Bob's Mongologue

Pay-It-Forward Sheep Purchase Day 1

2011-06-18T02:24:00.000-07:00

By Bob Figlock & Danny Wolf
Published: Tuesday, May 24, 2011

After weeks of planning and fundraising, we finally arrived at Division 5 on Saturday morning to discuss the arrangements that the recipient families had made for purchasing and transporting their sheep. Our cohort consisted of Bob, Danny, Bavaasan the translator, Enkhbayar the veteran of such undertakings, and John and Joel for support. Most of the families were able to show up, explain their plans, and make the initial contractual agreements. Five families had already selected a seller and had their documentation in order, so we made the necessary travel arrangements, produced a hand-drawn map of our contorted route, and agreed to set out early the next day.

We left Choibalsan in a porragon (a 1960's Russian Jeep) Sunday morning. The wind was picking up and dying down spasmodically, and rain, snow, and hail were taking turns at falling. We barreled along a path that at times consisted of a pair of dirt wheel-tracks pressed into the grassland, and at times was merely the grassland itself. We were trying to get 40km southeast to the dwelling of a herder who would be selling us 60 sheep from his flock of more than a thousand. As it can be extremely difficult to find nomadic herders in the countryside, our driver had to stop at every home we passed and ask where the family was. Conversations usually progressed along the lines of:

Driver: Do you know Boldbaatar?
Woman: Which Boldbaatar?
Three children and a man have walked out into the rain to open the porragon door, stick their heads in, and gawk unblinkingly at probably the first foreigners they've ever seen for 30 seconds straight.
Driver: The one with the sheep.
Woman: Oh, he lives that way.
She points to a spot on the blank horizon absolutely indistinguishable from any of the other 359 degrees that she could have chosen. She might well have been pointing back to Choibalsan for all we knew.
Driver: OK.
Woman: OK.

During several of these stops, the ubiquitous guard dogs wanted to attack our porragon and would chase us unto the very end of their strength. One large dog in particular chose to chase us… from the front. Our driver was careful not to run it over but at times we were going over 30km/hr and the dog was zigzagging in front of us, barking over his shoulder all the while. He made it close to a mile before tiring out and letting us pass. We weren't even within sight of his home any more.

Finally we made it to the ger we were looking for. Shortly after arrival we discovered that all of the sheep were still out to pasture and we therefore couldn't make the purchase. An ironclad rule of our project was that all sheep were to be selected by the recipient prior to payment so we could personally ear tag them. It would be a few hours before they could be corralled for selection. Luckily, the next seller was only 20km away, so we decided to move on so the sheep could be chosen in the meantime. On the way we saw a herd of camels so we stopped and took pictures. The camels were pretty curious about us, but tried to keep their distance, especially when Bavasaan tried to get close enough for us to take a picture of them together. This was the first time Danny had gotten this close to a camel outside of the zoo. The camels tired of us before we tired of them, so we continued on our way.

When we arrived, the two families who were making the purchase showed up 5 minutes after us. The seller already had his livestock on hand and waiting for selection so some of us went out to choose and tag the sheep while others stayed in the ger, sipped milk tea and ate biscuits, and handled the particulars of signing the contract. One of our previous families had opted out at the last minute, causing us some alarm, but fortunately here we encountered an old man who had lost all but 50 of his clan's livestock and is supporting 7 children and over 30 grandchildren with these animals. He had been vetted and chosen to receive a ger from a World Vision project last year. After Enkhbayar conducted a long interview, we determined that his family was eligible to participate.

The two families who were buying sheep that day had small, young herds and preferred to purchase 15 two-year-old mothers with 15 lambs instead of 20 three-year-olds as most recipients were doing. This way they could appropriately stagger their herd for sustainability. They agreed that they would pay back the same 20 3-year-olds that everyone else would, and Enkhbayar approved of this modification, so it was put into place. Once the sheep were tagged and the contracts were signed, we handed over the gargantuan stacks of tugriks (there is no checking system out here) and received a shower of gratitude for creating a project such as this. The two herder families were all smiles and couldn't thank us enough. They were clearly very excited to have these animals, and spoke enthusiastically of driving them home this week.

We were seen off by another round of handshakes and waves to go back to the first seller with whom we had met. This time we arrived to find the animals had been selected and everything was ready for the contract signing and tagging. As with the previous purchase, several people went outside to chase the sheep around the corral while others filled out and signed the contracts. The sheep were docile once tackled, but were naturally averse to having an oversize hole-punch used on their ears. Since we caught the slowest ones first, and couldn't separate the sheep that had been tagged from those that hadn't, the last few animals proved very difficult register. In spite of being the only member of the flock without a bright orange earring, the very last sheep took five of us to bring down, at one point jumping clear over another (standing!) member of the flock.

Much like at the previous handovers, everyone was highly and demonstratively appreciative of what we were doing. Once the contracts were finalized and the payment was given, we headed back to Division 5 to get more signatures for the contracts, as everything is signed by each adult member of a recipient family in triplicate. We were greeted by some of the family members who had stayed home. They made us Mongolian soup containing dried sheep-jerky and milk tea as a gesture of gratitude. Although we were exhausted by day's end, we had had what we felt was a legitimate Mongolian adventure out in the countryside and were looking forward to purchasing the other half of the animals next weekend.

To view more photos, please visit our album here.

www.flickr.com

Jagaa, the dog.

2011-05-11T01:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been better about updating! I would like to share with you all my best story of late. I hope you don't mind blood and guts. Seriously, don't read this if you do. Just be assured that the story has a happy ending.

---

So my site mate John Russell's dog keeps trying to kill itself. It was I who first found her a day or two before Christmas, collapsed in the middle of the biggest intersection in town during a fairly heavy snowfall, and it was just because her impending doom was so immediate that she is the one puppy to which I've given in and that I've taken home. Fortunately, John was willing to atone for my mistake and adopt her. Her name is Jagaa, short for Jargal noghoy (happy dog.)

She has stopped to pee in front of several rapidly advancing cars. She leans right down into open manholes. She scales furniture to poison herself on large quantities of chocolate. While we were walking along the frozen river a month ago (which was holding our weight just fine,) she managed to fall through the ice behind us while we weren't looking and was dramatically rescued by a herdsman.

John and frozen Jagaa

So, we figured she shouldn't reproduce. The local Choibalsan veterinarian volunteered to fix her for free so that her students could get some experience and exposure. The alternative would have been a slightly-less-than-200k tugruk (about $180, or 80% of our monthly salary) procedure at the real vet in UB. John decided to go with the free one.

So last Tuesday we took her in to the Technical college and she got fixed. She was not completely anesthetized through this procedure (apparently they don't do it that way here) so four vet students were holding her down while the vet and her protege did the fixing. She was clearly displeased.

Friday night, the time of evening comes to change her bandages. This is the third night of doing this so no biggie. We're over at our other site mate Danny's house, and many of the soumers (village volunteers) are in visiting. We take the dog into the kitchen to swap gauze, when we notice that there's a lot of blood. We flip her over onto her back, and carefully undo the Ace bandage. The gauze is super bloody. And then her intestines pop out.

I'm not talking about a little bit here. At first there were several inches out. Jagaa is freaking out, as is, understandably, John. I rush into the other room to grab help from the other volunteers. I tell one of them to start iodizing water and grabbing gloves from the med kit. I try to call the Choibalsan vet three times on her number and several more times on the numbers of her co-workers. It's 9pm on a Friday, so nobody answers.

I call the vet in UB and ask for advice on my phone while continuing to make calls on other people's phones. She says it's not life-threatening so long as we can wrap the whole mess up. We start flicking the iodized water across her guts to keep them wet and clean and avoid oxidation. By this time the dog is throwing up, and every time she does more intestine comes out. The protruding amount ends up being larger than two baseballs but smaller than a football. A soum volunteer, Jason, is in gloves and is holding the guts on the dog's stomach so that they don't touch the kitchen floor while John and Danny hold her top and bottom halves so that she stays on her back. She is... agitated. Jason soaks fresh gauze in iodized water and uses it to cover the pile.

I get Merrie, the volunteer from the technical college, to come over, and call the vet from her phone. It finally gets through, so I put Geoff, our best speaker by far, on the line and he explains the situation. She wants to wait until tomorrow morning. We explain that no, this needs to happen now. I concede to the demand that I come pick her up in a taxi. At 10 o'clock, Merrie, one of our Mongolian friends Munkhtuya, and I get a taxi and race to the vet's house, her protege's house, and the school to pick up medical supplies.

We get back around 10:30pm. Her guts have been out for just under an hour and a half. We clean the kitchen table and start sterilizing stuff. Jagaa gets two shots of local anesthetic, which don't appear to do very much. Danny and John continue to hold her down while Jason continues to keep the intestines in place while the vet carefully threads them back inside. I'm running around cleaning and grabbing things like scissors and antibiotic ointment, and cleaning up dog puke from the floor. The dog doesn't seem too agonized during this part. The guts are back in by 11:15.

Then came the bitch, as it were. The vet had poor eyesight, and could therefore not do the stitches. She hadn't been able to perform the original ones either. Causality? Perhaps. The vet student had to sew her stomach muscles back up, and then her skin. The dog was thrashing. By this point John, Danny, and Jason are using their actual bodyweight to hold her down. She is a 20 pound dog. Adrenaline's a hell of a thing. Things actually got worse near the end because there appear to be much more nerve endings in skin than in organs.

She was all sewn back up at 12:15pm, three hours into the incident. We thanked the vets and paid for the drugs and their taxi ride back. We agreed that it was the worst night of several of our lives. John got Jagaa safely huddled into a corner where she passed out while giving all of us the evil eye.

