Airport Delay

The start of our trip out to Khovd was delayed by about 35 minutes as they shut down the entire airport about 20 minutes before we were supposed to board. The reason? The Emir of Kuwait was in Mongolia, and his flight had to leave first. So, we got to watch the excitement from inside the airport. At first there was just the airplane, with a rolled out red carpet which 2 women were repeatedly dusting off with little brushes. Then, a troupe of fancy black cars sped into view and pulled up in front of the airplane. And, here is one of the many, many, not-that-exciting photos we got of the action. We aren't sure which one is the Emir, any of you recognize him? :) All of the excitement was over in less than 10 minutes. I wonder what the Emir of Kuwait thinks of Mongolia....?

Under the Knife in a Third World Country

Thanks to all of you who called and kept me company while I was in the hospital, it was greatly appreciated!

Here's what happened: I started getting sick in the middle of the night Thursday night, throwing up and having really bad stomach pains. Amrah came in a taxi and took us to the hospital. The nurse looked at me, then they called a doctor from home to come in and look at me. He decided I needed to have my appendix out ASAP. Clayt called our the school director, and he and the school principal showed up soon after. We wanted to be sure this really had to happen, and if it did, was this the best place available. Turns out it was a yes for both.

I asked if they would put me to sleep, and he said they could, but it would involve putting a tube down my throat and the recovery would be longer and more painful. The alternative, however, was not much better. They wanted to put a needle in my spine to numb me from the chest down, and then operate while I was awake. Both parts of this plan really freaked me out.

30 minutes later I was undressed and in the operating room, hooked up to a monitor and waiting for the scary shot in my spine. The good thing was that I didn’t have much time to think about everything, it happened so fast. The woman came in to give me the shot. She told me “You don’t move, ok? Never move. If you move, then my needle will break inside your spine.” I asked, “will it hurt?” She said, “yes.” She was really making me nervous. So, there I was, naked, curled up on my side in the fetal position with two nurses holding me down to minimize my movements. The shot hurt, but it wasn’t so bad. the needle did not break.

2 minutes later I was lying on my back again and the shot was kicking in. They were rubbing iodine or something all over me, and I could feel it. I mean, everything was going numb, but I was aware that they were touching me. This made me really nervous as I thought I would be able to see and feel when he cut into me. That feeling went away though, and as they saw I was getting freaked out, they put up a little curtain so I couldn’t see anything that was happening.

Some time later the doctor told me that my appendix was really long and red. He asked if I wanted to see it. I figured, why not, I wouldn’t get another chance! He dangled the thing over my face with a pair of tweezers, and I was scared it would fall on me. But, it didn’t of course, and that’s the first and last time I ever saw my appendix.

After surgery they wheeled me out. I passed Clayt, Amrah and our school bosses, and was only able to say “I survived” before we were down another corridor. I was still very numb, and it was tough to get my dead weight into the bed even with the nurses helping. And there I lay, at 4:30 in the morning, staring out the window and shivering from nerves and way too uncomfortable to sleep. I had to wait until 10 a.m. before I could see clayt. They gave me nothing for pain, nothing to help me sleep.

So that was early Friday morning, and I wasn’t able to come home until Monday late morning. The days in between were filled with 2 shots and 2 IVs each day. Unfortunately for me, I have hard to find veins and this really confounded them. Each time they came in to give me an IV, they had to poke me at least twice before getting the right spot. One night the nurse poked me 4 painful times before giving up and not giving me an IV at all. Our boss brought me soups and crackers twice a day, which was helpful since the hospital didn’t feed me hardly at all.

I had the pain from the operation, pain from the IVs and shots, pain from where they ripped off the surgical tape and took some of my skin with it, and then they said I had a bladder infection too, and the treatment for that was also painful. At no time did anyone give me antibiotics (but I hope that was what was in the shots) and no painkillers. I asked one of the nurses on the second day “please, can I take medicine for the pain?” She said “No, pain is good.” I beg to differ.

