Day #67: Life in the ger

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Over the course of the tour we planned to camp out about half the time and stay in gers the rest, but uncertain weather has meant more nights in gers than anticipated. At several places the family has had a spare ger especially for visitors/tourists. This usually means we get to sleep in beds. At others, though, we just sleep in the same ger as the family, in a row on the floor.

Most families move their gers at least once a year, having a summer and winter site, and sometimes more frequently (land outside of cities belongs to the state and can be used freely). At one place we stayed, the family had only moved to the summer site the day before, and were still settling in. The gers have wooden frames covered in layers of felt and cloth secured with ropes held in place with rocks. I didn't see a ger erected from scratch but did observe some roof maintenance on one - the felt underlay had worn away over winter and had to be replaced. The structure is simple but sturdy and they can be erected in a matter of hours by the nomads.

The farming lifestyle (and lack of electric light) means early nights and early starts, typically bed at 10pm and rise at 5:30am. One of the hardest aspects of life in gers for me to grasp is the lack of privacy. The ger is just one room, often made comfortable enough with beds, the oven for warmth, and solar panels powering a black-and-white television, a shrine if the family is religious and a display of photographs, but for a Westerner the idea of not having a private room or space to go to for some time aloneis strange, especially when having the children there and us as guests means 7 or 8 people sleeping in the same room. I suppose time alone happens during the day when everyone is working at their respective tasks.

According to our guide, nomadic life is decreasing in popularity as more Mongolians choose urban lifestyles, and in response to this the government has introduced measures to encourage people to become or remain as nomads. Foremost amongst these is the option of distance education for schoolchildren. One consequence of Soviet rule in Mongolia is that every child by law must be educated up until the end of high school (Mongolia has a 96% literacy rate). In the past there was no option but for nomadic families but to send them to boarding schools in cities and have them at home during holidays. This still seems to be the usual practice. At this time of year the children are just returning home for the holidays, and in one family the mood was celebratory as the mother also moves to the city during termtime so that her young children do not have to board. The end of term for summer was therefore also a family reunion.

Children keep themselves amused in the evenings by playing various games using sets of sheep ankle bones, which have a distinctive shape (4 different sides of the bone represent the sheep, goat, camel and horse). Most of the games involve some sort of motor skill (flicking or a game similar to jacks, for example) so I was hopeless at all of them, but the German was very good and it was interesting to see the range of games that could be invented from the bones.

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