And then we drank.

We were gun-shy of the ordeal happening all over again-same stitches and stitcher after all-and I was flying in for a conference on Sunday anyway, so I took the dog with me to get redone at the vet in UB. The logistics of flying with a dog in Mongolia were a big hassle, but less than I imagine a repeat would have been. The original procedure had only removed her ovaries, not her uterus, and due to the possibility of cancer that's apparently a big reason to get a female dog fixed in the first place. So John ended up dropping more than 200k on the UB procedure, plus another 100k for round-trip airfare that wouldn't have been necessary if he'd just driven in with her under less critical circumstances. Jagaa was none too pleased with her third surgery in a week, but is now pretty healthy aside from still being on antibiotics. The UB vet found the beginnings of a serious internal infection when they opened her up, so it turns out that the UB trip was definitely the right call.

Lesson learned. Guys, pay for the expensive surgery from the beginning. It's worth it.

The post-op victory picture. Stone Cold Jagaa is a Stone Cold fox.

Happy 50th Birthday, Peace Corps!

2011-02-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

and congratulations to the 200,000 Americans who have served as Volunteers. I'd like to express my deep gratitude towards JFK, Sargent Shriver, Director Williams, and all of the other American and foreign leaders to whose efforts we owe our wonderful program's existence. To our amazing staff here in Ulan Bator, all of my fellow PC Mongolia Volunteers, and the host country nationals who make our experiences possible: from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for enabling the most challenging, inspiring, and rewarding experience I've ever had.

Kennedy Signing Executive Order 10924, Establishing the United States Peace Corps

Ladies and Gentlemen...

2010-08-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

Introducing Mongolia's very first Elvis impersonator. This is my English teacher training counterpart, Nargie, impersonating Elvis on Darkhan public access television.

New Updates!

2010-07-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! The thick of Pre-Service Training is upon me, and I have had little to no time for eating, sleeping, or posting. What I do have is a massive backlog of pictures from last year. I apologize that I can’t write more context for these, but I hope that they will tide you over until I can return to musing in this space once again.

[[editor's note]] The next 5 posts or so are all new updates, be sure to read them all!

Chillin in Choibalsan, and other adventures

2010-07-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

Visiting Counterparts’ Houses

Here are pictures from Shine Jil (New Year’s Day) at my main counterpart, Tsetsegjargal’s, apartment and a lunch that we had at Geoff’s counterpart, Urgoo’s, house with his hilarious kids.

Volleyball Tournament

My school’s staff is amazing at volleyball and often wins tournaments. They let me play with them once. I’m pretty sure that I did not impress…

Chilling in Choibalsan

is comprised of pictures that would not fit anywhere else, yet most definitely warranted inclusion in this space.

and just in case you were wondering what goes on with other Aimags’ groups…

Teaching

2010-07-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Included here are pictures from the Dyned lab that I resurrected (see earlier posts,) a somewhat impromptu “Materials Creation Seminar” that Geoff’s school put on, and assorted pictures from my “English for other subject teachers” class which was quite a lot of fun while it lasted. In case you’re wondering, the woman with the video camera is Geoff’s director, who insisted on taping and photographing us while we watch a carefully choreographed display lesson. I started taking pictures of her taking pictures, which led to an endless feedback loop that we both enjoyed thoroughly.

Teachers’ Day Party

2010-07-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

Teachers' day occurs the week before Tsaagan Sar (the lunar New Year.) My school rented out a nice Chinese restaurant and provided no small amount of merriment. Trinh showed up, and the ceremony turned into a dance party. He has often been known to have this effect.

Teachers’ Day Performances

What is a holiday without a series of hastily-prepared musical performances? I had the honor of leading the Foreign Language department in a round of “We are the World,” singing a duet version of a wonderful Mongolian song roughly translated as “Traveling Bird,” and whipping out Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. The sustain pedal broke about a measure after I started, leading to an electrician, the music teacher, and me awkwardly trying to fix it in front of the entire staff for almost ten minutes. I eventually gave up on that and just played the song without pedal. NICE.

My School

2010-07-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

These are random pictures, most of which were taken by my counterparts and coworkers of their various projects in and around the school building. Mind that this edifice was a food factory only three years ago. There is an awards ceremony included for good measure. These occur quite frequently but one is hardly distinguishable from another.

Brewing

2010-07-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

Joel and I have been busily brewing beer in my apartment, turning a batch out about every other month. Some brews have turned out better than others, but they have all produced a lot of fun, a learning experience, and five gallons of beer. There should be much more of this to come around the end of the summer and throughout next year. I’ve also been trying my hand at cheese making (thanks to a wonderful dairy farm in somebody’s yard not half a kilometer from my building) and have an extra-sharp cheddar aging in my apartment right now. It should be ready by Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know how it ends up tasting. THEN YOU PEOPLE IN AMERICA CAN BE JEALOUS OF MY CHEESE!!! [Sob]

Michael Jackson in Mongolia

2010-04-08T17:27:00.001-07:00

My friend and future co-trainer Alison Boland filmed and edited this during our Pre-Service training. It's pretty fantastic.

The Nine Nines

2010-03-18T23:56:00.001-07:00

The Nine Nines (the nine periods of nine days that are how Mongolians record the passing of Winter) are here delineated. The first Nine begins on December 22nd. We're on the eighth one now!

“Есөн ес”
“The Nine Nines”

Нэг “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the first nine?
Нэрмэл архи хөлдөнө. — Homemade vodka will freeze.
Хоёр “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the second nine?
Хорз архи хөлдөнө. — High content vodka will freeze.
Гурав “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the third nine?
Гунан үхрийн эвэр хөлдөнө. — A three year old cow’s horn will freeze.
Дөрөв “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the fourth nine?
Дөнөн үхрийн эвэр хуга хөлдөнө. — A four year old cow’s horn will freeze and snap.
Таван “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the fifth nine?
Тавьсан будаа хөлдөхгүй. — Rice left to set will not freeze.
Зургаан “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the sixth nine?
Зурайсан зам гарна. — The surface of the road will come out.
Долоон “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the seventh nine?
Довын толгой борлоно. — The small hills top will become brown.
Найман “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happen during the eight nine?
Нал шал болно. — The ground will become moist and damp.
Есөн “ес”- д яах вэ? — What will happend during the ninth nine?
Ерийн дулаан болно. — The days will become warm again.

Broomball

2010-03-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

Our most recent trip into UB for Swine Flu vaccinations had the good fortune of coinciding with an American Embassy Broomball tournament. Broomball, for the uninitiated, consists of trying to play hockey with brooms in place of sticks, a soccer ball in lieu of a puck, and crucially, plain shoes instead of skates. Hilarity habitually ensues. This embassy newsletter gives the play-by-play as well as I could. My sitemate Trinh was the Peace Corps Volunteer who exclaimed “This is for the housewives!”

Thanksgiving and IST

2010-03-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving:
Gorge on foreign food,
drink a tasty beer,
and socialize with volunteers
you see about twice a year.

IST:
Repeat the above with Mongolian counterparts.
The teaching and project planning sessions were also excellent.

Travel.

2010-03-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

It is occasionally our dubious pleasure to spend between 12 and 20 hours packed into a porragon, a Soviet-era Russian microbus with a beefed-up suspension, on spectacularly unpaved and sometimes utterly illusory “roads.” Oftentimes there are neither markers nor hints whatsoever as to which parts of the steppe/regolith do and do not constitute a viable part of the thoroughfare. It is while we are traversing these uncharted wastes (and evidently concourses) that I spend minutes and hours wondering whether my driver is engaged in some sort of solar-relative form of navigation, or whether each porragon leaves a scent trail to be followed by the next, like some sort of peon-ant posting a linear memorandum of “there’s food this way!” for the benefit of his fellow proletarian.

A porragon has either eleven or twelve actual seats in it. These seats are quite small, and nine of them are usually arrayed on three benches in the back. In spite of this, I have never undertaken the trek as part of a fellowship containing fewer than twelve members, and, just in case we should be waylaid by wandering bands of highwaymen I suppose, our numbers have at times ranged up to sixteen. I am not counting children (pupae) or, as they are termed after their metamorphosis from the larval stage, “lap banshees.” Experience has shown me that either incarnation is capable of The Exorcist-themed projectile excretions.

One might say that the road to Ulan Bator is fraught with peril. Reasons for 2-4 hours stops in the past have included snowstorms, our vehicle breaking down, a vehicle in our caravan breaking down, a vehicle NOT in our caravan breaking down, etc. ad nauseam. I admire the fact that Mongolians are a very communal society, in which spending three hours by the side of a road in temperatures below negative thirty Fahrenheit is something that is “simply done” for the benefit of those in the other vehicle who would otherwise freeze to death. This does not, however, excuse a three-hour break in a city of fifteen thousand while the passengers on our two vehicles get wasted on the vodka that Russians wouldn’t drink.

An “autos,” an actual bus that takes the same route, is exactly the same except twice as big and with twice as many people.

World Aids Day, aka. condomucopia

2010-03-10T11:02:00.000-08:00

Hello, all. I apologize for my protracted paucity in posting pictures. When I imagined the Peace Corps lifestyle a year ago, visions of reading lengthy tomes while relaxing in a hammock suspended between trees danced through my head. The reality of service in Mongolia is actually frenetically paced. I’m sure that my friends serving in tiny villages across the country would leap to protest this claim, had their months-long inertia induced by steadfastly surviving glacial ger-life not slowed their movement to a lethargic yet plucky torpor. In fact, we are not only in the grips of an abnormally frigid Mongolian winter, but perhaps the coldest and most brutal brumality to rock this steppe in 30 years.

