A Year In Mongolia

Books

2007-05-22T14:19:00.001+08:00

One of my students was telling me recently that during the Soviet era, almost no books from other countries were available in Mongolia. The late Russian greats (Dostoevsky, Pushkin, et al.) were represented, but few others. My student mentioned that there were a few books though from America: Did I know "Goodbye to Arsenal"? At first, I did not. Then I realized that was because, while his transliteration was perfect, the novel is better known as Hemingway's 1929 novel, "Farewell to Arms." Another one: "The Little House of Uncle Tom."

In one sense, I was surprised there were any American books in Mongolia then; there are so few now. There is not currently a single real (ie, not used travelers' books) bookstore in Mongolia . Admon, the main publishing house, does have a small bookstore-ish store, but it is mainly textbooks and the like.

Around and on Sukhbaatar Square there are people selling old Mongolian books and a smattering of English texts but, for the most part, there is no way to cultivate a library in Mongolia, in any language. Literacy is high, which suggests that if people had books to read, they might, but poverty and a low population count mean that even if books were available, they'd be too expensive for most, and that Mongolian translations would be rare.

Abuse. Again.

2007-05-02T12:32:00.000+08:00

Recently, I was awoken by two dogs barking and what I determined were six men yelling. The ruckus was coming from the small courtyard my bedroom window overlooks. The courtyard, which fits about 12 cars, is enclosed on two sides by my L-shaped building.

I thought the noise would stop after the dogs growled away their typically somewhat imaginary predators, but it didn't. I got up out of bed and looked out my window. There, the six men were kicking, over and over, a person on the ground who was not moving.

"Hey!" I yelled out of my third-story window. "Hey!"

They looked up. Far off, a car turned on its headlights in our direction and looked as though it was going to come our way. The men looked at each other, looked at me, and then dragged the still unmoving person to the arched gateway that leads to the courtyard.

The car turned off in a different direction. The six men actually dragged the person back out into the courtyard and had the audacity to start kicking the person again.

This time, I didn't say anything. I just stood there, in my white tee-shirt watching them, letting them know I was watching them. They dragged the body off again and then I didn't see them anymore.

To me, Mongolian culture plays a significant role in this. Mongolian boys grow up wrestling (re: fighting) one another. No one stops it because it's deemed athletic, no matter how many people end up with black eyes. Alcohol also obviously plays a part. As does the seeming acceptance, or the belief of inevitability, of domestic violence.

Still, that does not make violence okay. And if I heard everything that was going on, so did every single other person who has a window facing that courtyard. Yet not one other light went on, not one other person yelled anything out their window. I know one of the men in the courtyard was wearing a red baseball cap, but that's all I can say with certainty. Had one of my neighbors looked out the window though, I'd bet they could identify the hat-wearer. I bet they know his parents. But my neighbors kept to their beds, seemingly placing their heads under their pillows, hoping the noise would stop so they could get back to sleep.

Reason #64 of why I love Mongolia

2007-03-29T12:13:00.000+08:00

Because the garbage trucks play the ice cream truck song to let you know that they're coming happily down the street and you should put your trash out.

Fakes

2007-03-23T14:17:00.000+08:00

Recently, one of my students was wearing a pair of jeans with the cuffs rolled up. On the underside of the fabric was the ubiquitous, double-linked Gucci G's. So, somewhat jokingly, I asked her if her jeans were really Gucci. It became clear that she didn't understand the question, and her English communication skills weren't the problem. So few brands in Mongolia are 'real' that the word ceases to have meaning here.

All of the DVD stores sell DVDs fake from China, all of the legit clothing stores sell fake Abercrombie clothes and fake Diesel jeans. There are no 'real' items here. Or maybe they're all real; who knows. I have an Abercrombie sweatshirt I got here that's exactly the same (as far as I can tell) as one they're selling on the Abercrombie website for around $150 dollars. Mine's made in Macau, and, conceivably, the real one's are too. After all, when these companies are having everything made in China, or wherever it's cheap in Asia, what's the difference between a real Abercrombie sweatshirt and a fake one?

I can't even imagine trying to explain to my student that people in America might pay over $1000 for jeans that look exactly the same as hers.

I was reading Harvard Business Review yesterday (I read anything I can get my hands on here) and it was talking about how much people trust the names of brands they know. The researchers discovered that if they put no name peanut butter in a brand name jar, it tasted better to the people in the experiment than it did in its own jar. This occurred in across the board experiments.

While I understand why companies are upset when counterfeit articles of their clothing pop up, no one in Mongolia can afford the real stuff. In my mind, companies should probably just consider these fakes as whetting the appetite of Mongolians for 10 years down the line, when the real stuff finally comes. Then Mongolians too can pay full price for the same clothing they've been getting all along.

Cheating and Karaoke

2007-02-16T18:43:00.000+08:00

I've spent the past 10 weeks teaching an advanced English class, mostly at nights, 12 hours a week. The course was at a language institute, which means that my students get certificates, not grades at the end. I taught about 12 people, ranging in age from 16-25, 11 of whom were female.

I started giving weekly quizzes at a certain point, which I stated clearly were only mock exams -- I never put grades on top, I just put checks next to correct answers and wrote the right answers next to incorrect ones. Still, the amount of cheating (a word I had to teach them) was amazing. People were always passing their papers back and forth, whispering answers in Mongolian and writing cheat sheets on their hands -- this for a class without grades!

I was talking to one of my friends who teaches at the University of Humanities here, and there, apparently, cheating is also rampant. And blatant. Students, when asked to write a paper, will rip whole paragraphs of the internet, and not even bother to change the font so it matches that of the rest of the paper.

There is this sense of needing to get good grades, but it's not really based on anything. It's fairly impossible to fail out of a Mongolian university -- if you keep paying tuition, you can keep taking classes. And, at my school, there aren't even grades to strive for.

Still, I gave my students their final exam on Wednesday evening, and, when I walked in at six, several of my students were huddled around a table, studying. They said they'd been there since three. What's more, they all did incredibly well, without any of them cheating (that I could tell, and I usually can).

They did so well that last night, to celebrate, we snuck out of the school and did three hours of karaoke. NB -- Britney Spears is stellar for non-native English speakers.

Winter in Ulaanbaatur, Mongolia

2007-01-18T16:11:00.000+08:00

Because I'm used to Fahrenheit, rather than Celsius, I tend not to understand the irregular temperature reports I receive, but I recently checked online and found that this week has a high of 6 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of -20. Tomorrow, the high is one degree, or -17 Celsius.

I could have told you it was cold. Obviously it is cold. I have a ten minute walk to work and by the time I arrive at my office each morning, the hair sticking out of my hood is frozen white. This is dry hair. Taking a shower in the morning here would be suicidal.

But because everyone warned me about the freakishly cold Mongolian winters, I came prepared. Patagonia's long underwear has been my savior, as it has for many other people I know here. I also wear a super warm coat, a scarf, a hat and mittens, beyond my regular attire. And all of the houses in Mongolia are heated nationally by the government, so there's nothing to worry about once inside.

All this means that it's actually hard to tell how cold it is here. Once you get below freezing, it's hard to distinguish one level of cold from the next, especially when you're wearing clothing covering every part of your body except for a narrow swath across the face.

So while I'm fine, the sewer children and "lost dogs" of the city are not.

While there is apparently a law in Mongolia against kicking anyone out of their home between December and March, even if they don't pay the rent, due to the cold, there are innumerable people, particularly children, who never had a home in the first place.

They tend to live in the sewers, next to the pipes shooting heat into apartments like mine. Occasionally, people are burned by the pipes, but, for the most part, they offer the best way to survive the winter here.

The dogs of the city have fewer options. For a while I was counting the number of dogs I saw loping around the city, and the number of dead dogs I saw strewn around haphazardly, but both were too depressing.

One of my friends was saying that Mongolia needs to learn about spaying animals. Another countered that until social problems are fixed, people have more important things to worry about than their pets. She suggested that the dead dogs, sad as it is, are probably better off dead, as life on the street is rather bleak. (On a side note, I recently learned that you have to register your pets with the local council and pay a fee of approximately $2 per month per dog, and $1 per month per cat.)

Two puppies have recently begun living outside my building. Someone put an old coat out there for them to sleep on, and a lot of us give them food, and, at night, people take the puppies inside out of the cold. I try to save meat for the puppies whenever I can, and I started taking in the little puppy, who looked about four weeks old, on Christmas Eve, pitying the poor thing as it mourned the cold outside.

I say this because I tend not to give any money to the sewer children I see daily on the street. I'm not exactly sure why that is. In part, I think, it's because of how aggressive the children can be, surrounding me and saying, "money, money, money," and then cursing at me and calling me "Russian" if I don't give them anything. In part, it's because Lonely Planet suggests that I shouldn't, saying it will only cause children to see begging as a viable solution, and in part, I think, because, awfully, they are not as cute as puppies.

Several of my friends volunteer at the orphanages here, and bring back horror stories of children chained to beds, but it is a wonderful service they are doing.

I'm not sure what I think is the best way for me to help. Is feeding two dogs scraps helping anyone? Is feeding two children food helping anyone? I'm not sure.

Reason #23 of why Mongolia is Mongolia

2007-01-10T17:31:00.000+08:00

Because somehow I ended up dressed as snow girl at my work New Year's party, because that led me to writing an article about New Year's celebrations for the Mongol Messenger, and so a picture of me as a snow girl is in Mongolia's first English language newspaper, and because today, two weeks later, I received a text from a Mongolian boy I don't know saying, "Alexa, I think I love you. I know you are a snow girl."

Here I am on stage.

Abuse

2007-01-05T10:56:00.000+08:00

I came home one Saturday night recently at about 2 am and heard a loud argument occurring across the hall. An hour later, I could still hear the argument occurring. Then I heard screaming and yelling on the stairs, and suddenly, outside my window, there was a woman lying in the courtyard, crying hysterically. Several people were standing over her and yelling. I heard her come sobbing upstairs again and then there was more screaming and yelling in the apartment. I didn't know what to do, so I went and opened my apartment door. A woman was holding open the door of the apartment where the screaming was coming from, and several other neighbors and the building's security officer were standing in the hallway and on the stairs. The woman holding the door open kept saying everything is fine, even though everything is not fine. Then the screaming woman stumbles toward the door and her entire face was bleeding. I didn't know what to do. I grabbed the phone and called the police. I asked the woman who picked up, in Mongolian, if she spoke English. She hung up on me. I called two more times, and she hung up on me. The last time, she said, "We don't speak English here," in English, before hanging up on me. Finally, the woman holding the door open took the beaten woman outside and they got into a car.

Physical abuse is terrifyingly common in Mongolia, but it was the first time I was an eye-witness to it. I talked to my boss about it, and she said that abuse centers are sprouting up, with housing, because most of these women stay with their husbands because they have nowhere else to go. My boss also suggested getting some pamphlets from one of these centers and discreetly slipping them to the woman when I see her in the hall.

Almost equally disturbing though, was the emergency police woman hanging up on me several times in row. What if something serious had happened to me? She didn't care. I understand that not everyone in Mongolia speaks English, but my boss said that the police have the capacity to locate calls. At the very least, she should have sent someone over to make sure I was okay. I just hope that nothing happens to me or my friends while I'm here, because it's now obvious that if anything does happen, the police are not going to help.

Bayan-Olgii

2006-12-19T15:54:00.000+08:00

Recently, I flew up to Bayan-Olgii, all the way in the furthest North-West corner of the country. Bayan-Olgii is mainly Kazakh (90%) and the rest of the 100,000 people there are from other minority populations. While the landscape is relatively similar to that of the rest of Mongolia (wide-open spaces) the feel of the place is very different. Although Kazakhs, like Mongolians, use the Cyrillic alphabet, their language is entirely different. Also, they are Muslim, as opposed to nominally Buddhist like the rest of Mongolia, which means that there are mosques in every town and I got to hear a few call to prayers.

A friend helped start a kindergarten out in Sogog, a small town two hours West of the provinical capital, Olgii, and so I went to see it while there. The kindergarten, which was built in time for school to start in September, is really pretty, and the toys and books in each classroom are so much nicer than anything else I've seen in Mongolia. The American woman who helped start it is trying to make the kindergarten self-sustaining, so she brought in designers who taught the women of the community how to make some of the more intricate Kazakh patterns, and she then hired the local women to make all the crafts needed for the classrooms. There's also the potential of starting a cafe or other venues to raise money. The kindergarten currently has 54 students, many of whom are bused in from several kilometers away.

