Me and Cady at the Mother Tree
The Mother Tree
After we visited the Mother Tree my Dad took us out to his Mom’s house, who lives in the outskirts of Bagh 5. He took us there because she had slaughtered a sheep, and it was lunch time. He was going to get us some Nadaam Hoshur, but I told him the PC said we weren’t allowed to eat it because people use bad meat or they make the Hoshur several days before and it will make you really sick. So we went out to Grandma’s house, and she had indeed slaughtered a sheep but I guess it wasn’t ready to eat yet so we just had some homemade yogurt and some homemade bread. I love my Grandma’s yogurt, it is so delicious!! After we ate my Dad took us back out to the horse races, and we had missed one of the races, but there was another one in like 45 minutes, so we hung out. Peter’s Mom had a Hoshur stand, and a bunch of the other Trainees were there, so we hung out there for awhile. Then Peter’s Dad showed up with someone’s horse, and was letting us get on and take pictures and stuff. I asked if I could go for a little ride, and he let me so I took it for a little trot. I think I caused quite a stir among the Mongolians!
Nadaam was really unorganized, and no one really knew what was going on at what time, even the Mongolians didn’t seem to know anything. Finally we saw a bunch of people gathering at what we assumed to be the start line, so we walked over, but of course as we were getting close all the Mongolians were leaving and going back to where all the food tents were. We could see the race kind of off in the distance, they had already started. It was the 2 year old race, and the riders are little kids, and most of them were bareback. The race was really long, the only parts you can see are the start and the finish, they ride out for like 4 km (I think) and then come back. So we stood around waiting, and finally we saw people gathering at a different place, so we went and it turned out to be the finish line. We saw them all come in, looking pretty tired. I don’t know how those kids can hang on for such a long race, bareback no less!! And the race horses are really skinny, I think part of the training is to not let them eat very much and make them sweat a lot. They award prizes to the first 5 and then to the last place finisher. They didn’t award the prizes right away though, on Tuesday at the end of Nadaam they all came to the stadium in town and were awarded their prizes. They gave away bikes and TV’s and DVD players and a couple of the winners got dirt bikes. The award ceremony was pretty cool. All the little kids came on their race horses, and the winner would sing a song and then all the kids got a sip of Aireg and poured some on their horse and then they took a victory lap around the stadium. Sometimes they would do so carrying their TV or DVD player on their horse, which was pretty funny.
After the racing on Monday night my family slaughtered a sheep. I think nearly every family slaughters a sheep or a goat during Nadaam. My family didn’t blowtorch it like Salomon’s did though. We hog-tied it and threw it in the back of the SUV and took it over to my Mom’s parents’ house. They slaughter them differently here than we do in the US. Two guys held the legs out while the sheep was on it’s back, and then a third guy cut a little hole right below the sternum and stuck his arm in and pulled the aorta out of the heart. It took him several minutes to find the aorta though, he had his arm in the sheep and was feeling around. What really surprised me was the sheep wasn’t making any noise, it was just kind of writhing its head around, obviously in some pain. Finally the guy got the aorta and then the sheep was dead in like 30 seconds. Then he skinned it and cut off the feet and cut it open and started taking out all the organs. In Mongolia the innards are considered the best part. My Dad kept telling me I was going to eat them, and I told him I would eat a little bit. But I was a little scared. I had told him how Salomon got sick after eating the goat that his family slaughtered, so I think that helped my case. The guy who was butchering the sheep took out all the organs and Grandma and my Aunt took the bucket and cleaned out the stomach and the intestines and then boiled the liver, heart, kidneys, lungs and stomach. They guy who was butchering took all the blood out of the sheep and put it in another bucket which they later mixed with flour and chopped onion. They hung the meat up on the side of the house, where I’m pretty sure it stayed all night. Then the next day two bags full of it were delivered to my house… and I’m pretty sure I’ve been eating it ever since. I was a little worried about eating meat that had hung out all night, but I figure it can’t be much worse than all the other meat I eat here, which sits out in the meat room at the market for a whole day, and who knows when it was really slaughtered…
Me, my host Dad and Dinner
When the innards were finished boiling they took them out and cut them up and everybody dug in. I ate a little piece of the liver, which was OK, and a piece of the heart. The heart was the best part, it actually tasted like tender meat (something that you really just don’t get here) and then I ate a really tiny piece of the lung. The lung was gross, it was squishy and slimy. They tried to get me to eat some of the Kidney, but I had had about enough innards to last me for quite some time. I think the reason they like the innards so much is that they are tender. I never saw what they did with the blood/flour/onion mixture, but Cady’s family also slaughtered a sheep that night, and then on Wednesday I was over there and her dad pulled out a plate of innards and microwaved them (gross!) and he kept saying it was the blood. Cady saw her family make the same mixture with the blood that my family did, and we figured out that they then stuffed it inside the intestines to make a sort of blood sausage. I don’t think I could eat that. Innards just kind of gross me out, and intestines full of blood definitely gross me out!
On Tuesday we had class again, and then a really pointless “administrative” session, and after that we went to the Stadium to watch some of the wrestling. When we got there nothing was going on, and then for about 2 hours they were doing the racing awards, and finally they got to the wrestling. It was the final round, so there were only 8 guys left. They all came out on the field and did the eagle dance and then all 4 matches went on at the same time. The rules of Nadaam wrestling here are that once a body part other than a hand or foot touches the ground you lose. And it’s single elimination. The next round was the 4 winners of the first round, and one of the matches went really quickly, but then two of the guys were taking for ever! They were just kind of standing there leaning against each other not really doing anything. That went on for like half an hour, they would lean for awhile and then break, repeat repeat repeat. Then finally they did a coin flip, and the winner of the coin flip got to have his arms on top, and then it went pretty fast after that.
The Eagle Dance
The final round took forever too. Cady and I left because we were bored, and we later heard that there was a bit of a scandal. Apparently one of the guys was the hometown favorite, and it got to the point of the coin toss and the other guy won the toss, and the crowd started to boo and hiss and people started leaving, and then the hometown boy lost, and the crowd started going out on the infield and more people left. But then somehow the hometown boy ended up winning or something, there was some talk about a bribe. I don’t really know what went on, something scandalous.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were UB Nadaam, so pretty much all that happens is people watch TV. I watched some TV on Wednesday morning with my family. It was just opening ceremonies, and I sat in the living room and was writing in my journal and watching, and then my Dad yelled at me for not watching, so that was the end of writing in my journal… They have also been making some weird food. When I came downstairs on Wednesday morning there was a big plate of weird yellowish stuff. At first I thought it was this thing that some trainee’s families have made that is gelatin with fat and meat and maybe some cucumbers or something in it. I was terrified! But it turned out to be made with raisins and this creamy stuff that usually we put on bread with sugar, which my Dad had heated up. It was actually not too bad, kind of sweet, but the texture was weird. My Dad also pulled out a plate of the sheep ribs and started eating huge pieces of fat and putting it in his Milk Tea. He knows that I don’t like fat, because every time we are cooking or there is fat around I say I don’t like it. So he didn’t try to make me eat any of the sheep fat. I did have some Milk Tea, I’ve had it a few times. It’s actually pretty good. Some people make it with a lot of salt, which makes it kind of gross, but when it’s not salty it tastes pretty much like heavy milk with a little tea in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment