market.  Sure, fermented mares milk may not only fetch a few cents a gallon on the market, but if that's all you've ever had, you don't crave a latte at Starbucks for $4.   They have a roof over their heads, with a great view out the front door.    

Maybe it's their sense of family, and the supportive culture?  There's street crime and petty theft just like anywhere in the world, but people just seemed stoic and upbeat about whatever was in their path.  Nearly every family I stayed with, except for that one episode at #3, seemed like a really tight unit.  You respect your elders, and in return they take care of you.  Your family are your best friends for life, in a true sense.  That has to count for something.

Or maybe it's because, for most Mongolians, their destiny is in their hands?  There isn't much of a ruling class in Mongolia that resembles that of much of the developing world, nor does that matter.  You've got your ger, your herd of livestock, and you can live life pretty much how you want.  None of that stuff matters.

Who knows, but it was eye-opening.  I am guessing Mongolians would rate their happiness as being quite a bit higher than most investment bankers I knew on Wall Street, and maybe more than a few PE guys too.

This all ties together, because my host-brother had just received his accounting degree from a University in Singapore and was back looking for a job in UB.  His English was great, and his qualifications put him in high demand.  He didn't see a future for himself on the steppe (It's too boring!  Hot chicks don't want to marry a nomad.), so he was moving to the only major city in Mongolia.

His family was great - they were gregarious, and fun, and kind, and I saw three generations living under one roof.  We rode horses for part of the day, he showed me how to handle the animals, and then we had an impromptu drinking competition at 10 in the morning when some of his father's friends showed up and started drinking Mongolian vodka, which is surprisingly smooth.  What a day.

Then, a rough night of sleep because of another epic electrical storm, before setting out the next day for the next stop, another few hundred miles west and deeper into Mongolia.

Not quite as happy as the Swiss, but right up there with the Spanish, French and Germans.

Getting the hang of it.

A cushion for the Westerner, huge.

Another place of prayer, with travelers tying flags to the tree as offerings.

The view over the dunes.

Engraved, special edition sitrrups.

Sunset.

The grandma, just an incredible force.  A lot has changed in Mongolia in her life, but then again, a lot hasn't (yet!).

I miss having one of these out here.

The kitchen.

The Mongolian version of the saddle - not as comfortable!

Milking the mares.

Herding cattle back for the night.

Letting the water drain from some cheese.

Family life.

Another group of tourists on the horizon.

One big happy Mongolian family.

Day 4: Religious relics and domestic disputes

In Mongolia there are happy families, there are unhappy families, and there's everything in between.

On the whole, Mongolian culture is incredibly friendly and optimistic.  But I witnessed my first questionable family encounter on day 4, after another pleasant morning with my half-dozen host sisters.

Maybe it begs the obvious question... how can you tell what's going on when you can't even understand the language?  Totally fair, but sometimes body language, a screaming spouse, and some projectiles tell the story pretty well.

This ger was part of a family "compound", where extended family pitch five to six gers for a more serious kind of party.

What was the story?  Well, I never figured it out.  All I could tell is that the sister (I think...) of my host family's mom was more than a little angry at her husband.  I'm pretty sure he didn't sleep that night in the ger... or on the couch downstairs.  I think I saw a few attempts at apology, only to be rejected by the hysterical spouse.

And what about my family?  Well, the host-mom and her daughter were awfully cold to me, and other travelers I ran into who stayed there mentioned the same.  The host-family father was great, but he wasn't there very often.  His sons were helpful and kind.  I wonder what the dynamic was?  My host-mom woman spent a lot of time in front of the mirror, trying on makeup or lotion that her relatives brought her from Korea, or China, while I sat there and read.  Her pants seemed a little too snug to be comfortable around the ranch... I wonder if it was a case of city girl caught in the countryside?  Was it his idea to do this to earn some extra money?  Did she resent the Western tourists in her ger?  Who knows, but it was certainly a different experience from the first two homestays.  

Despite the awkwardness my host-father took me on a great ride up to an old Buddhist shrine.  The setting is simply spectacular, and must have been intensely moving for generation of pilgrims.  On top of a ridge, with a view for nearly a hundred miles in every direction, some ancestors of Kublai Khan built a series of six stupas.  Their vaguely humanistic shape evoked the vision of religious, almost otherworldly sentries perched on a mountaintop, standing watch.  It was an unexpectedly moving experience.

That night it was just me and the guys watching Mongolian wrestling on an old black and white TV.  That night again, I slept in a ger with total strangers.  I was getting used to being out in back of beyond, but I wished I could understand more.  Another day in Central Mongolia.

Stupas overlooking the steppe.

The view from the ranch, with goats, sheep and sand dunes in the distance.

Coming up on sunset.

My third home of the trip.

This family is loaded - a motorcycle, SUV, and even a light truck.

Evening in the ger.

Mongolian sports are typically related to war - archery, horseback riding, and here, wrestling.

View from the back of the ger towards the entrance.

And towards the front of the ger.

An afternoon in Mongolia

My experience out here in Mongolia gave me a healthy sense of respect for anthropologist... those field academics who leave their ivory tower in the states to head to a remote part of the world and live with a tribe, or a village, for years without much contact from home.  Field biologists too, actually.

