Tiptoeing the planks

Met them at the school. Selenge, the “emmay” grandmother was in her dell, Ganbayar, “Ogie,” the 5 year-old in a bright silver suit complete with hat and tie. I’m packed in “Zaya’s” (Ogie’s mother, my host sister) taxi, and am off to the khasha-compound. The roads are unpaved, and we must swerve wildly to avoid potholes, dogs, cows, and rock-mounds. The fences, which part just enough to allow a car through, are made of hand-cut wood and bits of corrugated scrap metal. And yet, they are often beautifully decorated. It seems that the majority of yards contain only gers. We arrive, I’m shown into the 10-foot by 15-foot guest house/room in which I’ll be staying (its’ wonderful, kind of a Mongolian bachelor pad,) and I am immediately sat down to a feast. All the relatives, some visiting for the occasion of my arrival, crowd around and marvel at the vodka and wine that I brought them, as well as the photo-albums and picture-books. Vodka shots are distributed, and the socializing (purely gesticulative in my case) continues late into dinner. At last, I sleep around 11:00.

My dry sink was clogged. The grandfather, an honored man with a name so epic I will not begin trying to inscribe it, stuck a bicycle pump up the faucet and with great tribulation sent a filthy brown geyser erupting out of the tiny water tank and directly onto the head of Ogie, who, to be fair, had been warned not to observe so closely. We all dissolved into hysterical laughter. I think things will be all right.

There is a certain…contentment. The hearth is roaring, because it rained and snowed my first night in Nalaikh (June 19.) I haven’t bathed in many days (where would I? No running water,) I had my first adventures with the outhouse, essentially a wooden plank missing out of a platform over a hole, and I have had to ninja my way to the main house around the “noghoy” guard dog (a week later, as I type this out of my handwritten Mongologue, I still endure daily gesticulative iterations of my tiptoeing from all members of the family.) The scenery is beautiful. The people are very curious and generous. Even the thrice-hourly barging –in of Ogie are useful, as he never tires of “en-you-way” (what is this?) I’m exhausted every evening, but I know that my brain is working over-time digesting between 100 and 150 new words each day, and it appears that my body is thus-far keeping a phalanx of focally-inspired bacteria and viruses at bay. I know that things will get much rougher. I know that I will get spectacularly ill, and I do fear the difficulties and intricacies of what I’ve been told is among the most difficult languages in Peace Corps. And yet, somehow, the fear doesn’t come. The “morning paralysis” that used to bench me for an hour upon each waking is barely lethargy as I work my way out from under warm sheets into frigid air. I suppose that at last, having finally found an arena in which I can really prove my quality, much more to myself than to anyone else, I’ve discovered a whole new drive. A whole new… contentment.