Naadam

Wow! I think my last weekend in Mongolia may also have been my best as Mongolia is celebrating the annual Naadam festival. Commemorating the 88^th anniversary of the Mongolian People’s Revolution (when Chinese occupation was ended with the support of Russia) and the 803^rd anniversary of the Great Mongolian State this is a big deal! Just like Christmas or August bank holiday it’s a time for a break from work and lots of fun with family and friends. The main focus of Naadam is competitions in the ‘three manly sports’ of Mongolia: wrestling, archery and horse racing. My Naadam started at 8.30am (!) in Sukhbaatar Square, I had no idea why my friend Mandakhai wanted to meet so early but it turned out there was a very good reason indeed. There was a full band in the Square and many marching soldiers. Then many beautiful horses came trotting up the road and into the square. They had come to collect the nine white banners from the Parliament House and take them to the Naadam Stadium for the official opening of Naadam. The word banners doesn’t really describe these things properly at all, they are circle of cloth in the centre with horse tail hair hanging down all around and they are very beautiful. They are made with tail hair from white horses from each of the 21 aimags (like a county or province) in Mongolia.

After this we walked down to the Central Stadium for the opening ceremony, it was so exciting to be there, just like a music festival or big event of some description the place had turned into a mini-village with so many stalls selling food and drink, handicrafts, sunglasses and “I love Mongolia” hats. Most excitingly there was a stall selling vegetarian food so I even got to join in eating khuushuur, the traditional Naadam food. Khuushuur are like deep fried pancakes with a filling in the middle so they are semi-circle shape sorted of like a flat Cornish pasty and as well as being the food of Naadam are eaten pretty much the rest of the time too. Anyway, the veggie ones were yummy and I even enjoyed a cup of salty milk tea, either it is tasting better than it used to or I have got used to it.

The opening ceremony was amazing, it did involve a lot of sitting in the rain but I loved it. The most exciting part was when a lady in white gown came down from the sky on a wire to join five men on horse-back, this was to tell the tale of Chinggis Khaan’s great-grandmother and her five sons, the youngest was to be Chinggis’ grandfather. There was also music and dancing, the arrival of the nine banners to be placed on the podium and a spectacular horse vaulting acrobatic team that were just amazing. After this the wrestling began with some interesting dancing. Then it was time to see anklebone shooting and archery.

The anklebone shooting or flicking was amazing, I don’t think I can explain it very well with just words, I want to draw pictures and do lots of actions, but I’ll try. There are about four men sitting in a row and they are trying to shoot at the anklebone. Then, at right-angles there are maybe six or so men in a line, so you have three sides of a rectangle, then at the top is a sort of box or cabinet, maybe roughly the size of a bedside cabinet. This is the target where the anklebone is placed, so the side facing the row of men has a kind of anklebone space in it. Right, so if you are still with me the men shooting the anklebone have a flat white tile, maybe a little bit bigger than a domino and it sits on a wooden rest and then they flick it really hard and it flies through the air for a long way (I would estimate two metres) and hopefully it hits the anklebone – amazing. After the shot, the men sitting along the sides collect the tile and throw it from person to person until it is returned to it’s shooter. It was great to watch and there was also lots of very atmospheric cheering and chanting.

Also there was archery, I think the best bit about this was all the archers were in beautiful traditional Mongolian dress and looked really spectacular. Mongolian archery aims to hit a target on the ground. It looks like a row of small blocks with the ones in the centre a different colour to the ones on the outside. Women shoot from 65m and men from 75m. There was even children’s archery, which was incredibly cute as quite often the bow was bigger than the archers!

The final sport to see was horse racing, this is held in a venue outside of the city so and a long and bumpy bus ride was in order to get there. It was great to be out in the fresh air when we arrived and fantastic to see people whizzing by on horse back in every direction. We made our way to the race finish line and squeezed our way through to the front of the crowd. Then we waited, and waited and waited, the horse races are very long (15km to 35km) so they take several hours and there is no special race track, just the wide and open Mongolian countryside, so we were looking out to the horizon and hoping to see some horses coming in soon. I’d been imagining a dramatic gallop to the finish line but the horses are so tired after all this way that they mostly came in at a steady trot or a canter with their young riders pushing them on. It was worth the wait!

And finally, I have to share my horoscope from the glorious UB Post newspaper. Pisces: The accent remains on passion, romance, creativity, speculation, taking a gamble, indulging your urge for pleasure and / or beauty. Your energy and charisma soar Sunday – do what you want to do! Ask favours, start significant projects. Money needs awareness and care Monday morning – it’s not an event, but a quiet bad idea or “moral frown” you need to watch for. Travel, communications and casual friends keep Wednesday eve to Friday busy and happy. All week your more eccentric qualities shine – and gain applause (or a good smile). Six weeks of domestic friction and domestic profit start now.

One week to go!

Woohoo! I am feeling very excited as this time, in one week, I’ll be on my way home. It almost seems like it is not real, it’s just too exciting!

I have been trying to make the most of Mongolia before I go though and have been up to all sorts of things the last few weeks.

I went horse-riding for two days, which was great fun. The countryside is so green and beautiful now so it was great fun to get out of the city. Here’s a pic of our ponies having lunch …

And here is our cozy tent …

Another exciting thing was going to my friend’s graduation. Here is a pic of her and her mates looking very beautiful in their lovely dresses …

I’ve also been to Chinggis Khan the opera – yes, there is an opera about the founder of the Great Mongolian Empire – it was really good fun, not that I understood much but the music was great and the costumes very beautiful. Here is a slightly blurry photo …

Yesterday, my lovely colleagues made a big vegetarian lunch for us all as a little goodbye. They also got an ice cream cake – yummy!

And finally, I’ve seen a strange sight the last two days on my walk from the bus stop to work. A little old lady, standing outside the entrance to her apartment block with a cup of what I think was milk but could have been tea. She also had a spoon and was using it to throw the milk up into the sky. I’ve no idea why …

Graffiti

I pass all this graffiti on my way from home to the bus stop each day, I thought I’d share it …

VSO Volunteer Conference

A few weeks ago all the VSO volunteers in Mongolia (well, almost), headed out to Batsumber Soum to a little summer camp on a green hill. We were there for our volunteer conference 2009, a chance to share our experiences, learn from each other and agree on how we can make sure VSO Mongolia gets better and better.

The location was incredibly beautiful and also helping a good cause, as the summer camp is owned by one of the NGOs VSO works with. The income from hosting conferences provides a venue for vulnerable children to come and have a rest from their difficult lives and be involved in informal education and vocational training opportunities.

Beautiful Camp

Anyway, I should start at the beginning and tell you about our journey there, a small bus load of volunteers plus our country director headed north on the road out of the city and after a while turned off the road onto a bumpy, bumpy, bumpy track that eventually lead us to our destination. It really amazes that there is so little infrastructure in Mongolia and yet life simply carries on, somehow a tarmac-ed road, really isn’t that important, you can still get to where you need to.

There was, of course, a lot of hard work at the conference, but I am just going to tell you about the fun bits. Top of the list has to be a small toast for Oyuna’s birthday that rapidly spiralled into a never-ending cultural event. Oyuna, had of course, brought several bottles of vodka for us to toast her birthday but I don’t think she could have anticipated what came next, we sang happy birthday in English and then in Mongolian, and then in Dutch and then in Arabic and then in French and then in Tagalog and then in Welsh and I imagine that I’ve missed one or two out there as well!

To go back home, we got the train, the station, or at least, little bit of track where the train stops is just a short walk from the camp, there are a few photos here:

At the train station

It was my first train journey in Mongolia so I was excited to tick one more adventure off the list before heading home. Unfortunately, the excitement didn’t last so long as after an hour or so, we stopped and didn’t start moving again for a long time … a train ahead of us had derailed and so was blocking the way, eventually we were moved onto a side track and went past the derailed train, which luckily was a freight train so I am guessing that no one was hurt.

When we were finally back in UB it was out to dinner (a lot later than expected!). To catch up with Mongolia’s Global Xchange volunteers, Global Xchange is a totally amazing youth volunteering programme that teams up 9 people from the UK with 9 people from a developing country and supports them to spend 6 months volunteering together, 3 months in each country. The volunteers were at the end of the Mongolia phase of the exchange where they had all been volunteering in dusty Choibalsan in the most eastern aimag (province) of Mongolia. Now they are all off to Kendal in the UK to spend three months volunteering there. The best bit for me is that they’ll still be there when I get home so I can visit a little bit of Mongolia in the UK.

Mandshir Khiid

Last weekend I visited the beautiful Mandshir Khiid monastery. Sadly not much of it remains following purges in the 1930’s that destroyed almost all the monasteries in Mongolia and imprisoned and killed many monks. There is a small building that has been restored though and various remains that can be explored. Here are some photos …

Pool in the sunshineVery pretty countryside

Ruins near the monastery

An almost ger ...

P.S. In other news two exciting things have happened this week:

1. Mongolia has a new President. This was excitingly reported in The Times, it is not often Mongolia gets a mention in the UK press.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6357384.ece

2. I found some pesto in the supermarket – amazing!

Hot pants, Pizza and a Strange smell in the air!

