In a few short weeks I will have lived in Mongolia for one year. That fact blows my mind in so many ways. I have never been away from my family, my country and all that I hold to be “normal” for so long. Yet I find myself at a loss of what to write about Mongolia, and my experience here. It has all come to seem so normal. Mongolia is like nothing I had ever imagined, or experienced, or even imagined I would experience. Yet now it is normal. It is Spring. Everyone says Spring in Mongolia is rough. All I know is Spring in Missouri. The red buds blossom, April showers bring May flowers. But Spring in Mongolia is filled with dust storms, white-out blizzards that melt in two hours and dead animals.
A few weeks ago I went to UB for my annual Peace Corps physical. The bus ride there was more frustrating than most of my previous trips to UB. They are working on the road again, which doesn’t mean progress at this point. It means driving aimlessly across fields because there are piles of dirt and rocks blocking the road. And it means animal carcasses. Animals die in the Spring. This past winter was harder and colder than it has been in 10 years according to most Mongolians. I believe them. Walking the 5 minutes to work my eyelashes froze, and even though my desk was mere feet away from the wall with a radiator, my hands were frozen most of the day. Long underwear, which I have never worn in my life, was a necessity from October until mid-March.
My trip home from UB was even more interesting. When we stopped for lunch it was like a scene out of a Disney movie. A storm was coming through. We sat in the ger , waiting for our lunch of tsoy vin to be served, and kept hearing what sounded like an airplane. It turned out to be a thunderstorm. When I went outside to look, I could see darkness sweeping over the land. It was like something bad was about to happen. I watched the dust storm coming from the West, and the thunderclouds coming from the North. But no lightening. In Mongolia the sky is nearly endless, you can watch the clouds cast shadow over the Steppe. I watched “dustadoes” rise into the air. There isn’t enough moisture in Mongolia to create tornadoes, but cyclones of dust frequently rise a hundred feet into the air.
Somehow, though I have never lived through a Mongolian Spring, it doesn’t really shock me. Last week I went to Battsengal to ride horses. While I was in UB I met some PCVs who had just ended their service in Ukraine and were taking the Trans-Siberian to Beijing. They ended up coming out to Arkhangai for a few days to experience the Mongolian countryside, and, of course, I took them to Battsengal. During the two-hour ride out there we saw innumerable carcasses on the side of the road. Spring means dead animals, but also clean-white baby sheep and adorable baby horses. Somehow, after living here almost a year the carcasses didn’t even phase me. Maybe it’s the normality of seeing animal bones littered across fields, and even in the dirt streets of Tstetserleg. The last time I went to Battsengal the baby sheep were just starting to be born, and when we came back from our ride the family told us that an eagle had eaten one. We saw one of the kids of the herder family tear across the Steppe on his ever-ready Mongol horse to the sheep herd because there was an eagle circling.
Everyone who has heard anything about the “Mongol Hordes” knows how hardy Mongolian horses are. During the time of Chinggis Khan, they carried the army all the way to Vienna. But you can’t even begin to imagine it until you see almost skeletal horses during the Spring giving birth and nursing their foals, and surviving that. Nearly every horse, yak or cow I see has severely protruding hip-bones, and is clearly seriously mal-nourished. Yet these animals, at least most of them, manage to survive this hardship and go on to thrive once the grass is fully grown and the Mongolian Summer fully arrives. Only to do it all again the next year.
It makes you think about the Mongolian people. Like their animals (which outnumber them almost 40 to 1), Mongolians, for centuries, have survived this harsh climate and at one point had the largest empire ever known. This country is full of hardy animals and the resilient people who care for them.
These resilient people are trying to fight through a post-Soviet, high-inflation and corrupt economy to develop. The contrast between their mostly small community knowledge and lifestyle and their desire to be a democracy seems an almost impossible struggle. The national elections are coming up this year. And with the national elections comes a possible shift in the controlling Party. In America we are used to essential continuity, regardless of which party is in power. Our basic civil servants are not politically appointed, they keep and do their jobs through major shifts in the political atmosphere. In Mongolia that is not the case. A change in the controlling party means every civil servant loses their job, and is replaced by someone with the same political affiliation of the controlling party. How is anything to be done under such a system? School directors, School system methodologists, Park administrators, all the way down to the drivers hired to transport these employees of the State have almost no job security. Why should they work hard? Why should the seek promotion?
Despite this strange governmental system, many Mongolians are working hard to develop their country and try to gain transparency in their government. Many of the younger generation, who haven't grown up under communism, realize there is a lot of work to be done and want to be the ones to do it. Mongolians love their country, and are proud of their unique traditions and way of life. Many of the small-business owners I meet and work with through Mercy Corps are eager to learn what it takes to compete and keep their business going.