The upside of living in a busy Aimag Center is that there is always work to be done, and sometimes internet connectivity with which to do it. I hope that in the near future I will be better at time-managing the former and utilizing the latter (when present) to get my truly massive backlog of pictures and stories posted here. By the way, Happy Tsagaan Sar! (Lunar New Year)

World AIDS Day

December 1st marks World AIDS day, an occasion on which we can all come together in the timeless and joyous pursuit of plaguing, pillorying, and perhaps protecting those who are less comfortable around condom demonstrations than ourselves. This year, that unenviable role fell to the general student populations of Choibalsan’s two colleges. We also worked to spread awareness of sexually transmitted infections, educate on their prevention, and distribute countless quantities of those enigmatic and enticing little prophylactics known as “Lifestyles-Ultra Lubricated.” Tia Farrell, a superbly knowledgeable PC volunteer at the Red Cross in UB, generously provided us with 750 such safety sleeves, which we put to very good use. After the customary early-morning “big old bag o’ condoms” photo shoot:

…we were off to the Dornod Health Department to coordinate with Raj and Jay, VSO volunteers from India and the Philippines respectively, on our methods of mass dissemination. Posters and materials from the Red Cross were distributed to the local secondary schools, where the health teachers were busy plastering hallways with all such resources onto which they could get their latexed hands.

We then saturated both the Dornod Institute and the Dornod Technology School where we adopted “Shock and Awe” tactics of dispersal, and clearly won some hearts and minds in the process. No place was safe, from the snowy exterior

to the library

to the very classrooms themselves.

There is something uproarious about-literally-running up to a group of young Mongolians, loudly saying “here you go” or “mai,” the Mongolian-language equivalent, and pushing a condom, a bookmark with AIDS information, and a hand-made red ribbon into their unexpecting palms. We established such disarming routines as approaching a particularly reticent recipient (provided that he or she was with friends) giving him or her a significant head-to-toe once-over with a knowing smile, and then bestowing not one but two or three condoms, conspiratorially murmuring “looks like you’ll be needing a few of these." I'm pretty sure that several of them understood the flattery, as farcical as it might really have been.

When our condom cache was nearly exhausted, we attended an informational seminar that had been arranged by Raj, Jay, and the local chapter of the Red Cross. The college-aged recruits seemed very motivated. The thought that some of them will still be doing this sort of thing after we’re all gone is quite reassuring. Now if only I can get them to wear red ribbon capes and put on condom skullcaps...

So remember folks:

Limit your trysts,
get checked twice,
listen to all that Red Cross advice;
condom fairy’s coming to town.
EVEN IN MONGOLIA

Address in Dornod Aimag

2010-01-31T22:57:00.000-08:00

Robert Figlock, Peace Corps Volunteer
Shine Hogjil Secondary School
Dornod Aimag, Herlen Soum
Mongolia (Via China)

Роберт Фиглок, Энх Тайвны Корпус
Сайн Дурын Ажилтан
"Шинэ Хөгжил" Цогцолбор Сургуулы
Дорнод Аймаг, Хэрлэн Сум
Mongolia, Via China

If the web characters don't work, here's an image for easy printing!

January

2010-01-04T15:35:00.001-08:00

Footraces, Teaching, Weddings, and Ribbons

2009-12-29T01:43:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my school had a Saturday-long track and field competition. When I made the mistake of producing my camera from my pocket, it was deftly snatched (so that pictures of me with students could be taken, whether I wanted them to be or not.) Just about every event to which I bring my camera turns out this way. I suppose I am appreciative, as it means that I get to be in a few photos. It also gives me a great excuse for poor lensmanship.

I was supposed to participate in a footrace, but it was scheduled on the same day as a ribbon cutting ceremony for the first private hospital in Dornod province. The two were not initially supposed to conflict, but the race was delayed by more than three hours. This gave me the unique opportunity to change from the sweats in which I had jogged to my school to the full suit I had brought along in my backpack. This was accomplished in the elementary school’s gymnasium dressing room, while three female gym teachers, inquisitive and unabashed, observed the entire procedure. For about five minutes. This was despite many clearings of the throat and significant glances from me. Oh well, the Greek prefix “gymno” does mean naked after all… Alas, I achieved only boxers. The hospital pictures are the last two in this set.

Here are a variety of classroom pictures. Some are from my regular classes, some from my English clubs, and some from my lessons for teachers of other subjects. Also included are pictures of the English resource room at School 6, which I hope to replicate at my school during my time here, some cool Mongolian script which is written in such a way that it resembles the animal that it articulates, and a few class photos. Most of the ladies in the picture of me with 6 classy dames standing around me are my English-teaching counterparts.

I’ve tried to take some outdoor shots while here, but the desire to capture something significant has lead to a pretty pronounced dearth of Choibalsan photography. 0984 through 0989 are from a fishing trip that I took with my main counterpart, Jagaa’s, family just outside of town. Note the tile Mongolian flag next to the Hammer and Sickle on the side of the building next to my apartment in 0996. 1020-1026 are from our first severe dumping of snow, 1102-1141 are stray kids and stray dogs, and 1322 onwards are my newfound winter wonderland.

I recently had the spectacular opportunity to attend a wedding. Not just any Mongolian nuptial, but a Buryat one. The Buryats are an ethnic group that is mostly concentrated in Siberia, but also has a sizable population in Eastern Mongolia, particularly in Dornod province. The event was held in a Buryat-owned and run hotel, which had several family crests and traditional Buryat dels on display. Picture 1155 features a coworker of mine next to his family’s blazonry. They are the clan of the White Hog. Note the “r”-shaped design on the male mannequin in 1159. The embroidery there is unique to each clan. As to the ceremony, the bride (who is the social worker from my school) is in forest green with gold trim. The groom, who is employed as the technology teacher at the prestigious School number 1, is in a brown del with a gray cowboy hat. They can both be seen in 1189, 1196, 1205, and 1218. My powerful, generous, and kind director can be espied hugging the bride in 1227, and my main counterpart, Jagaa, is in lime green in 1271. The woman closest to the camera in 1201 and 1270 is Byamba, with whom I also work closely. She is simply a spectacular elementary school methodologist.

Fruit and vegetables were in abundant supply (quite the rarity here.) I singlehandedly ate all 20-25 mandarins on my table and the surrounding two tables, while an appreciative crowd murmuringly observed my ever-increasing peel pile. The entire rear haunch of an enormous sheep was served, and it is customary that everybody must take a bite of it in order to wish the new pair good luck in their relationship. It can be seen in 1163, 1183, and 1189. Lasagna is considered quite the foreign delicacy here in Choibalsan, and this Buryat hotel is the only place I know of that serves it. When I commented that mine (1210) looked like a bird, Jagaa retorted that hers, pictured in 1212, was then clearly a drunken bird. I convinced her to give it a thumbs-up for the camera.

Speaking of drunken, it was about this time that the vodka was decanted. And by “decanted” I am referring to a deluge. I was lucky to have Jagaa and my director sitting at my table and helping me get away with turning down a few shots because frankly, shit got pretty crazy. It was around this time that my camera, as per usual, was taken from me and passed from inebriated hand to inebriated hand. Abruptly, a rave started. Terrible Russian techno blared, and Mongolians of all ages leapt from their seats to dance. Alas, most of those pictures turned out too blurry to decipher. The remainder is posted below. All in all, it was a very good night.

We have been engaged in red ribbon-making for much of this week. World AIDS day, December 1st, is fast approaching. Our capable VSO health volunteers, Raj from India and Jay from the Philippines, have scheduled a bonanza of festivities, the likes of which shall not be seen again for many turnings of the Earth. There will be intensive training sessions for school health teachers, screenings of informational films, and a HIV/AIDS trivia competition among all the local secondary schools. I, for my part, am extremely excited to wear a cape and hand out red ribbons and condoms. To each his own…

And to top it all off, a few random pictures from my apartment. Enjoy the realistically-rendered rendition on the front of my PC cook book of Paul, our PCMO. Marvel at my bedspread, which my director enthusiastically told me had been taken from a kindergartener’s bed. Swoon at Amanda posing in a cap that she pilfered from Geoff. Gasp at the awful afflictions against which I have been supplied with curatives and remedies abounding. Ooh and ah at comely cooking, Lindsay with some impressively brackish laundry water, some of the best Beer Die throwing poise and distracting poses you have yet encountered, and general revelry abounding.