Apologies in advance for what might be my most bizarre post yet but I’m in the mood for sharing.

First up, I have not yet told you all about the sometimes shocking Mongolian fashion. Yesterday, I saw a girl in the most amazing outfit, she was wearing tiny black hot pants that had a kind of glittery, metallic sheen to them, she had teamed these little wonders with fishnet tights and black stilletos. I’d guess she was a student, just in her usual clothes for Uni. There is an extremly glam approach to fashion here and this wasn’t an unusal sight. It is perfectly normal to wear a skin tight mini dress and false eye-lashes to work, and some would think it  just foolish to ever leave the house without your spike heeled patent black boots – it’s a litte bit of a culture shock I’d have to say.

Moving on, I think I need to share with you the delights of Pizza Della Casa – I think it does the bext pizza in UB, mmmm! I went there recently with loads of other people to celebrate my flatmate’s birthday and had a delicious cheesy pizza with loads of mushrooms. You’d think a pizza in Mongolia might be a little bit mediocore but these are delicious! I’ve been really surprised by all the fantastic food you can get hear, there are also a few Indian restaurants and a fantastic Mexican that have certainly helped to keep me going.

And finally, a strange but true story from my office, I like it because I don’t really talk to my colleagues as my Mongolian is hopeless and their English only a little better but today we manged to all have a laugh together! I was working away when a little bit of a stinky smell came into the air, it was not nice at all, I looked up to see two of my colleagues fanning away with pieces of paper to try to waft the stink away from them and wildly gesticulating for me to open the window. I did do this rather rapidly and then another colleague who I assume was the source of the stink, began striking matches to get rid of the smell and apologising profusly. We all had a great laugh about that and it especially made me grin to think of the unexpected events that cross the cultural divide and make us all laugh!

A little update!

Somehow, I’ve not written one word on this blog since March – how has that happened? I could claim to have been incredibly busy and important but I think I am just lazy!

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot has happened in the last few months. The most important news is that spring and maybe even summer have arrived. There have been loads of beautiful sunny days over 20 degrees, I cannot believe that in February it was minus 20 degrees, this is certainly a land of extremes. It is not until the sun came out that I realised just how much a difference it makes, somehow everything seems easier when you don’t have to do it in extreme weather conditions!

And, it is now officially summer as on 15^th May the government turned the heating off. All the apartment blocks have central heating that is controlled by the government. You can’t turn it on or off or make it warmer or cooler. It just comes on in Autumn and gets turned off on the 15^th May. It’s interesting, especially as on 16th May it snowed!

Despite the sunshine, the green leaves of spring are only just arriving, Mongolia is incredibly dry and rain is very unusual. We did have a few days of rain a few weeks ago, I turned up at work being typically British and grumbly about it all and my colleagues were commenting on how lovely it was. When I thought about it they were right, after the snow and ice melted we were left with dry, grey, dusty streets, no plants no flowers, no green – just dust. Now, the rain has come that has all changed and there are leaves on the trees and little shoots of grass popping I even saw some flowers today and a butterfly at the weekend.

What else? Work is getting busy, which is good as I have just eight weeks left before heading home and saying goodbye to Mongolia, wow! I should tell you a little bit about what I am doing here. I work for a network of Mongolian NGOs that involve Mongolian volunteers in their work. I think volunteering is fantastic and wonderful way to support non-profit organisations while also learning loads of new skills and contributing to your personal development. My role is to support all these organisations to develop and grow their work with volunteers. Volunteering is a really emerging sector here – a lot of people still don’t really understand what it is all about. I’ve run lots of training sessions on “What is volunteering?” which are always great fun as you get to meet lots of lovely and enthusiastic people. Less successfully I attempted to give some training on evaluating volunteering last week but it was total disaster – I need to go back to the drawing board on that one.

Anyway, the exciting news is that I’ve also been on a lovely two week holiday to China. I went to Beijing and Xian and was hit by some serious culture shock, it’s less than two hours on a plane from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing but it is like a different world. The population of Beijing is greater than the entire population of Mongolia and everything is so new there. I was amazed! I was going to put a few photos up but the internet is being too slow, I’ll try again another day! Aha, and now it is working – see pictures below …

Terracotta Warriers

 

Xian Mosque

Amazing Fountain and Light Show

Olympic Stadium

The Great Wall

Khustai National Park

Last weekend I had an amazing trip to the Khustain National Park. This is the area of Mongolia where the wild Takhi (also known as Przewalski) horses have been re-introduced to the country. They are native to Mongolia but became extinct in the wild in the 1960s. A programme to re-introduce them from zoos and reserves around the world has been successful and now they are happily living in the Mongolian countryside.