I had two roommates, both Mongolian with almost no English. None of the nurses spoke English (except one, but she wasn’t ever around), and the doctor spoke funny English. It was a long and boring three days. Unfortunately, visitors weren’t allowed to come into the ward, so when clayt came to visit, I had to go stand out in the hallway to see him. It was a no-frills hospital. You had to bring your own food, your own toilet paper, and only 2 toilets for the whole wing to use. There was also an ashtray in the unisex bathroom, and a sign in Mongolian that said please don’t smoke around other people. Several times I had to turn back and wait a while since the bathroom was occupied by a man with a head injury smoking a cigarette. I could have gone into a stall, but I am still not cool with sharing a bathroom with strange men (especially when there is a lock on the door!).

They also burned incense in the mornings, which I don’t think would fly in the US, but it smelled pretty good. Also, one day the nurse wasn’t around and my IV was finished, so the girl in the bed across from me got up and took the needle out for me. See what I mean about no frills?

The stitches come out this Thursday, and I’m out of work for this week it looks like. I saw the doctor again today, and said everything looks fine. He’s a good surgeon, and said he worked for the WHO at one point, and traveled to 23 countries in that time. He’s used to performing operations in a less than ideal setting.

So there it is, the story of my least favorite Mongolian experience so far. Lets hope it will stay that way!

For a Good Cause

jm- last friday i met with a man (Edward) from a volunteer organization here in ulaanbaatar called the Christina Noble Children's Foundation. They have projects going in several countries, and here they work hard to help abandoned and abused children who have nowhere else to go. Here is a link so you can read all about the different services they provide:
http://www.cncf.org/mongolia/projects.asp

So today i was able to go out the children's "ger village" and see how things are set up and meet some of the children. I had emailed saying I was interested in volunteering, and they are excited to have me start teaching English very soon.
The stories that Edward told me were so sad, and all so similar. He told me many of the children are abandoned. In mongolia there are alot of divorces and remarriages, in which the new husband does not want the old husband's kids around, so they are simply abandoned or forced to leave. Poverty is a serious and ugly situation here. girls are raped either by a family member and run away, or after they are left on their own (I was told of a girl in this situation that was only 9 years old) they are raped and left very injured. When they end up in the hospital as a result, the hospital calls CNCF, and they take them in.

We peeked in on the "kindergarten" class at snack time, and Edward pointed out a new little girl who was brought to the center recently. Her mother had been trying to kill her over time by forcing her to drink or eat chemical tablets of some sort. When the grandmother found out, she brought her to the center, and still visits. There was a little boy whose arm had been broken so many times (by his mother) and not fixed that it was very crooked, and Edward said they are going to pay the money to have it reset for him. The same boy also suffered from Rickets - the legs were not in good shape. But he was cute and smiled while we looked at his injuries, and then ran off, not appearing in the least bit self-conscious about his funny gait. One of the smallest boys had large scars going across his forehead at the scalp from repeat beatings from his parents.

What nice to know is that at the foundation they are safe, and looked after at all times. They can be kids! In their small fenced in community they have 2 playground areas, a school house, ger living quarters each with a "ger mother", a washroom, a cooking house and even a small new bakery. They also have a basketball court that turns into a skating rink in the winter and several gardens in which they hope potatoes and flowers will grow.

I can't wait to start teaching them english, and learn all about them and learn from them too. Sometimes the horror stories of bad things happening to innocent children can be discouraging and very depressing, but at least through organizations like this there can still be positive outcomes for these kids.

A Picnic with Little Monsters

Last weekend was our spring picnic with the elementary students, grade 1-5. The kids were super jazzed for the 2 weeks before the event, and counted down the days excitedly. I was excited to interact with my kids outside of the classroom for once, where I didn't have to lecture them to keep writing or sit in their seats correctly. By the end of the day, everyone was good and tired, and I think we should have gotten a personal thank you from all of their parents for exhausting them so thoroughly. Here are some photos of the g-rated action.

This bird was a real party spoiler. We had just gotten into a rousing game of duck-duck-goose when this rather large bird started circling our circle, flying low enough to catch our interest and raise shrieks from the kids. I never saw a circle of duck-duck-goose broken up so quickly - the kids started screaming and running around, huddled together or trying to shoo it away, but in general just flailing about without reason. There was no resurrecting the game after that.

Here are some of the girls finding ultimate skipping stones for Clayton. He was deemed the best stone skipper, so the kids pooled their efforts and just gathered stones for him to skip. Some were as tiny as a fingernail, others so big clayt had to use two hands to try to skip them.

