Hello all of you fabulous people. Yes, I am alive, and yes, this update means that I finally got internet in Choibalsan, my new and wonderful site. I know that my prolonged absence had led some of you to believe that I had been sent to the nether regions of the Gobi, where the only means of long-distance communication is by camel dung-fueled smoke-signal or messenger eagle. The case is actually quite the opposite. While Choibalsan is remote, as it is in Dornod aimag, the easternmost province of Mongolia, it is actually a bustling metropolis of almost 40,000 people. That may not seem like much by American standards, but it makes Choibalsan the fourth largest city in Mongolia. There’s even an airport with a paved runway that has flights to and from Ulan Bator several times a week. The paved road from UB stretches more than halfway here, up through Ondorkhaan, so the first half of the ride flies by, while the second half can get extremely jarring and dusty. On our way here, a particularly brutal bump hit Amanda’s head on the ceiling of our vehicle, which explained why it was padded like an overstuffed armchair.
But I have gotten ahead of myself. It’s been an arduous process getting here, and not only in terms of porragon (ancient Russian jeep) rides. On one of my last days in Nalaikh, my host family took me to the gargantuan monument to Chinggis Khan, who sits on the largest graven figure of a horse in the world. The colossus is situated on the hill where legend holds that a young Chinggis found the golden whip that allowed him to take command of the Mongol hordes in what sounds to a Westerner like a decidedly Arthurian legend. I was in a sams, a traditional Mongolian shirt that my family had given me that morning. The official photographer of the monument was there that day. He took several photographs of me, saying that I would be on the cover of their next brochure. I’m already brightening Mongolians’ lives. There were also several tourists from all over the world, and I encountered a family of Spaniards who were flabbergasted by my knowing any Spanish or Mongolian whatsoever and by my willingness and even excitement to volunteer here for two years. Switching back and forth from my meager Mongolian to my superior Spanish was a linguistic ordeal the likes of which I had never before encountered. My family and I had a picnic in the field next to the statue and played cards until after the sun had set, while Ogie offroaded on a tiny bicycle with oversized training wheels.
The night before my departure, my family laid before me a formidable feast. They dressed me in several of their best dels for more pictures perhaps than I would have liked to take. At two o’clock in the morning before our seven AM departure, I managed to steal away to finish packing and pass out. The next morning, amid many tears, cheek sniffs, (their version of the kiss,) and gifts being exchanged, we left Nalaikh for our final training days in Zuunmod. When I packed for the excursion, my camera was inadvertently put at the very bottom of the suitcase that I didn’t intend to open until I reached my site (the location of which I still did not know at the time.) The result of this is that I didn’t take any pictures for several days.
The four days of Final Center training were obscenely entertaining. Greeting all of the TEFL volunteers yet again was like a reunion with old schoolmates, and seeing the volunteers from other sectors, Health, Economic Development, and Youth Development, with whom I had not met since we first arrived in Mongolia, was mind-bending. And yet, all was tinged with the knowledge that that selfsame afternoon we would learn our site locations. Many of us would after only a few short days (they pass like hours here) not see the others for months at a time if, indeed, ever again. We collectively took this as an impetus to party Mongolian-style like it was Nine-ninety-nine.
I learned that I would be going to Choibalsan and who my site mates would be. Although I endeavored to worm my way out of it, Chimgee, the talented and competent director of Pre-Service Training, got me to agree to play the piano at our swearing-in ceremony. Three days of intensive lectures concerning our soon-to-be sites and work sectors followed, accompanied by three intensive nights and early mornings of relearning how to play the piano, and particularly Claire de Lune. Ryan Rommann, my good friend from my training site, volunteered to be my professional page-turner. He took the job very seriously, coming to the theater hours before the event for several dry runs, and I have since received many compliments on the job that he did.
The morning of the swearing-in ceremony arrived. Volunteers from every site prepared a number of impressive cultural performances, most of which I did not see because I was backstage practicing on the backup piano and hyperventilating. Although I do not much remember playing, I’m told that it went well. I, of course, can think only of the two mistakes that I made, but believe that most of the audience of well over two-hundred spectators did not notice them. The performance was also carried on three television stations and repeated throughout the evening on UB television. I spoke with the Mongolian Foreign Minister who broke from a special session of parliament to attend, and had another very long conversation with the extraordinarily friendly and helpful Ambassador Minton. Unfortunately, he is leaving this month, and if his replacement is able to help Peace Corps Mongolia out even half as much as Mark Minton did, he will be a marvel of support. The new ambassador, Jonathan Addleton, was previously the director of USAID Mongolia, so I am optimistic that he will be a good friend to us.