Letters from Bob, Vol. 7 (excerpts)

2009-11-19T13:04:00.000-08:00

It snowed sideways today. Hard. Seriously the worst snowstorm I've been in (the worst I'd seen before was 15 below in Virginia) and it's SEPTEMBER. And yet, all was made well by the fact that, as per usual, and without a bit of the bumbling awkwardness that I always encounter the first day of a cold season when I find myself yet again the marshmallow man, I was cheered and chased off the school premises at sunset by a crowd of Mongolian children, all crying nearly unintelligible "good bye"s, "see you tomorrow"s, and for some reason "hello my name is"s. There is never a shortage of feel-good positive reinforcement when in Peace Corps. The key is dealing with your eyelashes freezing together halfway home, glued shut by the tears that the biting wind is drawing from your inadvertent eyes.
Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:45 AM

15 minutes for us = a lifetime of fame in Mongolia

2009-11-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

I am famous in Mongolia. This is at a huge tourist attraction.
I was at the giant Chinggis wearing a sams that my family had given me that day. The official photographer for the monument approached me and asked if he could take my picture for a brochure. I surmise that the language barrier resulted in this. I almost had a heart attack when Jagaa's husband showed it to me. Seriously, thousands and thousands of people will see it; he says it's right in the main entryway. Brightening Mongolians' lives one day at a time I suppose.
Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 9:16 AM

A Bit of Self-Discovery

2009-11-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

In the following e-mail, I explore my own reasons for volunteering. Its idealism can easily be juxtaposed to the pragmatism in the above message. Please note: the term "hero's journey" doesn't imply some sort of weird, megalomaniacal self-image. It's the literary shorthand for a character's self-actualization or inner realizations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey. Mrs. Eagle, to whom I refer, was the amazing high school English teacher that taught us critical and literary analysis in a way that would have been mind-blowing even at the university level. This e-mail was written to Damien, and has quotes from an earlier e-mail to Jenn. Please listen to the embedded song as you continue. After finishing with “Into the West,” which I mention, I had it playing on repeat as I wrote most of this:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

TO DAMIEN:
You have quite a knack for writing, you know. You make my Quixotic quest out here sound like a pitched battle against the twin evils of hardship and complacence. Should my life ever be worthy of novelization, I think you should be the writer of the narrative. Not three minutes hence, I at last finished The Silmarillion. It took being in Mongolia to get me through the whole "A son of B, slayer of C, betrothed to D" aspect. After the first third, it really picked up some momentum, and as with any good book, I had a tear in my eye not only for the beauty of the final prose, but because I feel like I'm leaving a friend who can craft fine fantasies by the side of the road as I ramble on. I'm still riding the euphoria of the epilogue, as I term it. I'm listening to "Into the West" from the Return of the King soundtrack. 

I can confess to you that most of this seeking for self-actualization that I do out here really is a Joseph Campbellian search for a hero's journey. I've come to some realizations about the nature of such in this regard. I'm going to start typing and copying and pasting, and see where it leads me...  

I've had a lot of time to think about this topic in Mongolia. All through high school and college, there was always a sense of preparing to set out and become the person that I wanted to be. That luxury is now behind me, and the realization that it's as much now the time to start self-actualizing as ever can be utterly paralyzing. The only way that I've been able to get out of bed in the morning is to take things one day at a time. Life in Choibalsan is tough, there's no doubt about it. Yet I firmly believe that I am becoming a stronger person with every day that I stay here.

The thought of turning back, as so many of my peers have done, seems inconceivable. I'm pretty sure that there is no coming back. I think at least once a day about how nice the luxuries, comforts, and particularly companionship of home would be. But if the opportunity or even the necessity arose, they would have to drag me onto that evacuation helicopter kicking and screaming. I'd apply the next day for something to keep myself on the hard road.

I've realized that when I complete my two years of service, I will have finished A hero's journey. Not THE hero's journey. That's what I've had to come to terms with. Life is not a book with some happy ending where time stops before things change and people die. But it is (if you choose to put yourself in the right places) a series of endeavors that make you stronger after each trial and tribulation. Every time you finish, you're ready to undertake something much more harrowing. The fact is, you can't go straight from the Shire to Mordor. But if you make it through the Barrow-downs, Tom Bombadill's wood, Bree, Moria, etc., you're ready for it by the time that you make it to the Dark Gate. I've spent way too much of my life thinking that I will have accomplished something amazing by the time I'm 25. That happens in mathematics and sports. Not in my field. Instead, I'm trying to keep myself as healthy as the food and climate here allow, and to develop my capacities.

What I'm focusing on here is getting REALLY GOOD at what I need to be doing. I'm trying to excel this job's pants off. I pour myself into lesson planning, and make myself available for socialization with host country nationals for a portion of the day that some would consider to be unhealthy. I do this because I want to beat the curve, and suck as much out of this amazing adventure as I can. When I've got a few months left here, and am deciding between going straight to the Foreign Service or graduate school with aims towards USAID or professorship, I want to have really lived Peace Corps Mongolia. I probably spend an hour a day doing precisely the opposite of that. I find myself taking refuge in my apartment and trying to live as close a facsimile of American life as is possible. I am okay with doing so, but only to the degree that is necessary for me to keep my sanity, and maintain my ability to spend the rest of each day working on developing not just the capacities of my students and counterparts, but myself as well. Otherwise, the paralysis extends beyond the 15 minutes after I wake up. 

Today, like most days, I walked home literally into the sunset, with a swarm of laughing children surrounding me and walking me to my front door. We call them the "hello monsters," because they enjoy nothing more than to say "hello" at you every thirty seconds. Occasionally they range up into "goodbye" and "my name is..." territory, but seldom far beyond that. In any case, I was exhausted from working for 9 hours and yet, had a ridiculous grin on my face. I realized that it's after I've spent the day helping people-to the best of my ability and no further-that I'm happiest. It's when I feel overwhelmed, particularly when I wake up in Mongolia each day, that I'm the most disconsolate. I'm pretty sure that if I were the center negotiator on climate change talks or nuclear disarmament accords as the person I am now, I'd be pretty miserable for lack of ability. 

As much as she's one of the best influences I've ever had, Mrs. Eagle broke us, somehow. She taught me to see every book I read, every action movie I see as male mental masturbation to the idea of a call to adventure and the ability to fulfill it. And yet, I love it. I bury myself in it. A quote from Snow Crash, one of my new favorite books:

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. 'If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being a badass.'"

So true. Maybe the thirteen-year-old in me never grew up. Or maybe a lot of people have this neurosis, I'm not sure. In any case, I've spent a hell of a lot of my life waiting for a call to adventure. But I've had to come to terms with the fact that my family, friends, or loved ones are not going to be murdered by some spectacularly mustachioed villain. Some wizardly old role model is not going to appear and reinvent me in some convenient and catchily-scored montage. We see self-actualization as this 2 minute series of clips of somebody trying to lift a weight and being unable, only 5 cuts later to be pulling a truck through the snow with nothing but their pecs, a big metal chain, and some tremendous testicular fortitude. 

You don't get conveniently reinvented. You reinvent yourself, and to do that you need to get out of your box. In my case, the necessity was to put myself in a situation of relative hardship, where I could not only come to better appreciate the ridiculous comforts that my American lifestyle affords me, but also to be somehow reforged into someone a little stronger.  

I've also given up on having a bird fly up to my window with some entreaty for aid strapped to its leg. I've had to find my clarion call. Aid and Development is the closest thing to a moral crusade that I'm going to get. And it's not a bad one. Hell, it's the biggest one. I'm unhappy with the lot of the Developing World in that they were dealt unfairly hard hands in life, and I'm unhappy with our lot in that we don't have any easy way to fulfill our desire to improve life. All the hard work has been done for us where our own well-being is concerned.

A major mistake-one that I've been desperately trying to avoid-is getting out here and somehow seeing myself as the "chosen one." I've learned that in nothing is predestined, particularly greatness. You may be smart and you may have lofty goals, but it takes DECADES of self-investment to turn yourself into a "hero" who saves lives, stops wars, or builds a better world. I'm pretty sure that within the somewhat narrower scope of reality, that's what I want to accomplish. Here's my last paragraph of the aspiration statement I had to send in when I got my invitation: 

I hoped to be invited to Mongolia starting the moment I was nominated to Asia. It was my opinion that in Mongolia I could help people who were in the most need among the Asian countries in which Peace Corps operates. As far as my personal goals are concerned, I hope that the relatively Spartan nature of Mongolian living will enable me to appreciate the blessings in my life all the more for the severity of their absence. I have loved Asia throughout my life, and I anticipate that the beautiful terrain and rich culture will further heighten my admiration for the starker places in the world and those that inhabit them. I also wish to prove to myself that I will succeed in a lifelong career of international service and ideally, humanitarian aid. I believe that only by having been in the trenches (i.e. the classrooms) of the twin causes of global development and integration could I ever wield the proper wisdom or authority to direct such crucial and yet intractable endeavors.

Here's a paragraph from another e-mail I wrote:  

What I need to work on is enjoying the ride there. I've lived my whole life imagining this perfect self that I want to be, ready to set out on page one. I'm learning that I'll be halfway through the book before I feel I'm ready for much of anything. I think in the interim I need to keep my mind set on ambitious yet barely-achievable goals, and end each year as different from and as better than the person as whom I began it. Keep riding the edge of the envelope, and learn to be happy there. At some point, even if you succeed, it's world peace, but for how long? Forever? See progress in how far you've come, not how much you've whittled down the way to go. There's always going to be farther to go, until the world ends. And if we ride hard enough, that's not the sort of thing that we hope will come about for absolution, for the comfort or release of being finished. That's going to be precisely the sort of thing we're trying to prevent, raging to make the world as good as we can for as long as we can, and becoming more capable of doing so with each passing day. Right?

Well, there are my thoughts, and pretty much where I am in life. Thanks for being an understanding brain connected to an empathetic ear. I guess it was as much for me to figure out as for you to read; it was extremely cathartic. I'm exhausted; I stayed up way too late writing this, so I'm sure that my paragraph order is all wrong and there are logical fallacies and typos abounding. I'm gonna head to bed and get ready for the wonderful experience of teaching 4th graders tomorrow morning. The plus side: every day, I get to eat lunch in a Mongolian public elementary school's cafeteria. Seldom can one experience grin-inducing cultural dislocation quite like that.