Here are two of the first graders - the biggest and the smallest. Enguun (the boy, who Clayt and I have named Goon) looks so sweet, but he is the bane of my existence in the grade one class. Degi (Delgerchimeg) is a mousy little thing and for some reason she is always smelling my arm when she comes up to my desk for help. First graders are interesting.

Here's Clayt, showing his brute strength wieghtlifting a first grader.

This is Aya, a six year old space cadet. She marches to the beat of her own drum, and here she is proudly waving her garbage flag, freshly pulled from the river. I took it and put it under a rock, so it wouldn't end up in the river. She proceded to pull out about six more, waving each around, getting people wet with river garbage spray, until I buried them one by one under rocks with the first one.

Clayt, the see-saw bully, terrorizing the girls in his class, making them shriek, until the one on the back actually pitched off sideways.

Here's a last shot of the whole gang.

Our Friendly Neighbors

JM- In our apartment building there is a small room right where you enter the front door. In that small room lives a family of a man, woman, sister and 3 children. There is no running water, no toilet. There is just enough room for a single bed on which most of them sleep, a cupboard thing with a tv on top, and not much else. At first I thought they were the landlords, and just stayed in that room when it was their turn to keep an eye on the building. But no, they all live there.

We were told that the government created these jobs for very poor people, usually unmarried women with children and no job. They manage the upkeep of the building in return for a very small salary and a place for their family to live. This upkeep includes everything from scrubbing the floors of the elevator and hallways on each floor with a rag and bucket of soapy water to picking up rocks from the "yard" (dirtpile) and road in front of the building.

Sadly, the people in our apartment building are far better off than most with the same job. When I have gone into other buildings, the room they have is - how to describe it? You can't stand up straight. It only the space where some people put a storage closet - the space behind a staircase in your home. Literally. There is a small window so they can see who is coming and going, and through that window I see a space about the size of the bathroom in my father's home (or clayt's parent's home) and this is where they cook, eat, bathe, relax and sleep. I have many times seen the kids from our building sharing the load of a big bucket full of water.

The caretaker's children in our building are very sweet. There are 2 girls and one boy. The boy is 13, the girls are 11 and 9 years old. They always say hello and good bye to us, with big smiles and waves. They in fact are quite dilligent about it, and often say each more than once. In return for their neighborly friendliness, we are always bringing them treats from the store, or coloring pages from school. I gave them a set of markers and some coloring sheets and they brought them up proudly colored in the very next day. Sometimes now that the weather is warmer we will see them sitting at the pavillion on the playground trying to color despite the wind blowing the pages around.

Just last weekend I invited them in to decorate easter eggs, as sheridan had gotten an easter egg kit from the states and split it with me. They loved it! They were so impressed to hear the color dye tablets fizz in the vinegar, and then when they saw the egg when it came out of the dye - they giggled alot. They gladly decorated their own, and even drew clayton's face on one! I also showed them how to make the hollowed out ones, and we made three like that, but only one survived the afternoon - they were fun while they lasted. We made a snack of scrambled eggs out of the hollowed out yolk stuff, and they gobbled it up. They even ate some of the hard-boiled ones before we could decorate them! They bit right into the egg shell and all, and I was horrified. So I peeled a few for them after that. :)

The father came up about 3 weeks ago with one of the girls and asked to borrow 20,000 tugriks ($20) because his sister-in-law (who lives with them) was really sick and they wanted to send her to relatives in the countryside to get better. We had previously loaned them $5 when the mother was sick and they paid it back after a few weeks. So, we of course gave it to them. The next day the sister was gone. We haven't seen her since, so we hope she's doing ok.

Yesterday the kids came up to visit. Recently they have been coming more often, and enjoy sitting and trying to talk with us. So yesterday we colored pictures and ate popcorn. The boy enjoys playing the one game we have on our computer. They had all just had a bath or at least a hair washing, and the girls let me french braid their (beautiful, very thick) hair. Then they tried to do mine. Clayt says we're "Those" people now - you know, the ones you visited when you were young and gave you all the cookies you wanted and thought everything you did was wonderful - and I suppose we are. But I always thought of those people as old - maybe these kids think of us as old too... :) That's ok. They are sweet and it makes clayt and i happy to be "those" people for such nice kids.