We had a day and a half in UB before our departure. We received our Mongolian cell phones, and essentially enjoyed all of the fruits Western lifestyle that that fair city had to offer. We stocked up on everything we thought we wouldn’t be able to find at site (which for me in Choibalsan was not much,) and ate at an Indian restaurant one night and an American restaurant the other. Both were superb, and not only because nostalgia is, contrary to popular belief, the best spice. We went to UB’s movie theater to see Transformers 2. It was by a generous margin the worst film I had seen in quite some time. Since the fourth Indiana Jones, perhaps. I wonder if a common thread could be drawn… Nonetheless, a movie theater experience was a great way to spend our last night on the town.
We rose with the sun to take our porragon to Choibalsan. The drive usually clocks in between twelve and fourteen hours. The first half passed smoothly and sleepily. Shortly after we passed Ondorkhan and got to dirt roads, we stopped for about two and a half hours to help a meeker (a Mongolian microbus) that had broken down. At no point were any of us Americans able to ascertain what assistance was being offered by our driver aside from notable aid with clucking of the tongue and shaking of the head as they tried to restart the engine ad nauseam, often without having changed anything since their last go. Nonetheless, it provided an illuminating introduction to the realities of Mongolian transport. We were succored by two thoughts: it wasn’t our vehicle that had broken down, and more importantly, it wasn’t winter. At last, we arrived in our fair city late at night. My school’s director, accountant, and training manager greeted me immediately, and took me to my apartment. Over the next week before school began, I was able to come to appreciate my new hometown.
Aside from being a veritable megalopolis of 40k people, Choibalsan also possesses two commodities that handily eclipse any lack of cosmopolitanism or comfort: great site mates and good food access. There are four M20’s (my class of volunteers is known as this as we are the 20th year of volunteers to come to Mongolia) in the city proper. We are Geoff, Amanda, Susanne, and I. We join two M19’s, named John and Trinh. There are an M19, Lindsay, and an M20, Joel, in the wilderness of Dornod aimag, and they often come in to visit. There are also two VSO volunteers in the city. VSO is quite similar to a British Peace Corps, and citizens of many Commonwealth member states frequently join. We presently have Marg (with a hard “G,” NOT Marge!) from Australia, and Raj from India. We’ve already had one pan-Choibalsan dinner/happy hour, and I am elated to be told that many more will frequently follow. This weekend a few of the volunteers and I had a Mexican food night at John’s house. My Barcelona-inspired Sangria was a hit. You can tell by the enthusiasm on Jeff’s face.
There has been quite a lot to do here since our arrival. The 70th anniversary of an important World War 2 battle was just celebrated here this last Saturday, with great accompanying pomp and circumstance. There were an impressive parade, a re-enactment, a wrestling competition, and a number of concerts. In the photos of black-suited dignitaries walking past, almost all of the subjects are members of Mongolian parliament. The cavalry looked extraordinarily bad-ass. The Russian and Mongolian Defense Ministers were there, and the equivalent of the Russian and Mongolian Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff were also in the parade. So was Amanda, for some as-yet-unfathomable reason.
The victory that was being celebrated was the decisive Battle of Khalkhin Gol, the turning point in the Japanese-Soviet conflict that was part of World War Two. This engagement was the Normandy of the East; its implications for the Pacific War cannot be overstated. There were two tactical schools of thought in early Japanese planning. The more popular was that of the Northern Strike Group, who wanted to leave the Pacific (and America) alone, and instead seize Mongolia and Siberia as far West as lake Baikal, for all the oil and natural resources there. This is why there was so much conflict in Manchuria (which is extremely close to here.) The second, and less popular doctrine, was that of the Southern Strike Group, who wanted to take the resources of Southeast Asia and engage America. At first the Northern Strike Group prevailed, leading to the battle in what is now my backyard. The Soviets and Mongolians, commanded by Georgy Zhukhov, utterly demolished the Japanese, leading the Southern Strike Group to take power, and setting the groundwork for the Pacific War against America. This was Zhukhov’s first major engagement. His second and third were the Battle of Moscow and the Battle of Stalingrad. Those valuable assets thought to be underfoot here turned out to be significant coal and uranium mines, hence the cargo train line that runs down from Siberia to Choibalsan.