Swine Flu & Life as a Peace Corps Volunteer

2009-11-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

Hi. It’s been a while. By “a while” I mean ages, and for that I apologize. Somehow, it seems that the longer I waited to get this update uploaded, the harder it was to get anything down on paper. Pixels. Pretend paper. There is no dearth of content to be sent, nor absence of anecdotes to be accounted, but one day’s delay lead to another, and before I knew it, weeks had wasted away. This is not to say that I haven’t been writing, just that I’ve been unable to make anything bloggable. Hence my asking the ever-facilitating webmaster Madelin to post the snippets that you find arrayed above and below. In an attempt to make up for lost time and posts, I’m going to copy and paste parts of a few e-mails that I’ve written to some friends while here. I extend the greatest of thanks to Damien, Jenn, Ben, Madelin, Amanda, and all the others who served as interlocutors and muses. I apologize to the very few of you who have already seen a lot of this material. Another post will be coming in the next few days with pictures abounding.

We are presently at the beginning of Week Three of at least four weeks of school closures, thanks to the H1N1 virus’s virulence in Mongolia. Inter-aimag public transport has been canceled in some contrived containment scheme, yet our hopes of returning to work are nonetheless dashed each Thursday when the announcement comes from the Ministries of Education and Health that school will be closed nationally for yet another week. The government is having public school lessons taught on television, a spectacle that I have yet to witness, but I admire their initiative. I am fortunate in that my school is continuing to have teachers come in day after day, sometimes to shovel snow, sometimes to write and rewrite curricula, and sometimes it seems, simply to socialize. Many less fortunate volunteers have been sent to their gers to “rest,” a valued pastime in Mongolia, and perhaps justly so given that they appear to work several times harder than we Westerners do at most things. These poor Peace Corps people are steadily chewing through every magazine and book in their gers, and every movie on their hard drives. It seems that the resources of intellectual entertainment have become scarce. I’m sure that some are slowly yet steadily spiraling into insanity. At the very least, I have working in the computer lab to keep me busy.

The students are using fairly modern Dell workstations that were donated by an initiative called DynEd two years ago. DynEd had this idea where they would buy a bunch of Dell computers and donate labs of them to schools in developing countries. They would then provide six months or a year of really good computer-based English learning with headphones and microphones and interactive phonics lessons and what-have-you for free! Unfortunately, the funding ran out, the Education Ministries in these countries couldn't afford to pay first-world tech support and subscription prices, and the whole thing got shut down. It would have been more expensive for DynEd to recollect the computer labs, so here they stayed. I don't think DynEd was nefarious or seeking to take advantage of places like Mongolia, they just get a C- for follow-through on an otherwise A- plan (A- because they didn’t install self-destruct mechanisms that would activate whenever a Mongolian teenager inserted his greasy grimy flash drive into one of the terminals.) In any case, now they're all pretty much Yahoo Messenger labs, where students message one another even as they're sitting next to each other. 

I'm doing my best to salvage this resource, painstakingly spending 2 or 3 hours a day (or basically all my free time at school when I should be lesson planning) clearing off years of accumulated viruses and junk. I have most of the terminals working beautifully, (i.e. my OCD level of computer fine-tuning,) and have made it so that each of the English teachers has a personalized account on one of them. I now often come into the lab (also my work/prep room) to find all five English teachers at their stations, merrily Powerpointing away and printing resources with the printer that I brilliantly procured for them. By that I mean that I casually asked the school Director, who is both resourceful and very eager to keep me happy, and she had a brand new in-box HP printer on my desk the very next morning.

On occasions like these, I realize what a good resource I am, not due to any special training or teaching ability, but just because I'm a native English speaker with an amazing support network. One of my great coups thus far has been to write a short e-mail to an awesome charity called Darian Book Aid, which donates 30 pounds of books to any Peace Corps Volunteer who asks for them. My books should be arriving in time for IST, which is the big Christmas-ish seminar that we attend with our counterparts. Speaking of which, it is at that time that we have a sort of networking fair at which we meet various NGO's, charities, and what have you so that we can begin with our secondary projects. We also receive grant-writing lessons then. 

I'm coming to terms with the fact that we really are facilitators, not muscle. If you joined Peace Corps to dig ditches or feed children, chances are excellent that there's a native who can do it better than you. But if you want to spend some time IN those ditches (the trenches of “the great common cause of world development”?) or seeing how the children are fed and working out a better method, you can utilize Peace Corps' trusted brand name and amazing array of contacts to get some pretty well-directed aid sent in. Corporations and governments and organizations want to be charitable, and they give money away to do so. It's really up to us on the ground to direct it.

That's what volunteering in Peace Corps really is. You schmooze, you spend months figuring out what the locals need, and you end up helping them out with the skills that are your best. Beyond that, you're just the eyes and ears of the Development institution, and a young 20-something in search of some greater significance.

It's important to remember that Peace Corps volunteers are not out there to save the world. Well, that may be why we volunteered, but it’s not what we’re accomplishing. We’re working to help people as best we can, build person-to-person bridges and find ourselves! This last point is actually pretty important. We're all on a journey of self-actualization out here. We're out of our boxes, and after 3 or 4 months, we figure out how to meet our basic needs enough that we can get down to some pretty serious self-actualization. That’s the idea anyway.

Letters from Bob, Vol. 6 (excerpts)

2009-11-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, probably 90% of the alcohol here is shitty vodka, but in my little local aimag we get some pretty good Korean beer imports. They're all light, lagerish asahi and kirin knockoffs, but beer is beer, and they're certainly drinkable. There are also two really good Mongolian beers that are extremely difficult to find, called Har Horum and Altan Gobi. Last night I had all of the people in the province over to my apartment and I taught them "touch the cup." It was ridiculous.

On the plus side, it is evident that where beer is concerned, I have not lost most of my tolerance. The Mongolians, nonetheless, are able to get me shitty drunk on shitty vodka. Oh well, part of the grand cultural exchange, I guess.
Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:40 PM

Letters from Bob, Vol. 5 (excerpts)

2009-11-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

Speaking of which, I managed to install Mario Teaches Typing on 35 virus-ridden mongolian public school computers today. I had to format my flash drive about every 3 computers, due to it becoming inoperative from viruses...

I had a terrible dream that all of my favorite bands had broken up or otherwise stopped touring by the time I got back. [shudders]

Oh, I long for burrito shits. They would signify that I had just eaten a burrito. I am edging closer and closer to buying a meat grinder every day. I have an amazing recipe for tortillas in my Peace Corps Mongolia cookbook (by which I live) and would then only be missing cheese. That is usually obtainable in UB, which would mean burritos 2-3 times a year! Oh, I get excited about ideas like this.
Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 5:52 AM

Letters from Bob, Vol. 4 (excerpts)

2009-11-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

Ahh, headed out for my first Mongolian club experience. We'll see..
Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 7:29 AM

The "club" had a dance floor that measured about 15 feet by 20 feet, and played horrible Russian disco music far too loudly. We immediately left for a quiet Mongolian bar.
Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 12:48 AM

The quiet mongolian bar is really cool. A nice combination of a traditional hearth, handmade crafts sitting about, and soccer posters from around the world on the walls.
Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 5:52 AM

Letters from Bob, Vol. 3 (excerpts)

2009-11-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to make stir fry with another pcv and things have gone terribly, terribly wrong, to the tune of things breaking and us in hysterics over how everything that can go wrong is doing so. Sigh, I have lesson plans to write tonight.
Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:01 AM

Oh man. I was introduced to this awesome woman who speaks some of the best English I've heard here by John, who is an M-19 (the year before us, so we overlap this year.) She's sitting here in the internet cafe, and it turns out that she runs the yoga and meditation center of Choibalsan, and John goes to it regularly. She just invited me and the other m-20s (my year) to go to a big seminar and start at her school. Very exciting.
Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:24 AM

Escape from Choibalsan: The Bob Figlock Story

2009-11-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure that choibalsan is where the zombie apocalypse will start. It's the factory town around an abandoned Russian uranium mine, for one thing. It's also full of giant old decaying soviet concrete apartment buildings. That's pretty much all there is, in fact. I live in one of the nicer ones. Expect me to start writing the screenplay for my zombie apocalypse movie, "Escape from Choibalsan: The Bob Figlock Story" pretty soon. I can already tell you the beginning.

EASTERN SIBERIA: EARLY 1960's

Two labcoated scientists, scorched and bedraggled, collapse into the snow, thrown forward by the force of a momentous explosion behind them. They turn to look over their shoulders at the immolating remnants of what appears to be a scientific facility.

Scientist one: Thank god the last of the virus has been destroyed. To think that we had created Hell on Earth.

Scientist two pulls a vial from within his coat, and holds it aloft to gaze at it by firelight. His face is tinged with marvel and with fear.

Scientist two: No, comrade, not the last

Scientist one, shocked: Why, Vladmir, why would you save any of that cursed virus?

Scientist two: The orders came straight from Comrade Kruschev. We are to bury a single sample, to be released in case Mother Russia should fall.

Scientist one: But where, Vladmir, where can the devil be buried so deeply that he will not rise again against our will, may God forbid it?

Scientist two: In an Uranium mine, comrade, just across the southern border from here. The Mongolians will never know what lies buried beneath them. They will never know what lurks beneath.... CHOIBALSAN.

(Title screen: Escape from CHOIBALSAN: The Bob Figlock story) is superimposed over the burning building.

The set is in a Mongolian ger. A stove burns weakly in the corner, and wind blows the tent flaps. An old, bunny-eared, black-and-white television is flickering.

Reporter, British accent: The UN and CDC jointly announced the discovery of a new strain of influenza, dubbed "The Choibalsan Virus" today, preliminary results show it to be remarkably virulent.... CCCHHHHKKKK

Static blasts onto the tv

The same set (in the ger.) The stove has burnt out, and dust covers the furniture. It appears that some time has passed. A bloody handprint is on the television's knob. The wind is blowing more fiercely than before.