I have not ventured much outside of the city since arriving in Mongolia and this was my first journey that involved a severe lack of roads, our initial journey was on good old tarmac but then it just petered out and the rest of the day was spent on dusty and bumpy tracks. This is the way the roads are in pretty much all of Mongolia, it is a huge country (the same size as pretty much all of Western Europe) and the infrastructure is really limited. I remember my first glimpses of Mongolia when I flew here last summer and was struck that when I looked out of the plane window I could see nothing on the land below, there was just untouched countryside in every direction.

Although there is not a road to the National Park when you arrive there is a whole visitor complex with a restaurant and bar, toilets and showers, and a basket ball court, seemingly just dropped out of nowhere into the Mongolian countryside. It is interesting to see how tourism can change an area and after a cup of tea and a last visit to the loo we were off in search of the Tahki horses.

We drove out into the countryside and it was the first time that I had stood in the middle of the vast expanses of wilderness that makes up Mongolia. The majority of the time you could see nothing but mountains in every direction. There were no roads, no people, no cars, absolutely nothing. It is amazing to experience and such a contrast to the busy capital city where I live and work and a welcome relief too.

After a short drive we found two herds of the Tahki horses, they have 66 chromosomes, two more than the 64 of domestic horses, so are a totally different species. They were really shy and not at all accustomed to humans gawping at them which I felt was a good thing. It would be a shame if tourism had made the wild horses not so wild after all. 

 

We had a slight drama when the car began to over-heat, not great when you are quite literally in the middle of nowhere, the driver stopped and opened up the bonnet and underneath there was a blanket neatly laid over the engine to keep it warm. I guess this is pretty essential to keep everything in working order when it’s minus twenty degrees outside but it seems things had got just a bit too warm on our long journey.

After a days exploring we spent the night in the ger of a local herder, gers are amazing, they are really just a small round tent and yet they will have everything you need. The one we stayed in had, beds and tables, a fridge, a sink, a washing machine, a TV and a computer. It certainly makes me think about why I need a whole house to fill with junk and clutter and a few precious belongings. We had some traditional Mongolian foods including airag which is fermented mares milk, I think the best way to describe it is to imagine a dry, west country cider and then imagine it made with milk and not apple juice, kind of very fermented drinking yoghurt. The main point to this story though is that a little later in the evening I vomited (poor me) and I blame the airag! It is certainly an acquired taste and not one I will be pursuing.

Apart from the short interlude of illness the night passed easily and we were warm and snug with the stove roaring away to heat the ger.

In the morning, we went out horse-riding, it is lovely way to see the countryside but it always scares me a little bit too, there are no health and safety regulations here. However, our ride was mostly uneventful. The ponies were brought down from the mountains for us and we had a good plod over the hills, we chatted to our guide as best we could, in Monglish and discovered all the horses we were riding were very old, so I guess they had picked us the safest steeds!

Tsaagan Sar

Tsaagan Sar is the biggest celebration in the Mongolian calendar, just like Christmas back home it’s a time for a few days off work and all the family to get together.

Tsaagan Sar means White Moon and it celebrates the lunar new year. It is a time to get the house super clean and serve loads and loads of food to welcome in the year ahead and hope it is full of luck for you and your family. The most exciting part of Tsaagan Sar for me though, is that this year it fell on my birthday and as it is a public holiday I got the day off work – excellent!

I was lucky enough to be invited to the home of a Mongolian friend to share in her family’s Tsaagan Sar celebrations, she lives a little way from my house so the first challenge was getting on the right bus to get there and more tricky, getting off at the right stop. I managed all this though and was pleasantly surprised to find the bus fare was a third cheaper than usual. I am yet to find out if this is a permanent reduction or just a holiday special.

It was lovely to meet my friend’s mother and daughter, when you greet people on Tsaagan Sar you do so with outstretched arms, as if you are going to hug, but you then lay your arms on top of or under the person you are greeting. The arms of the oldest person go on the top. I think that I got this right at the time and if not I hope people just understood I was a confused foreigner.

The centre- piece of the table was a stack of large oblong shaped biscuits or breads topped with many of the traditional Mongolian dairy foods. My friend explained that the first layer of breads is good luck and the second one is bad and the next good and so on, so you must always have an even number so that you are finishing with good luck at the top.

There was a mini version of this stack on a bookcase along with candles and a small bottle of vodka, this was for my friend’s father who had passed away a few years ago. She explained that Mongolian’s believe it is important to do this for relatives that have died and I talked to her about the way we always like to put flowers on people’s graves in the UK.