Of those 54 students, five have cerebral palsy. CP, as it is often refered to, is a funny disease, in that it appears to have a lot of different causes, and there are varying degrees of damage and no one seems to know exactly what causes it when. Essentially, though, it's a neurological disease that affects motor skills, rendering some unable to speak or walk or use any of their limbs. The causes appear to include babies not receiving enough oxygen to their brains during the birthing process, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), and incest, or intermarriage among too close relations. For some children, it appears to occur at a few years, possible due to diseases such as meningitis or due to malnutrition.

That essentially 10 percent of children of this Kazakh community appear to have the disease, however, gives pause. In the developed world, approximately 2-2.5 childrenn per 1000 develop the disease, which is hugely different than one in ten, as it is in Sogog. One explanation, beyond how small the gene pool is, is the quality of the doctors in the area. I've heard horror stories of dentists there helping women give birth. Someone who doesn't know what they are doing has a much higher chance of cutting off a baby's oxygen supply by accident.

The kindergarten in Sogog has wheelchairs, but, in general, physical therapy and other ways to help children with CP are out of the price range for the people in Bayan-Olgii, who live mainly in a non-monetary community, subsisting off the land.

Someone, I want to say USAID, charitably started a school for CP children in Olgii, but it wasn't heated, which is terrible for people with CP in particular, as their muscles are already so cramped, and it didn't serve meals, which is considered necessary in Mongolian schools. So I believe it closed, despite the obvious need for such a school.

I'd love to go back and try to track how many people in the area have the disease and how much its prevalence has increased in recent years. Getting better doctors would likely decrease the number of cases, but as the gene pool becomes even smaller, more might be necessary.

Reason #105 of why Mongolia is awesome

2006-10-27T17:15:00.000+08:00

Because recently, when I was walking home past the State Department Store (the biggest store in the country) Queen's "We Will Rock You" was blaring from outside speakers for no reason whatsoever.

Reason #87 of why I think Mongolia's awesome

2006-10-24T11:50:00.000+08:00

The Mongolian phrase for "what day of the week is this?" also means "what planet is this?"

Water Supplies

2006-10-18T12:30:00.000+08:00

I was at a conference last week headed by David Dollar, the World Bank Director of China and Mongolia. It was a really interesting, concise lecture and Dollar seemed really smart and well-informed. One thing he discussed that I found particularly intriguing involved the lack of potable water in Mongolia. Essentially, the water in Mongolia is gross and undrinkable. The World Bank, which, as I later learned, is "the world's largest external financier of water supply and sanitation," is trying to resolve this issue. Dollar said that right now in Mongolia, poor people pay 10 times as much for water as others do because they are not on "the network." Dollar feels that, although seemingly counter-intuitive, Mongolians pay too much for water right now, and if the prices were raised, that would allow water companies to expand the network, giving poor people access to water. Dollar also suggested a graduated system, so a certain amount of water, determined as a sufficient amount for daily ablutions, would not be expensive, but any water used beyond that would be. This, in his mind, would both encourage water conservation, and offer access to water to a maximum amount of people.

It all sounded really impressive to me. Then I happened upon this article by William Finnegan, from a 2002 New Yorker. It's about the World Bank initiating the same project in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the same numbers, "poor people are paying 10 times as much for water as others" are used. There, the project seems entirely ineffective and, ultimately, expensive and beneficial only to the World Bank and the water companies.

I'm not sure what the best solution for Mongolia is in terms of water. I know that Lake Hovsgol in Northern Mongolia holds 1% of the world's fresh water, which makes it really crucial right now when the world is running out of drinking water. It also seems that Mongolia should be able to give its citizens access to fresh water when it has so much of it.

Mongolian Education

2006-10-02T13:36:00.000+08:00

Like almost everything in Mongolia, the education system is in flux. Even though the Soviet system ended 17 years ago now, education here still hasn't fully come into its own. Under the Soviet system, schools were funded by the state, books were funded by the state, supplies were funded by the state. Literacy was at an all time high (while it still hovers about 90%, under the Soviets, it was essentially 100%).

In the past 17 years, some schools have been privatized, and others have been closed, as the state has been unwilling or unable to sustain heating and teachers' salaries in the small local schools that dot the countryside.