I was always surrounded by people, but at the same time I was intensely alone that day.  Language turned out to be an issue. No one in the family spoke more than a few words of English and my Mongolian was coming along too slowly.  What it would be like to do this as part of a field study, being out in the field for months at a time, without contact with home, hoping that your community would accept you and that at the end of a few months you'd have enough material to create what you need to back home?  Of course the first days are the hardest... everyone's guard is up and the language barrier is at its peak.  I knew that after another ten days or so I could head back to my Western oasis in UB with wi-fi and Westerners to swap stories with.  

The time went by slowly... I sat outside and watched the sky for a while that day.  It's an enormous sky - when it's clear the sun beats down hard, and when the weather is in flux, which is true most days, its a huge theatre full of clouds, shadows and different shades of blue, white and grey.  

There were occasional trucks and buses that sped down the main road, a few hundred yards away.  Who knows where they were headed.

At some point a windstorm came through, with the wind beating down the the sky turning menacing shades of grey, but it passed, and other than the lightning, which makes everyone a little nervous out here, it was just a great show.

We played a game that roughly resembled dice - except the dice were actually ankle bones from horses.  It doubles as a drinking game, although we didn't go there at 3 in the afternoon.

Then there was dinner - potato noodles with mutton jerky, onions, and my special addition of hot sauce.  Everything goes down better with hot sauce.  Mongolian's don't really do dessert, but I had a couple of Snickers stashed away which I shared with everyone.

The more I travel the more it turns out two things are universally true: everyone loves TV, and everyone loves cell phones.  The family spent most of the evening glued to the TV, watching Mongolian music videos, or game shows, or old Westerns.  If there's one genre that your average Mongolian family can relate to, it's cowboy movies, with the cattle rustlers, good guys, bad guys, horsemanship and bandits.  Everyone once in a while someone's phone would ring and they'd run out of the ger.

And then, once the sun set, and people collectively thought they had had enough TV for the day, everyone sort of went to bed in a different corner.  There were 2 beds in my ger - I got one and the two eldest daughters got the other - a few people piled on the floor by stove, and presumably everyone else slept in the other ger.

I've gotta say, that was one of the more exotic experiences I've had over the years... sleeping in a tent on the steppe of Mongolia, with five strangers.

Bracing ourselves for a windstorm.  These are all bark and no bite - you can see them coming from miles away, menacing and dark, the wind 

Ger life, day three, family two

Badzar's family was wonderful - his brothers were as patient as could be with my terrible horse and camel skills and his parents were generous and patient (a recurring theme) with my incipient curiosity.  It must get old after a while, having visitor after visitor poke his nose around in your home.  If it bothered them, they certainly didn't show it.

But, all good things come to an end.  After a second night of fitful sleep - the dogs bark and howl all night - it was time to move on and see a different side of Mongolian life.

My knees and rear end still hadn't recovered from the past few days of riding - especially the trip to the watering hole that was a good three hours round-trip.  You see, Mongolian horses are pint-size - they're really more like ponies - and fitting in the stirrups means you have to bend your knee at an awkward angle.  The saddles are traditionally made of wood with silver decorations, and even with the pillow they provide tourists they're still pretty tough.  If you want your knees to relax... well there goes your rear end.  And if you try to save your behind from too much punishment your knees give out.  For the first few days out on horses I played this game over again and again, to the amusement of my Mongolian hosts.  

Most Mongolian learn to ride before they learn how to walk, and the sight of Westerners learning how to handle a horse for the first time must have been pretty funny.  I guess it would like us watching someone learn how to ride a bike for the first time, or learn to swim.  It feels so natural that you wonder how someone else could be having so much trouble!  

It was another 2 hour camel ride to our next stop, a couple with seven daughters and a son near the main road.   

One of the great things about staying with a couple of different families is that you can see all the different flavors of family life.  As it turned out, each of the four families I stayed with was very different.  Comparing across all those different families gave me a little bit of sense for what was "Mongolian" and what was more an idiosyncratic part of family life.   

Again, it was the kids in the family that helped me integrate for the one night I was there.  This time it wasn't chess, or TV... it was volleyball!  It wasn't the last time spontaneous volleyball would happen in the middle of the steppe, and I wonder if my experience was unique or if volleyball really is the quasi-national sport of Mongolia?  I could never really figure it out.

Mongolian's name their children very literally; the guys are named after macho things like thunderbolts, axes, rocks and predatory animals, and the girls are named after beautiful, feminine things like chrysanthemums, peace, flowers and jewels.  Altantsetseg ("golden flower") succeeded "thunderbolt" in taking me under her wing at my second homestay.

What happened that day?  Well, we took another horseback ride out to some abandoned stone monuments, Indiana Jones style.  Scattered all over Mongolia are these little stone statues - no one really knows who created them, or why.  Locals still think they have supernatural powers, and its not hard to see why when you're standing in the middle of the steppe with a mysterious, ancient stone statue in front of you.  We made the most of the opportunity by taking some silly pictures.

We passed a couple of hours with some volleyball, occasionally wiping off the volleyball when it got sent into the goat pen.

Then were was a lot of hanging out as visitors passed through - friends and family who just wanted to say hello.  Since everyone has so much free time on their hands, it's fair game to swing by a buddy's ger and just say hello.  No need to call ahead, no need to make plans - I bet the whole idea of fixed social plans would strike people as a bit strange, actually.  It reminded me a little bit of college, actually, and of my time in Morocco during college.  Or maybe the office on a really slow day?

Letting the horses drink and my legs recover.

More space and sky.

Everyone loves tourist photos.