Reporter, British accent: The United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed the Choibalsan Virus Containment Act today, shutting down all international borders for an indefinite amount of time.... CHHHKKK

And then something that starts to introduce the characters and whatnot. I thought of this entire thing while in the bathroom the other morning. It's just preliminary so far, but tell me what you think. Perhaps you could make an awesome movie poster? Ok, have to go.

Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:43 AM

Before Choibalsan

2009-11-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

"I miss you guys! I have to be very brief; I'm in a strange internet cafe during lunch break. I'm going to Choibalsan. It's the easternmost Aimag center in Mongolia. I will have four sitemates, and they're all very cool. There will also be three more within an hour and a half-long bus ride. I hear that the city is extraordinarily flat and boring. It was supposedly the site of a major Russian uranium mine, so it's mainly post-Soviet concrete-block buildings. I'm basically going to Siberia, (just a few hundred km south which is nothing here) except where they speak Mongolian. On the plus side, it is on a special cargo train line to Siberia. This means that it has the second-best food supplies in the country after Ulaan Baator. All of us there have to live in apartments which have their plusses in comfort and their minuses in less of a neighborly experience to integrate with the community. At least one of my counterparts lives in my building though. They say that I will have internet at school, but I'm not sure about whether I can get it at home yet. It's a three-year old school with six brand-new English teachers. They want to become a school that specializes in foreign languages, and it seems that that's pretty much up to me. Ahhh, I have to play piano at the swearing-in ceremony tomorrow! The US ambassador and the Mongolian Foreign Minister will be there. Sigh. Lots of stress. I'm very excited though. Also, it's a 14 hour bus ride from UB to my site, so that will be fun. I would encourage visitors to take advantage of the twice-a-week $100 (each way) flights. I would, of course, spend part of your trip with you in UB, and we could go to the sites of some of my best friends here who live near UB in gers. It would be pretty great. Ach, have to go practice for tomorrow. Bye!"

Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:41 AM

Letters from Bob, Vol. 2 (excerpts)

2009-10-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

""ger-bul" (ger-group a.k.a.family) dinner."
Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:03 AM

"Had my directorial review today. Apparently they love me. They think I don't take enough notes during my daily four hours of Mongolian class though. I take notes IN MY MIND."
Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:30 PM

"Peaches and gravy is now among my favorite expressions. Before coming here, I would have thought the idea of the two combined disgusting. Now, for lack of good food, I find it ravishing. It turns out they have 3G messenger hawks here. Have fun!"
Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:59 PM

Goat Wrestling... (unabridged)

2009-10-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

A story continued from an earlier post:

I had a ridiculous Nadaam weekend. A brief foretaste: it started with us wrestling the goat that we were taking out to the countryside to gut and roast into the trunk of a Hyundai sedan. The goat was, to say the least, displeased about being put in the trunk. It was a pitched battle for quite some time. He managed to ram the wheel and, unbeknownst to us, pop the tire. As we were driving to the relatives' house to drop the goat off, we realized the tire was popped, but the spare was in the trunk with the thrashing and thumping goat. That's how it BEGAN. I have a bunch more stuff to send you. Overwhelmed with it yet? Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 1:42 AM

Contrary to earlier promises, I didn't slit the goat's throat, as there was a very particular way this goat needed to be killed. They make a soup out of the blood and so as little as possible needs to be spilled. Throat slitting is not exactly prime. They had us hold it down, and the grandfather took out a huge knife.
He made a decently sized-incision on the chest of the live goat, plunged his hand in, and fucking pulled out the heart. The goat was dead in like 15 seconds total. It was amazing. I'm told that I will be asked to do this soon. My god. They immediately fried the heart (giving me a hefty chunk,) and then filled the body with scalding hot rocks. A blow torch took off the fur and a lot of the skin. I went out to play soccer with all the kids, and by the time I got back they had most of the guts out. We made "hoshuur" which is pretty much hot-pockets, out of all the meat and the guts. I've gotten so used to eating guts..... Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:29 AM

[[editor's note]] This story was in recent debate with Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics, who I met at a conference at the University of Illinois. Perhaps a few key details were curtailed in the telling of the anecdote, which was also part of the introduction. (something to the effect of: "Hi, I have a friend named Bob studying in Peace Corps in Mongolia. He is a huge fan of your comics. He sank the largest cruise liner in the Mediterranean and has ripped the beating heart out of a live goat.") Apparently you do need to make an incision before digging your hand into straight up flesh. We are not zombies.

2009-10-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

"I just got kicked really hard in the shin by some 15 year old who was screaming "jesus" at me. I think he thought I was a missionary. It hurts!"
Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 5:32 AM

Letters from Bob, Vol. 1 (excerpts)

2009-10-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

[[editor's note]] To enhance the quality of the Mongologue, I'm going to start posting few snippets from e-mail exchanges in between regular posts. Hopefully this will help keep a more constant flow of content, and give you a better idea of the crazy little stories we all miss sharing with Bob on a daily basis.

"In lifestyle, it's nothing like what you'd imagine here. I've seen many gers with giant flat screen tvs, and I have yet to be in even a very nice house with indoor plumbing of any sort. In fact, I'd say the gers are generally nicer. I'm in a tiny cottage, which is warm but god I'd slap a puppy for a toilet. Holes in the ground are terrible. Also, the food here does not make for pleasant bathroom visits... The language is extraordinarily difficult. The people are great... and the dogs are the scariest beasts you'd ever imagine. Hardly even dogs. missing huge patches of fur, dead on teh side of the road, chasing me around, mainly st6uff like that. Fun." -Bob
Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 3:26 AM

"Funny how TV comes before toilets, though sounds about right for that part of the world. You should build yourself a royal throne with wood and cover it with felt... sounds like you're guna be building those squatting muscles back up. After Spain, the girls had calves of steel... When you get home, I imagine you looking somewhat like your description of Mongolian dogs, patchy and delusional." -Madelin
Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 7:27 AM

"Patchy and delusional is already where I am, I think tattered and somnambulatory is where I'll be when I'm back." -Bob
Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 3:30 AM

Surreal.

2009-10-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

Please listen to this song as you read further:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

I have become an avid runner since coming here. On any day that I'm out of teaching class early enough to get in a good hour of meandering through the aimag's lesser-traveled back roads and horse paths, I do so. This evening, I went farther than ever before on what is perhaps my favorite trail. Though I have run with other volunteers, today I was alone. There are few trees in Choibalsan, but some outlying regions are fairly forested due to planting projects that the Soviets undertook decades ago. Running East-West clear across the Southern end of the town is the most convincing of these mock-woods. The trees there have grown tall enough that falcons and eagles use them as hunting perches from whence they can peer across the massive steppe that extends beyond the city limits in all directions. I jogged Westwards along these paths until I came to a fairly large and shallow pool, at the center of which sits a giant stone Buddha. I love to run around this pond, as I can see out over the massive Ger District which lies strewn to the North and West. The inhabitants of these areas tend to burn trash in large pyres, both for warmth and just to get rid of it. They were doing so in full flaming force this evening. The smoke filtering across the little lake makes for some spectacularly streaked sunsets, if you catch them at just the right time. After enjoying such a sight, I was jogging back home when a capricious urge overtook me. I cut through the trees to the south, and ran up an embankment that I had not previously noticed. This was quite a find, as the majority of the terrain here is about as flat as moonscape. Just as I scaled its 10 meter (towering, in my mind) summit, my ipod hit the crescendo of strings that occurs at about 1:32 in "The Kiss" from "Last of the Mohicans." My running playlist here is embarrassingly full of such grandiose music. At that very moment, three horsemen in full dels and felt caps (traditional Mongolian riding attire) burst out of the trees, singing a song in unison. Their entrance on the scene must startled two very large birds of prey, who tore out of the trees and the crimson sky from the Northwest and strafed directly above me, hurtling towards the Southeast. As I turned to follow their flight, I saw that they had disappeared into the largest and most luminous harvest moon I have ever witnessed. The three mounted Mongols streaked past me to the South. Just as this magical minute passed, so did the song end.

I stand fully ready and willing to admit that one of the reasons I came out here was to fill my days with moments that make me wonder whether my life is directed by Sergio Leone or Peter Jackson. Somehow the coincidences and happenstances of existence here are so obliquely arrayed that they align into cinematic moments that occur with such frequency that I am tempted to abruptly stop and demand that the hidden cameramen show themselves. On each of these surreal occasions, I find myself awash in wonder, admiration, and of course, contentment.

That's how I'm feeling right now. I'm still sitting in my sweats, having immediately torn out my laptop to type this.

To Choibalsan and Beyond!

2009-09-16T20:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Final days of Training

2009-08-12T23:12:00.000-07:00

Why hello there all you lovely people. It’s been quite an interesting spate of time. I’ve been very gastrointestinally distressed for the past few days, but fortunately our superb medical officer, Paul, has me slip-sliding down the road to recovery. Things are once again going smoothly, as it were. Language class is progressing as well as my obstinately recalcitrant memory allows. We were delighted to discover recently that the euphemism a male uses to go outside and pee is “morr harah” or “to go see a horse.” These are the sorts of phrases that stick with me.