I apologize for the arduous history lesson. For those who skipped the last paragraph, the point I wish to make is this: a battle fought in my new stomping grounds can be directly blamed for Pearl Harbor (both the battle and the atrocious movie,) and praised for the far superior film Enemy at the Gates as well as my living on a train line that brings me canned peaches, balsamic vinegar, spices, coffee, vegetables, parmesan cheese, pumpkins, as well as that holy grail of clandestine comestibles, PEANUT BUTTER. I apologize to those other volunteers who are in soums or less-endowed aimag centers who had to read all that, but hey, it’s probably not like you have internet anyway, right?
I might live better here than I ever have, at least in terms of the comforts that I can buy on a $4.50-a-day salary that would seem paltry in California but feels more kingly here. Yes, many of my apartment’s electrical sockets don’t work, I can immediately smell anything that the apartment above me flushes, and the hot water comes out orange a lot of the time. Yet my first thought upon seeing rusty water is not a feeling of disgust, but rather gratitude at having running water to begin with, quite unlike more than half of the volunteers in Mongolia, and an even greater percentage of the native populace.
My school is extraordinarily new and efficient by host country standards, and while it can have some quirks, like the six hours that the tech people from two schools and I spent this week trying to fix the school’s internet connection, it’s in a spacious, newish, well-insulated concrete building that will keep out the negative 30 degree Celsius (BEFORE wind chill) weather during the winter. The teachers are talented and generally hilarious, and include me in everything, even the several hours after school each day of volleyball. The students find me novel, and my few teaching experiences hence far have been cockles-of-the-heart-warmingly positive.
In contrast, the weather on the first day of school was dreary and wet. I walked the mile or so to my school complex with a heavy pea coat covering the markedly professional clothes that I now wear every day I passed flooded streets, the meekers that had skidded off of them, and countless, enormous Soviet-built apartment blocks complete with ten-foot-tall, red hammer-and-sickle murals on their sides. It had the feeling of a soundless montage that would cut to and from a portrayal of Russian gangsters or KGB agents meeting untimely ends. Or perhaps a post-apocalyptic Eastern-bloc-themed zombie film… In any case, the fact that the weather was this cold on only the first of September warrants some concern about the winter.
The students came early to school for singing, congratulation of the teachers on a new school year, and a television address from the Mongolian president. I observed several classes, mostly taught by my extraordinarily capable counterpart, Tsetsegjargal (her name means “happy flower,” which I find hilarious.) She recently surprised me by getting my landlady to hook me up with a pseudo washing machine after I casually mentioned that I had spent an entire afternoon doing laundry by hand. I hear that a refrigerator is in the works as well.
Community development opportunities have already begun to avail themselves to me. I will of course be involved with technology in my school in some way. If nothing else, I can be there to catch such entertaining typos as can be seen in two of these photos. The women who work in the technology classroom make superb displays on the wall that feature mounted portions of desktop computers complete with labels and descriptions as to their function. Unfortunately, English’s “c” is Mongolian’s “s.” Here are some pictures of past placards and a new, huge one that is still in the works:
Also, and on a more serious note, my site mate John is extremely passionate about the trafficking in persons (TIP) program that Peace Corps is running here, and with good reason. Mongolia has, in his words, “a perfect storm” of attributes that make it a prime target for modern slavery. It possesses open, visa-free borders with China and Russia, a welcoming, unassuming, and adoptive culture that wouldn’t think twice about sending a daughter away to work with a distant relation, and particularly strong young men and attractive young women. Choibalsan in particular is at a major crossroads leading to China and Russia, from which slaves can be whisked to the corners of the world without much notice. I cannot wait to begin seminars at my school about this, and am thankful that I have John, virtually an expert on the subject, in the apartment block next to mine.
Being so lucky in my placement does occasionally give me a pang for the romance of living in a ger, and lighting a fire in my tiny stove every day in order to survive. Being in the East, which to be fair, is a moonscape, will occasionally make me yearn for the verdant backdrops of the Center, North, or West. Being so fortunate with the friends that I have here very occasionally makes me wonder who I would become if I were to spend two years living a hundred kilometers from the next native English speaker. Hard on the heels of any of these thoughts is the realization that I have clearly been placed at a site where, with a little effort, but not too much difficulty, I will be able to make a gargantuan difference in the lives of quite a few people. And I suppose that that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
All right, I have stayed up more than late enough writing all of this. I get up at six AM here in order to get to school on time to prepare for class! Those of you who knew me in college should be shaking your heads in bewildered disbelief at this point. For those of you who read this all the way through, I’m impressed. Thank you. Good morning America, good night Mongolia, and good luck to all of you.