We spent the day chatting and drinking wine, that my friend’s sister had posted from America where she lives, she has just had a baby and her mother is desperate to go and visit her new grandson but it is difficult to a visa so for now it is just looking at all the photos.

Aside from the wine, I was treated to a wide variety of Mongolian drinks during the day, but luckily no vodka! First we had Mongolian milk tea, with salt, I am very slowly getting used to drinking this but it is certainly not something I would ever make for myself. Then we had fresh, home-made cranberry juice, which was delicious, many varieties of berries grow wild here and are always for sale in the markets, even in the middle of winter. Later we had some sea buckthorn juice, I’d say this has a little more of an acquired taste but I still enjoyed it.

Later others arrived and one brought a bottle of snuff, I’ve heard about this a few times but had never been offered it so that was a little Mongolian rite of passage for me. It was in a smooth carved stone bottle, which was kept wrapped in a beautifully embroidered strip of fabric. The bottle was passed to each guest in turn who passed it back to the host before it was passed on to the next guest. It was always passed with the right hand, arm outstretched and the left arm bent inwards so the left hand touches the right elbow, this is just the way it is here.

Eventually it was time for me to get the bus home before it got too dark and cold. And also time for a another surprise as, as I was leaving I was given several bars of chocolate, as a small gift, I was not expecting this but it turns out gifts for departing guests are a traditional part of Tsaagan Sar too.

The Tsaagan Sar celebrations weren’t just confined to the home, I randomly mentioned it to the security guard who looks after the VSO office when I was there on Friday, my Mongolian is limited to literally just saying “Tsaagan Sar” and smiling, but I got the message across and he seemed very excited that I’d mention it. He stood up and got his hat, which confused me momentarily until I remembered that you are supposed to greet people with your hat on during Tsaagan Sar so I put my hat back on too and we did the arms on top of each other greeting and I was offered snuff and biscuits – all very cheerful.

Birthday time!

It was my birthday last week. Apart from the trauma of now being official in my late twenties (how did I get so old?), I had lots of fun.

I shared the celebrations with another volunteer whose birthday is a few days before mine, this relieves the “birthday pressure” and we can’t afford to go out and celebrate twice on our volunteer allowance – it doesn’t cover those kind of extravagances.

We started out with tea and cake in Stupa Cafe, this is in a Buddhist Centre with a big white stupa outside – hence the name. It is also cheap and in fact also cheerful, filled, as it is with traditional bright orange, painted ger furniture. I was given a really cute little tortoise ornament from a friend, she said that tortoises represent a long life, so now I will have a long life, I hope so!

Next up was a quick stop at the shop to buy wine (an untold luxury but at least I can buy it here when I need a treat) and snacks while we got ready to go out dancing, us two birthday girls were staying over with another friend whose flat is much nearer to the city centre than mine. I went all out and wore make up for the first time in ages and we discovered, during a particularly girly conversation, that we’d all gone to the extremes of shaving our legs to mark this auspicious occasion. This should not be such an event but seeing as I never go out wearing anything less than thick cotton tights, thermal leggings and trousers it is a totally pointless activity that I will admit doesn’t happen very often at the moment!

Moving on, in more ways than one, we were off to Marco Polo, an Italian restaurant were I had a pizza (!) with loads of mushrooms – it can hardly get more exciting, which is ridiculous but true I am afraid. Then it was time for the night to really begin, cocktails and dancing, first up was Oasis, usually full of VSO volunteers because they let us in for free, very kind of them. Then we decided it was too quiet and went to Crystal, a lot more popular with Mongolians and playing dancey, dancey, trance music which I tried, but I suspect failed, to dance along to. Then all of a sudden it went very quiet, the DJ put Dido on and everyone sat down. The police had turned up, it is illegal to serve alcohol after midnight in Mongolia but everywhere does so the police just turn up every so often, I imagine some money changes hands and then the police go away so does Dido and everyone carries on dancing – interesting. So, finally the cocktails got to me and it is definitely home time.

Walking home, in at least –20 degrees, we stopped at the 24 hour supermarket to get eggs and baked beans for breakfast. Ulaanbaatar is certainly a city of contrasts, although we’d just walked along pavements that at times disintegrated to nothing but dirt and rubble and on the way I’d tripped over a big bit of metal just randomly sticking out of the ground at ankle height, you can still go to a supermarket at 1am and buy baked beans made in Italy by a Singaporean company and distributed to Mongolia from somewhere in Malaysia and it tells me all that on the side of the tin.