Here’s a quick summation of what these pictures will contain: Two weeks ago, our magnificent Cross-Culture training team put together a trip to Terelj, a local nature camp on the Tol River. Between the wildlife, the stripping down to underwear and jumping off of a bridge, and climbing Turtle Rock, we had a giddily good time. Have a good look at picture 518. It is my new desktop background. The impromptu theme was “family photo” and I think it turned out to be charming and perhaps droll. We took a day trip to Ulaan Baatar, where we saw the sights, visited the Peace Corps office, and went to a Western food store called Mercury Market. I got red wine, cheese, and hot sauce. We also ate in a Korean restaurant while there. Spicy food has been sorely missed these past few months.

My family got a kitten. I was given the pleasure of naming it, and after careful deliberation I elected “Olbar shar barr” which means “Orange Tiger.” It is named after my bedspread, which depicts the same. A few days ago, Barr got stuck between the double panes of my family’s cottage’s windows. He would have been entirely unable to get out under his own power. He was not particularly perturbed, and purred whenever we approached. I was very strangely, and perhaps nostalgically, reminded of the “Bonsai Kitten” craze of a few years ago. Thusly commenced Operation Tiger Swipe. The picture at the end of me holding him/her (I can’t tell) up to the window and scolding him/her is among my favorites.

Last week, the Teacher Trainers, University Teachers, and Primary School Teachers among us TEFL volunteers all came to Nalaikh for a seminar. Whereas a moral man would have let them prepare in serene tranquility, I cruelly led them out to the White Gate where we whiled the day away with cheese, storytelling, and Mongolian Beer. Such an evening of song and dance, held in the misty haze under a full moon, has not been witnessed in many long ages.

On Sunday we had our Host Family Appreciation day. The idea was that we would make American foods and share them with our families during a field day. The ordeal of describing some of the dishes in a language that has no words for them proved to be a challenge. We cooked macaroni and cheese, (“byaslagtay goymin”, cheese-being -with noodles,) garlic mashed potatoes, (“sermustay nohach tumus”, garlic-with smashed potatoes,) and fried chicken (“sharsun tahani mach” which is literal.) The biggest hit was Rachel’s apple-cinnamon-raisin hoshuur. Hoshuur are sort of home-made empanadas or hot pockets, and are traditionally only filled with meat or potatoes. The closest we could come to explaining them was “cheekhertay uzumtay alhimtay hoshuur, or “sweet-with, raisin-with, apple-with hoshuur.” For no good reason the day ended with an impromptu hip-hop dance-off. All the Mongolians formed a large circle and in turns, shoved each of us into the middle. In a rare moment of cultural lucidity, I described it to Tim and Ryan as being like “the end of a Ninja Turtles movie.” Ah, Vanilla Ice.

Back to the present: This Thursday is the test date that determines both my language and survival capacities. I am doubtless that I will be judged mute and fetal. On Saturday, we learn of the sites to which we are assigned for the next two years. To describe me as nervous would be understatement. To describe me as bursting at the seams with anticipation juice would be hyperbole, but only just. Rather, a vivid and unromanticized narrative of the percolation that occurs at the nape of my neck, combined with some sort of vicarious experience of the exhilaration I endure (which a fifty gallon drum of Red Bull and a Led Zeppelin vs. re-animated Zombie Beethoven rock concert/battle to the death could not jointly produce) every time I consider the site-placement possibilities would pretty much nail it. But I ramble unintelligibly on…

In any case, if I appear to drop off of the face of the Earth after this weekend, it is only because I have been sent to a tiny village that is without internet. Or mauled by yaks. Be sure to read the captions on these pictures, as I worked really hard on them. By that I mean I got hopped up on Mongolian Minute Maid and stayed up labeling these photos when I should have been studying some of Mongolian’s 8 case endings…

Cyclones, hearts, kittens, and camels...

2009-07-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

7/21/09 11:00 PM here, 8:00 AM California time

Whew. Things are pretty wild. We had a hail storm today that we were not quite sure we would survive. I have some great pictures of a cyclone forming about a mile away. Unfortunately, I was driven inside for what must have been the best part. The term “golf ball sized” is thrown around too often these days (I guess) but these hellish ice balls were literally of that stature and velocity. There are pretty big holes in my family’s shop’s ceiling, which is a little bit thinner than those of the houses. My host father had to run out to put the dogs away, and he has 10-15 welts on his back that look like he got shot with a paintball gun at point-blank range. And all this after it was in the mid 80’s F for most of the day. I have a lot of video from out my window, but I’m not sure that it’s postable… I’m sitting in my little cottage, the storm having subsided, trying to reconstruct what has happened this month from my pictures. I’m sipping tea (Akbar Gold is glorious,) listening to Radiohead’s “Reckoner,” and waiting for the iodine to finish cleaning my water purifier, which doubled as a catcher of soupy attic-water today. Hm, there is much to tell…

Before Naadam: The larger of my family’s two khasha dogs still tries to break through my window every night or two. There’s nothing quite like turning over in your sleep, only to inadvertently incur his wrath and suddenly come to with a Batman-like silhouette trying to bash through the glass nose-first. He’s a beautiful dog, at least half German Shepherd, but it is only due to my rock-throwing coaching from the locals that he has not feasted upon my manflesh. Mongolians are much like hobbits, and Mongolian dogs much like the Uruk-hai in this regard.

On the subject of flesh: no preparation for a “festival of manly sports” would be complete without some bloody, gutty carnage. Every one of these organs becomes part of the meal. I discovered that liver is actually pretty good, and heart is palatable.

Naadam: Nalaikh’s little Naadam on Friday was a bucolic bash. There were a lot of dances with cultural heritages ranging from Mongolian to Russian to Indian. Ogie was pretty much the runaway star of the show, with his atonal “Naadam, Naadam” song piercing every eardrum and every heart. My Russian mine-collapse-rescue-specializing-type-guy firefighter friend from the Red Cross received some important honorifics. Little kids could pay money to ride around a corral on an ATV, while horses, camels, and even goats looked on in despondency.

If the apocalypse were to start with the sky gushing watercolors (before the flames, blood, and toads,) then Mongolia would be Ground Zero.

Kathleen has a tiny kitten named Tom. Her family finds this hilarious, because Tom means “big” in Mongolian. BREAKING NEWS: As of yesterday, (at this writing) her adorable dog Janey had six puppies, all of whom are as of yet in good health. This is shocking, as she is a tiny, malnourished animal and nobody even knew she was pregnant. We’re REALLY hoping they all do all right. Pictures to come soon.

The Naadam Stadium in Ulaan Bataar was not as crowded as one might think due to sporadic rain showers. Watching giant men wrestle on a wet field is about as much fun as you’d imagine, particularly when they call on the strength of eagles before and after each bout by running around and flapping their arms in slow motion.

All right, easily the best part of the weekend: We had to wrestle a furious goat into the trunk of my host sister’s Hyundai sedan and then deliver it to Kathleen’s house (her host mom is my host brother’s and host sister’s older sibling. Kathleen takes great joy in being able to say, in all truth, “Bob’s my uncle.”) In any case, the goat was none too pleased at being taken to what it clearly sensed was its death, and decided to be a butt-head about it. I apologize for that one. It managed to pop the rear-right tire with a near-miss at our shins, but we didn’t realize it at the time. We finally bound it and got it in the trunk. When we discovered the tire was ruptured, we found ourselves in a predicament, as the spare was in the trunk with the enraged goat. We managed to limp to the house, drop off the goat, change the tire, and make it to the highway a few hours later than we’d intended.

Of course there was still time for a detour that involved a camel ride with Ogie and some Golden Eagle photo-ops. The drive out was amazingly green. As you can see in 320, what the Mongolians lack in infrastructure they make up for with invisible horses. Wrestling is a huge part of Naadam, and I was not able to escape it. I went 0, 2, and 1, but that was still enough to land me third place in the family contest with all the pomp, circumstance, and fermented mare’s milk, (airag,) that such an accomplishment affords. These were some of the last pictures I took with my broken camera, and a few came out very blurry because of it. In the shirtless flexing pictures, I am the whiter blur than the other ones, as you might have guessed. Lots of soccer, singing, and sloshing with the extended family ensued. A sudden downpour necessitated running outside to retrieve a gigantic mound of drying firewood, which, after a few rounds of singing Mongolian anthems and drinking Mongolian vodka, was quite an ordeal. I could not believe the degree to which I was considered part of the family for this holiday. I held two newborn babies, got to watch the hilarious, highly bowlegged dance of a two-year-old cousin (I am assured that she will be braced so as to have straight legs when she grows up,) and had to sing a few songs myself. We’ll just leave how that part went out of this.

The storm appears to have started up again. It was a perfectly clear, starry night just an hour ago. Speaking of which, the night sky here is ridiculous. The Milky Way stretches across the sky like a glass of spilled Airag. Whoa, the lightening is REALLY close. The thunder shakes the windows in their panes, and me in my boots.

Way post-Naadam: Just this past Sunday, I got to help raise a ger for my host brother and his new family. I brought Wally, Cara, Kathleen, Ryan, and Tim along for the ordeal. It was extremely hot and sunny, so handling giant sheets of felt (which smell precisely like a barn filled with sheep) wasn’t the most fun of activities, but it was a really good experience.

Last night, we had a ger-warming party for Irka (my host brother.) If you take the party from Naadam, above, and cross it with an American house-warming party, but subtract electricity, so the entire gathering is lit by only my flashlight dangling from the rafters and the hazy beams of a car that’s left running and pointed into the ger, you pretty much get the idea. Also, multiply however much vodka you imagined by three. It was a LOT of fun. Kathleen and I had to sing when the communal vodka bowl came our way, so we broke out with “Hey Jude,” and “Let it Be.” They actually knew the songs, and we were a hit. Everyone you see (except the fellow PC volunteers) in the Naadam party pictures, the ger raising pictures, and the gerwarming pictures are extended Mongolian family of mine who I see several times a week. I love it.