Here are some photos clayt took yesterday while we were hard at work drawing mountains, goats and gers.

What's that smell?

JM - Twice in the last week the answer to that question has been unpleasant, if not toxic. Last Thursday I came into the 10th grade room and they had the window open to let in some air. But it wasn't smelling too great. I went to look outside. On the other side of the driving course which is behind our school is some kind of factory building. It emits yellow smoke sometimes, and black other times. But this wasn't the problem that day. It was a group of men on top of the roof, doing some repair or sealing work. They had shovels, hard hats, and a giant pile of buring car tires. They were melting the tires for rubber to patch/seal/? the roof. The unlucky guy was the one that had to maintain the fire, adding tires and shifting them around, sometimes the black smoke blowing so you couldn't even see him at all. That can't be healthy. Here's a pic of the action.

Now the crane which has blocked the view out our living room window for 4 months finally started moving about 3 weeks ago. It looks like they're going to build a building behind us. This afternoon I was checking out the action when I got a lesson on how to effectively deal with unwanted trash on the construction site.

Step 1: Pile all the trash you don't want into the middle of the site and then light it on fire.

Step 2: Add a bunch of metal wiring that is coated in thick plastic on the top.

Step 3: Collect more garbage (especially plastic!) to add while the fire grows.

Step 4: Walk directly in the path of the nasty black smoke to add more to the burning pile.

Step 5: Let it burn until it turns the sky grey and gives everyone in the building next door a headache (and maybe black lung). Those black specks in the picture are pieces of ash floating by.

We look forward to seeing what other innovative approaches are used while this building is constructed!

More Published Works of Clayton Maring!

JM - Clayt isn't one to brag, but I am! He's such a good writer, and its nice to see his talent put to good use. Here are some links to his latest articles written for the Mercy Corps.

Here is a link to a brochure Clayt created from scratch - downloadable in Mongolian or English.
http://www.mercycorps.org.mn/index.php?coid=117&cid=150

NEW RASP CLIENTS IN SUKHBAATAR AIMAG BRING BUSINESS PLANNING HOME
http://www.mercycorps.org.mn/index.php?coid=116&cid=151

BAYANHONGOR'S GAN BOGD MILK MARKET: A LOCAL SOLUTION TO SAFER MILK
http://www.mercycorps.org.mn/index.php?coid=119&cid=151

A Second Trip to Terelj

This past weekend we took a short overnight trip back to Terelj, just about an hour outside of the city. We went with Sheridan and Amrah, in the comfort of their car. We were going to stay in a summer house owned by Amrah's father, a house none of us had been to before. Somehow we found the camp where it was supposed to be located, and tried the set of keys we had in several doors before finding one that opened. It was like a little abandoned ghost town. Some of the small buildings were kept up, while others were only shells, no doors or windows and lots of trash inside.

The little house had the bare necessities, and lacked a few too, depending on what you consider necessary. It was 2 rooms - a bedroom with 5 single beds in it lining the walls, and a living room/kitchen which had a woodburning concrete stove, a small table and some office chairs. The beds here, in case we've never mentioned, are not like beds at home. They don't use mattresses. They use the box spring, and thats it! In our apartment we've loaded it up with blankets to help cushion, but camping we had only our sleeping bags with us. We drank enough to make it comfy regardless. :) No toilets, no running water, etc.

Got a fire started right away, and settled in to cooking dinner - fried hotdogs and junk food. A mother dog and her three puppies showed up and made instand friends with us. The pups were still nursing and so friendly. Here the dogs usually all cower and run away from humans, because they are used to being chased away with stones or etc. But these dogs were so friendly and happy to play. I think they ate more of our food than we did, and everyone found excuses to take them out something to eat again and again.

Terelj is by far my favorite place here so far. Its not too far out of the city, but once you're there it feels like your worlds away from everyone and everything. The mountains and scenery are so beautiful. The silence that surrounds you is overwhelming sometimes! You hear NOTHING except for a bird now and then. No need for earplugs - its like the silence just stuffs into your ears and fills them up. And the view at night -- we went out to look at the stars at least twice - with nothing giving off light for miles around us, the stars were amazing. We layed on our backs in the grass (freezing, but it was worth it!) and just stared up and wished we could somehow capture what we were seeing to show you. And I'm not a good enough writer to do it justice! I've never ever seen so many stars in my whole life. Even with all the stars and some of a moon, the dark was also supressing a little. The minute you stepped outside it surrounded you and you couldn't see more than a foot or two in front of you! Here is a great photo of Clayt, Sheridan and I in the dark - none of us could see each other at all and we just stuck poses in the pitch black.

