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Published: November 28th 2010
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Goats
Goats in a snowy mountain landscape What pastimes do Mongolians enjoy? Drinking vodka, playing cards and watching wrestling. I’ve managed to do all of these over the last few weeks as I’ve made friends and relaxed, in between my endless round of interviews of course! I won’t talk about my one and only venture with vodka. However, playing cards with the Guchin Us soum governor, Danzan, helped us find out more about our new area and got us into good favour, particularly as he won a few hundred togrog from us (£1 = approx1800 togrog).
Guchin Us at first seemed less diverse in landscapes than Bogd but, as it is at the transition of desert steppe into Gobi and with the addition of fresh snowfall, it had its own drama. The first two days we completed 18 interviews as we whizzed around with one of the bag governors who knew the location of most of the gers in his bag. This is no easy task when household may be in one place one day and ten or twenty kilometres away the next. The third day was even more complicated as the sky was thick with cloud and the air full of snow. Despite the white out
The team
Me, Enkhbayar and Nyamaa made a great team we still found most of the gers we were looking for. Standing in a wind-chilled, snow covered gravel desert with nothing but white snow around us as Enkhbayar replaced a flat tyre, made me realise how quickly frost bite could set in and how hardy the herders of Mongolia must be. Luckily our minibus was toasty warm – when we were inside it. Gers seemed to come in two forms: the large comfortable carpet-lined winter shelters that are permanently owned places for the long cold winter months and the smaller, more mobile gers that can be packed up and rebuilt quickly but that lack warmth and insulation of the winter homes. Lack of normal winter pasture meant some households having to move with their animals in the colder months and live for longer periods in their smaller draughty gers.
Finding gers in the second area of Guchin Us was complicated by most of the households having gone ‘by otor’ and moved their ger and livestock out of the soum in search of pasture. This area was badly affected by the dzud last year. Dzuds are extremely cold winters that occur at intervals in Mongolia. But last winter was particularly
Van in snow
Finding gers in normal conditions was hard in a complete white out a miracle severe and proceeded by a hot dry summer so animals had not put on enough fat to face the cold. Many herders had lost a high proportion of their livestock, which had literally frozen to death, and overall the livestock in Guchin Us soum was reduced to little over half. Some households we visited were reduced to poverty, with no other employment opportunities available. Nearly everyone we interviewed reported changes in the climate over the last ten years: hotter dryer summers and colder winters. Unlike Bogd where we were given milky tea everywhere, in Guchin Us the additional lack of baby animals in spring meant a lack of milk; so tea was served black. Herders could no longer rely on their diet of dairy products during the summer.
Our first four days of household surveys finished, we had difficulty finding a guide that knew the area for the final few days. Finally, a large herder, a prize winning wrestler, accompanied us but his knowledge of the area was lacking as we discovered later that he actually came from an adjoining soum. We ended up driving from hill top to hilltop, scanning the brown land for pinpricks of habitation and
Social network
Family participating in drawing a social network diagram during an interview failing miserably. The one herder on our list that we did find was too busy rounding up his flock of goats from the on coming storm to answer our research questions. However, three days later we completed our task and packed up our things. Nyamaa and I were both looking forward to finding a hotel with hot showers again.
The weather forecast for our journey back to UB had been worrying as strong winds and heavy snow was forecast, but as we set out accompanied by another vehicle from the aimag centre, the sky was blue although the roads were covered by compacted snow. We stopped on one stretch of road to help push a car that had skidded off into a snow drift. The endless snow covered landscapes, partly golden yellow where the grass pushed through, with the blue Mongolian sky above were stunningly beautiful. It has been a lovely time of year to be here as the season has changed from autumn to winter. Descending into the thick brown smog that covers Ulaan Baatar in the winter was a complete contrast to the clear fresh air of the countryside.
As for the wrestling, Friday was Mongolian
Easy rider
Motorbikes are taking over from horses on the steppe Independence Day and Nyamaa and I spent the afternoon at the Wrestling Palace in UB. The spectacle of Mongolian wrestling is part posturing and part a show of strength as a hundred or so large and larger men, dressed to show off their bulk, posture and tussle in a knock out competition. Stewards sing out the merits of each wrestler and then hold the ceremonial hats of pairs of wrestlers as they push and pull trying to get the advantage and throw their opponent to the ground. The winner slowly pace round, arms wide to the audience.
Ulaan Baatar is gradually heading towards winter, and signs of Christmas, such as decorated trees and giant Santas, are appearing in the snow covered streets. I am flying home on Tuesday to the familiar cold of a Britain and just hoping that the military posturing in Korea doesn’t disrupt my Korean Air flight via Seoul. Although I’ll be glad to get home for a while, I’ll miss the kindness and warmth of the people of Mongolia, particularly Nyamaa and Enkhbayar, as well as the vast and beautiful landscapes of the steppes.
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