This week we started teaching in earnest. No more micro-teaching with classes of 15, yesterday we had 68 to the two of us teachers. Lesson planning and execution is proving to be a lot of fun, and my teaching partner, Anna, is superb. The only pictures I have of this are from a demonstration we did of professions yesterday. Anna was a movie star, so I popped out my camera and pranced around her, snapping photos and asking for an autograph. Other notable demonstrations included me pulling out a real matchbox, nearly setting myself aflame, passing out, and getting bodily dragged out of the room by her. Needless to say, the students adore our doing this. I brought a kid up to the front to be a doctor, and when I feigned a heart attack, he started doing real compressions on my chest. This was obviously not the most comfortable of student-to-teacher chest groping interactions, but then, when are they ever? He gets an A for effort, I guess.

The very last pictures you see in this update are of the near-tornado that almost touched down in my district. I guess that brings you up to date. The roof’s leaking again, and the worst part is that the water, usually a precious commodity, isn’t even usable as it’s trickled through a pretty gross attic. Who needs bathing anyway? I haven’t showered in over a month now. It keeps the khasha dogs away.

Daily Grind

2009-07-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe it’s been 10 days since I’ve written. In Ryan Rommann’s words, “When we first got here, it was at least three times a day that I said to myself “What the ____?” Now that has diminished to only once a day.” I suppose what he tries to mean by this is that we have fallen into a close semblance of a routine here. On any given day, we might be receiving cross-cultural lessons, having a community development seminar, or “microteaching” in pairs to a class of 10-15 children. All of these occur at least once a week, and twice in microteaching’s case.

We also have four hours of Mongolian language class each day. My group’s language coordinator, Batsukh, is an extraordinarily patient teacher who seems earnestly enthusiastic about class each day. We all seem to greatly enjoy microteaching, as it is excellent practice for what we will be doing for these two years, and is actually pretty fun.

The cross cultural and community development activities range from a walk-around of Nalaikh to scope out potential development partners to a traditional ger visit to somber talks of local birthing, wedding, and… funeraling rituals. The Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders who lead these sessions are essentially older models after which we shall try to cast ourselves, though in some cases, such as Kiley’s fabulous dress, Dylan or Greg’s musicality, Kyle or Maureen’s kind demeanor, or Luke’s exquisite eyebrows, we are doomed to failure. They are dearly loved.

On a tragic note, Ryan Anderson, (notable from the spectacular picture #335) had to go home for a plethora of quite rational reasons. He will be missed, but managed to impart some general wisdom and an energetic teaching style that puts Pea-Wee Herman (sp?) to shame.

There have been two movie nights now, red wine and The Princess Bride for one, and Team America on the fourth of July for the other. Pulp Fiction will be coming shortly.

We hike when we can as there are some very nice vistas if you’re willing to go a few miles out of town, not to mention the allure of trees, frail and unadorned as they may be. Immediately upon leaving Nalaikh (about 500 feet from my front door,) the barren beauty of Mongolia will jump out at you like a giant naked anthropomorphic personification that can’t wait to give you a bear hug. Some find it desolate, yet I find it breathtaking.

Editor's note: don't forget to click the thumbnails to find out what these crazy pictures are all about!

"Imagine"

2009-06-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

I had to run home in the dark in a torrential deluge complete with thunder and lightning. Dark (pitch black, rather) khasha alleys and the fear of being struck make for a terrifying combination and very good exercise at a mile’s altitude. The host family wondered at my John Lennon shirt. I played them a bunch of Beatles. They marveled at my laptop and loved the music. I think a goal of mine here is to get a classroom to sing “Imagine.”

Sushi & Eggs

2009-06-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

My host family is ridiculously nice. They asked me what my favorite dinner and breakfast foods were. I told them sushi and egg/pepper scrambles (things that I imagined impossible to recreate here.) That night, they had procured seaweed wraps. Granted the “sushi” was just rice wrapped in seaweed, but it was positively heartwarming. “Unduk bas chin joo” (eggs with pepper) was served the next morning.

Mutton & Angel Wings

2009-06-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

The plus side to having more mutton than you imagined you could eat shoved at you each day is that you can be working 16-18 hours a day (I get dinner here after midnight and have class at 9 each morning,) get pumped full of vaccines, and be living in conditions that we shall say fall well below American standards of hygiene (it doesn’t bother me at all any more) and you can still rebound with a 4 hour nap. The down side is the bathroom visits.

I heard the AOL login dial tone coming out of a ger today. I watched the Victoria’s Secret fashion show with the entire host family. I had to explain the angel wings. I’m not sure that I understand American culture myself. They all knew the words to that terrible “Yeah yeah yeah yeah” “Hookay!” song that was so popular a few years ago. I weep for them.

Vaccines

2009-06-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

Being “sick” here, even just exhausted (in the literal sense) and feeling hung-over as hell from yesterday’s vaccines, Japanese encephalitis, rabies, Hepatitis A, and something else,) has a whole new level of reality. It’s not just acting sick for chicken soup and a day off. A day off would be fatal to my language learning. It’s feeling confused, disoriented, and lethargic. Forgetting where you are, but putting on a very healthy face for the “emmay.” Not at all painful though, not too bad. Raining again, which is considered a very good sign in this constantly dehydrated country. We “brought the rain” to Nalaikh the night we came, so we are considered lucky.

Napped, feeling a little better but life is still a little dreamish.

"Cook Dog"

2009-06-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

The day after my tiptoeing adventure, they showed me a giant bowl of gross-looking broth with large bones sticking out of it. Irka, my host brother, clearly said “cook dog.” Disbelieving, I looked up both words in my dictionary, and he confirmed them. I pointed at each bone, and said “noghoy” (dog)? They affirmed. Finally, after just starting to believe, I realized that by cook dog he meant dog food. They were sheep bones from the mutton we’d had that night, and this was the slop that would be put out for both the vicious khasha dog and his mellow brother.

It’s one in the morning, window-breakingly windy outside (they keep extra glass that they cut and replace them with frequently,) and you’re bathing by flickering stovelight as close to the stove as you can safely get. By bathing, I mean kneeling, naked, over a liter of water in a small plastic “timpun” tub, washing body parts individually (always from the hair downwards to the feet!) For the bottom half, you squat over the tub to avoid spillage. The tub is wide and shallow enough that boiling the water is nearly pointless, as so much surface area and about a centimeter of depth cools it off almost at once. It’s at a time like this, as you catch your breath and prepare for each freezing-cold splash, that you think “wow, I’m really in Mongolia.”

Tiptoeing the planks

2009-06-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

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.

(Dis)Orientation

2009-06-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Orientation passed in a blur. 5 days with new friends in a new country learning a new language seemed like an instant. Sad saying goodbye to so many going to other training soums, but I will see most of them once every three or four weeks during training. The “meeker” ride to Nalaikh was characterized by excitement mixed with anxious anticipation of meeting host families. I’m told that mine speaks no English.

We going straight to the Wild Wild... Mongolia

2009-06-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

I ate lunch sitting across from the American ambassador, who was very laid back. Wild/semi-tamed cows roam the streets, enter yards, and are driven out. I watched them get up to the door of the Police Station. I’m definitely in Mongolia. All roads are dirt. Yards have cow and horse skulls, Wild West-style. They are shamanistically significant. Hiked way out to a tall mountaintop with a sizeable group, drank in the far horizons and endless, perfectly blue sky.

The Arrival

2009-06-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

Arrival in Mongolia. We lost a day because of our westward travel. I shake hands with Jim Carl, the country director. Run a gantlet of screaming, cheering, rapturous Peace Corps Volunteers from the M-18 and M-19 years. Bus ride to dorm. As tired as I’ve ever been. With burning eyes, a tired mind, and an enthusiastic heart, I slept at last.

The Departure

2009-06-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

Departure was orderly. Korean Air was extraordinarily high-class. I have become good friends with Maggie of Philadelphia, Joel of San Diego, and Jake of Colorado. The seat-back entertainment systems were very advanced, and included head-to-head Tetris. Jake soundly trounced me in two rounds, but I savored my last taste of videogames. I watched Coraline and Chinatown.

The day bears on and on. Traveling with the sun is disorienting and disconcerting. The Korean layover is full of last-minute internet-checking.

Exhaustion has set in. Poor bastards made the mistake of putting me and Maggie next to each other on the flight from Korea to Ulan Bator. She introduced me to the terms “giggle-bunny” and “giggle-scorpion” (the manly option,) all meaning punchy to the point of social dissolution, I think. I opt for “giggle-raptor.” The woman sitting next to us urgently but kindly tells us that we need to sleep. Miles to go before I sleep…

"Shock & Awe" in L.A.

2009-06-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

Arrival in L.A. was a very mixed thing. I had left my Iphone (and therefore my music,) in Monterey. How appropriate that my window/tether to the world would be the first thing to go, albeit by mistake. The other volunteers at the staging hotel had the feeling of “friends of friends” that I knew could have been roommates at college had I known them then. Very few were from California, yet all immediately gave the impression that they were open-minded and worldly. This would have seemed a contradiction only a day before. Many of us went to a sports bar and had one last Sierra Nevada.

The staging speeches in L.A. were at least somewhat “shock and awe”-themed, trying to weed out any stragglers among those who would drop out. Jim Metzgar, the China/Philippines/Mongolia desk was introduced, and appeared to be awesome. He had served three years in Mongolia, and was best friends with Kieran, the Defense Language Institute teacher who had prepared me in Monterey.