Sheridan and Amrah loaned us their Dels for this photo. They are really warm!

Having a little fun in our hooded sweatshirts - we had no tv, books or board games - what did you expect us to resort to?

Clayt took this photo during sunrise - 5 am. He woke up because the fire had gone out and we were all freezing. Nowadays it gets light at 5 am and stays light until about 8pm.

This is one of the birds we see everywhere here. They are the size of a crow, but their call sounds like a squeaky sneaker.

Some goats and sheep and their babies out grazing. Some were only a few days old.

You know who this is. We took advantage of the opportunity to have our photo taken together in such a nice setting.

School Spirit

jm- Yesterday was a special day at our school, sort of a Mongolian Day. All the students dressed up in their traditional costumes, and there were performances and presentation booths set up in the afternoon. Just wanted to show some pics of the highlights.
Here is the 11th grade class, all dressed up.

And here's some of the first graders. Aren't they so cute?

Here's Clayt with some of the boys from his class.

This is Batmoron, a tenth grader, playing the traditional mongolian istrument, the horse-head violin.

Oyundari performed a nice dance balancing a rice bowl on her head. There was also one on top of each hand, but one fell off and broke about 30 seconds into the performance, so she ditched both.

Here's a photo of the whole gang, or at least most of it. You can see the "King" and "Queen" seated in the middle.

What's that? Milk? Camel? Fermented? Well OK!

cm - You are in the vast Gobi, with no water, no food, and the scourge of nature’s barren emptiness spread out before you like a sandy ocean full of invisible sharks. Then, you see a sleeping camel - a sign of hope for life. As you approach, you see a baby camel nursing; but wait - something is wrong. The mother isn’t moving, and you don’t see the slow rising and falling of respiration in its ribs. It doesn’t matter. You are too famished. You bend down next to the small, nursing camel, and begin suckling, taking in the sour yet rich milk, fermenting in the small udder of your rotting surrogate mother.

Hopefully you wake up at this point, and think “wow, that was a strange dream! I think I’ll go have a glass of regular, pasteurized milk to settle my disgusted stomach.” Maybe, however, this vision has possessed you, like a viral demon, just after you’ve taken you first sip of camel-milk airag. Airag is a term usually reserved for the fermented milk of mares, but fermented camel’s milk often goes by the same name. I am told that camel airag and horse airag are like apples and oranges – totally different tastes. Mongolians hold mare’s milk airag in the highest esteem, which probably has something to do with the exalted position of horses in this culture (during Chinggis Khan’s time a man could get the death penalty for whipping his horse in the face), but camel milk airag is also quite popular (however, both can cause a mean case of what my Mongolian friend calls the “quick shits” in the uninitiated digestive system).

So, we were lucky enough to procure some camel’s milk airag at a market fair. This stuff is the real deal, straight from the producer who lives in Bayanhongor, 600 km from Ulaanbaatar. Let’s go to the tape to learn more about this fascinating product. I mean, before I came here, I wasn’t even aware that it was possible to ferment dairy products.

So, from this picture you can see how the majority of milk products are bottled outside of the capital. Vendors simply take any available plastic bottle and fill it with their product. No safety seals here – just look at the seller and hope for the best – this stuff is not pasteurized.


OK, the pour started with a slight chunkiness, but became more consistent as the pour progressed. This is not encouraging. Is it really worth it to milk a camel for this stuff?


Now the taste test. mmmm… this is hard to describe. There is definitely a dairy taste there, but then the fermentation imbues the concoction with a crispness that is hard to describe… maybe like a glass of heavy cream cut with ¼ apple vinegar. I am sure this is an acquired taste, but I am not sure that I want to suffer through the acquiring. I must say, though, that I would rather drink this than eat fat, which is another traditional delicacy.


