Last week I traveled to Ulaanbaatar for the Peace Corps Thanksgiving party, and also to get Sophie spayed. It seems that in Mongolia the only place to take care of a small animal is in UB. Wednesday morning Jeff and I walked through the first inkling of sunrise to the bus. I was really worried they wouldn’t let Sophie on the bus, but it turned out our only worry was actually the fact that the guy was going to charge us to bring on our backpacks. That didn’t happen last time I was on the bus, but apparently the system isn’t exactly organized and each bus ride is the sole domain of the driver, who can do whatever he pleases. So eventually we paid up, and Sophie, Jeff and I were off to the city.
The bus ride is always an interesting experience. We eventually filled it to 36 people plus one dog. And it’s really hot, so there is always a war about whether or not the vent in the roof is open or closed. For about 3 hours it went something like this: the guy sitting in the aisle would stand up and open it and everyone would breath a sigh of relief. Then about 10 minutes later the guy sitting next to the vent would stand up and close it. Repeat repeat repeat.
Probably about half of the total PVCs in the country were in UB for Thanksgiving and the M17s to get their flu shots. That basically meant it was a 3-4 day party, all of us acting ridiculously. It was fun to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in almost 4 months, and we celebrated accordingly. Our Thanksgiving wasn’t until Saturday, but the Peace Corps put on a really awesome party for us. PC got 6 turkeys and then everyone brought a dish. And Ambassador Minton generously provided several kegs and bottles of wine. We all had a great time and the turkey was almost as good as my Mom’s. Not quite though.
Being in UB in the winter was kind of a depressing experience. The air is so bad there some times you can hardly see in front of your face. One day I went to the black market with a couple other girls and driving back into the city the smog was so bad you could only see about 5 cars ahead. Just being there for four days was enough to give me a bad cough. My big Thanks for this Thanksgiving is that I do not live in the city. I love Arkhangai. From UB Mongolia seems like such a sad, depressing place. You don’t get to see the beautiful Mongolian sky very often, and the traffic is awful. There are over a million people living in a very poorly planned city. There are street children who have nowhere to live but in the sewers, families in the ger districts who can't afford coal or wood to burn, and sometimes freeze to death. There is also rampent domestic violence and child abuse that no one can do anything about because the government doesn't have a system for dealing with things like that. Many children have to put up with abuse so they can eat, because a lot of times the only place they can get food is from the man abusing them. It’s also sad because so many Mongolians want to move to UB. It has the sort of gold-paved streets draw that America has to so many. But the streets in UB are paved with trash and open sewer holes because people steal the metal to sell to China. There are many people working in restaurants that speak excellent English and hold four year degrees, because there are no jobs. It’s sad that they all want to live in UB, because anyone who speaks English has great opportunities in the countryside, many English teachers out here don’t speak any English, and there are jobs for translators that are filled with very under qualified people because no one wants to live in the countryside.
I don’t understand the rush to live in the city. Mongolia is such a beautiful country. People in the countryside are really friendly. Sure, sometimes they are rude and living here has made me take a sick pleasure out of shoving people. But people are always willing to help. If you speak any Mongolian people constantly compliment you on how great your language is. It’s nice to be flattered like that, and it helps motivate me to study.
They say that it’s a small world, but Mongolia gives a new meaning to that phrase. Mongolia is a huge country geographically, but it’s not at all uncommon to randomly run into someone you know on the street. While I was in UB I ran into Nabaa, who was Cady’s host brother over the summer. One of the Peace Corps program directors went to university at the same school in America where my sister goes. The strangest experience I had was the morning I drove out to the Dragon center to buy my bus ticket. My taxi driver was really nice and he spoke quite a bit of English. I learned that he is a student at the Police Academy, and his parents live in Darkhan and his grandparents live in Arkhangai. He was a really nice guy, I asked him to wait for me when I went in to buy the ticket, but the ticket office wasn’t open yet so I had to wait like half an hour, and he waited for me the whole time. Then when we were driving back into town he asked me if I wanted to drink some coffee with him. Sure, why not? So we stopped at a little guanz, and of course they didn’t have coffee so we drank tea. And he ordered some food which I didn’t really want, but ate anyway. After we were finished he wouldn’t let me pay, and then he drove me back to the Peace Corps office and wouldn’t let me pay for my taxi ride. Mongolian men are a lot different than American men. Anhaa (my taxi driver) said that he had a girlfriend, and while we were eating he said “I only love my girl.” But then he wanted to have dinner with me that night too, and I gave him my phone number. He said he would call me later in the evening, or maybe he wanted me to call him I’m not really sure but I wanted to have dinner with Cady since I never get to see her anyway. When I was telling another PCV the story I told him the guy had a girlfriend, and the PCV said that that doesn’t really matter to Mongolian men. It wouldn’t matter if they were married and it certainly wouldn’t matter if they only had a girlfriend. Oh well. I’m going to stick with the idea that he just wanted to practice his English.
My trip back from UB was an awful experience. When I got to the bus they wouldn’t let me on with the Sophie. Even though I had taken her on the bus a few days ago…. But like I said each driver is a King. I tried to tell him that she had taken medicine and would just sleep; she was really good on the first ride. I gave her some benedryl which helped her sleep and it also kept her from getting sick. Luckily Rob was there and he speaks really good Mongolian, and after arguing with the guy for awhile to no avail he helped me find a Mikr. We eventually found a driver going to Arkhangai, he didn’t have a mikr but he had a really nice car and he said we just had to wait for three other people. So we waited for awhile, then another guy got in the car and we drove a little ways off to where there was a mikr that just needed one more person. So I got on and we actually left RIGHT THEN, which is an amazing and delightful experience that is very rare in Mongolia. We actually picked up two more people, so it was four adults in the one back seat, three kids sitting on the box in the middle and then the driver and his wife up front. It was a little crowded, but Sophie and I both enjoyed our benedryl- induced happiness and we were on our way. The thing with mikrs that sucks so badly is that they will just stop randomly and wait. About an hour or two outside UB we stopped and waited for almost an hour to meet another car. I didn’t see any exchange of people or things, so I’m not sure what was going on. We stopped a few more times and there was something minor wrong with the mikr so the driver kept messing with the engine. It was really really cold too. UB is much colder than Arkhangai, so it was really miserable for me when we stopped. Sophie wanted to be outside checking things out and all I wanted to be to cuddle up in my coat and shiver inside the mikr. Finally we got to the guanz stop at around 8 (the bus arrives at that place around 12:30, and we left only half an hour after the bus…). We had to wait there for a really long time while the driver messed with the engine and then FINALLY we were back on our way. By that time I was so tired and had taken more benedryl and I began with the Mongolian-style sleeping on a stranger’s shoulder. I was sitting between two men and they both had very comfortable shoulders to sleep on. I think at one point one of them pushed me off, so I immediately moved on to the other. They didn’t seem to mind too much. I also had a kid sleeping on the knee, and Sophie on my lap so there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go… I think at some point in the night we got a flat tire, which was frustrating because we were only a couple hours from home. We eventually reached my apartment at midnight. Luckily I had had a conversation with the driver’s wife. Once I told her I lived in the Goi Bashen she told me that she makes the buutz they sell in the delguur in my apartment building. When they dropped me off, in my exhaustion induced stupidity I left one of my bags on the mikr. My cell phone also somehow fell out of my pocket. I was so upset, when I got into my apartment I realized I was missing my cell phone and ran back downstairs but they were already gone. I cried. The things in the bag I left were the really nice pillow, some cheese and a piece of fresh ginger that I bought in UB. Sophie’s last set of vaccinations was also in there. Nothing irreplaceable but it’s going to cost a lot of money I don’t have to replace them. The cell phone is the worst thing. Peace Corps gives us a cell phone but if something happens to it we have to replace it on our own dime, and cell phones are expensive!!! But, I do know that they sell buutz in my delguur, so this morning I got Rob to go with me and asked the woman who runs the delguur is she knew them. She tried to call them but there phone was off or out of service, but I have the phone number now and the lady at the Delguur said I could go back later and she’d try again. I hope it works out. I took a walk up the path of Enlightenment to the Buddha statue this morning in the hopes that would give me some good karma…
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