Ooh, look at that mustache! Screw the “Got Milk?” campaign! I am signing up for the “Got Camel Milk Airag?” campaign. This unique taste has taught me that there is a fine line between the word “ferment” and the word “rot.” This is just another beautiful example of the durability and resiliency of mind, body, and spirit that you find all over Mongolia. These people take lemons and make lemonade. No, wait, lemons are expensive here. They don’t even get lemons – they get camel milk and make a fermented milkshake… and like it!

Not only did I have to carry this sign rolled up on the bus with me from school and then to the park, but then I had to stand holding it while clayt took and retook the photos, as my eyes kept being closed. Also, several people stopped to stare and laugh at me. But I think it was worth it in the end! Hope you have a great birthday Dad and Brian, I love and miss you both!

A Taste of Home

A few weeks ago clayt and i found a shop that sells american foods and we bought a giant bag of generic tortilla chips. Here there are no tortilla wraps, shells, chips, nothing! So we were really excited about the bag of tortilla chips and decided to make "super nachos." Sheridan and I made them for clayt, amrah, andrew and ourselves. We layed out the chips on a cookie sheet covered with tin foil since the cookie sheet is charred and rusted, and then covered them with ground beef (mixed with homemade taco seasoning since there is none here), homemade nacho cheese sauce, red and green peppers, tomoatos, lettuce, black beans ($2.50 per can at the specailty food store!!!), and salsa (from germany, it was kinda gross). No sour cream, no guacamole (avocados - $9.00 for 2), but it was still pretty much the most awesome food we've eaten in 4 months! (ok, maybe not the best, but it was great to have a taste of home) Clayt and I liked it so much we made the same thing for dinner the next day also! Amrah (sher's hubby, mongolian) didn't seem too impressed, so I guess it's an acquired taste. Here's a photo of our end product, round one. We were a little like Gollum -- it was our precious, and we didn't want to take it into the boys to share! Notice the crazed look in our eyes.

My Mongolian Arch Nemesis

jm- It can be REALLY frustrating not to be able to express yourself in certain situations. One of those situations would be when someone isn't doing thier job and its ticking you off. Over the last 4 months, at least 9 people have sent us packages. We are missing 3 of them, as of today. Normally I would be understanding of the fact that in other countries the postal system may not be as efficient, and it may take a long long LONG time for things to arrive. But so far, things have arrived punctually, except for the 3 we're waiting on.

Now when we go to the PO, we have to go to a certain desk, and give them our ID and address, and they have a book they check (everything is manual - no computer system at all!) to see if they can find our name listed. If not, they say no. If yes, they take our ID into the back room, and return with a box. Usually I have the misfortune of visiting the PO when the same lady is working each time. She looks at me, does not open her book, and says "NO." Once she said, "NO, Tomorrow." So I came back the next day, and she again did not open the book, looked at me and said, "NO." Its extremely irritating. So, I gave up on the PO for a while.

Well yesterday we decided to check in as we were expecting a package from my sister Dawn (should have arrived late last week). I went to the express counter, and the man there checked his slips, looked through the packages he had, and said it wasn't there. I asked what about for a box that wasn't sent Express, and he pointed over to another counter. Working at that counter was my Mongolian Arch Nemesis, the "NO" lady. I walked over with Clayton and before I even got close, she saw me and said "NO." ...... "NO." I went up anyways with my ID and etc. and said (gestures, tarzan English, little Mongolian) I was looking for a package that would have arrived a long time ago. She sighed, got huffy, and tossed me the book. So, Clayt and I looked through it, and lo and behold, about 7 pages from the back, was our names!!! I was happy and felt a little vindicated and wanted to say "In your face!" to her, but with my mongolian all I could do is emphatically point at our names in the book and say "TEEM! TEEM!" (yes! yes!). She didn't seem anything close to apologetic, she just went into the back and brought out a box and gave it to the customs folks.

So thanks Dawn for the package! We got it, but almost didn't. As for the other 3 boxes that are still MIA... I just imagine the "NO" lady has a little room in the back where she is stashing our stuff -- eating american food, practicing her english with grammar books, etc. She almost got our girl scout cookies too! But actually, our school director is going back with me on Monday afternoon to hopefully find the missing 3. He said he had checked with them just an hour before we went, and they told him also that there was nothing. So it seems a little fishy to all of us now.

We'll keep you posted. No pun intended. :)