This year, for the first time, the education system is being expanded. Previously, children started going to school at age seven. This year, school starts formally at age six, and next year, at age five. Currently, wealthier families, as in other countries, send their children to nursery schools, but many do not.

Up until 2003, education funds were determined at the local level, which meant that if a soum (province) governor didn't care for education, or had his own pet project, education in that area was underfunded. In 2003, the education system was centralized under the Minister of Education in UB. Unfortunately, however, funding is still based on an "average coefficient," on the aimag level, so a school of 200 in an aimag with a lot of larger schools gets more funding than a school of 200 in an aimag with a lot of smaller schools.

Interestingly, UB does not participate in the centralized education system. UB, which hosts 30 percent of all school-aged children, follows its own rules.

Teachers' salaries are a decent amount higher in UB than they are elsewhere in the country, but considering the higher cost of living and the greater number of hours teachers in UB work, (due to staggered school hours to allow more students to go to each school) the difference is hardly commesurate. What's more, many teachers outside of UB are giving housing and/or food and firewood as compensation for their work, along with their salaries. Like a lot of people in UB, this causes teachers to often look for side jobs to increase their incomes.

One of my friends teaches at the University of Humanities, which, until recently, was considered one of the best universities in Mongolia. In the past few years, however, it has been privatized and so its administration now views the school merely as a money-making venture. What's happened is that teachers are now told not to fail anyone. The school wants as many students paying as possible, even if they're not keeping up. One of the Peace Corps workers is placed there, and because she is paid monthly by the Peace Corps no matter how many hours she works, the administration is always trying to have her work long hours and to teach the night classes, which cost more to go to, and for which normal workers are paid extra. Needless to say, the reputation of the school has declined.

As in almost every area of the Mongolian government, various foreign NGOs and governments cover some of the costs. The Japanese government is a huge donor and, thus, participant, in the Mongolian education system, as are the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. I can't imagine the US or any other "developed" country allowing foreign governments to pay for and participate in the country's education reform.

Currently, the World Bank is funding the delivery of books to every child in every soum in Mongolia. Many schools and school libraries have not received new books since the Soviet era. I, through a side organization, am in charge of finding books in the Kazakh language for children in Bayan-Ogii, the Westernmost province in Mongolia. I'm searching for publishers in Kazakhstan that print non-religious or non-indoctrinating books that are willing to sell their copyrights to Mongolia, and that will give us a discount if we buy 200 copies of each book we buy. So far, it's proving difficult.

Photos from the train

2006-09-27T11:09:00.000+09:00

China

2006-09-25T11:14:00.000+09:00

I just returned from a week in Beijing, visiting a friend, with the excuse of having to leave the country to switch from a tourist visa to a work visa.

I had forgotten already, after two and a half months in Mongolia, what real cities looked like. I had gotten used to 8-story buildings and two main streets. With its 13 million people, and pre-Olympic buildup, Beijing was initially overwhelming. Luckily, the friend who I stayed with speaks Chinese, and, every morning, would write out in Chinese the places I wanted to go on little sheets of paper that I would hand to taxi drivers and bus attendants.

I took the train there and back, my first experience on the Trans-Siberian. I'm biased because I love trains, but it's a beautiful ride. You pass quickly out of UB and then you are on open terrain, passing by a few power plants and coal mines and a scattering of gers until you reach the Gobi Desert. Then you are surrounded by short grass and small sand dunes. This lasts for hours, until you hit China, which is amazingly more populated, immediately. You pass several sections of the Great Wall, and one station passes through the wall. It's easy, when flying, to believe that all of China looks like Beijing, and all of Mongolia looks like UB. Of course, this isn't true at all, and train trips are a reminder of this. China by train appears mainly like fields of corn and dying sunflowers where few people have cars and everyone has a bicycle. It's a beautiful country.

Yesterday, when I pulled into the train station in UB, it was rainy and dreary and cold. I met up with friends and we spent over an hour trying to find somewhere that looked appealing for dinner. Still, I was glad to be back.

AMCs and HHH

2006-09-12T14:01:00.000+09:00

A traveler through Mongolia coined the term AMC, and, in his absence, those of us who live here have usurped it and claimed it as our own. AMC stands for Adorable Mongolian Child. The term is something of a misnomer, as it suggests that there are Mongolian children who are not adorable. This is false. All Mongolian children are adorable.

Last week, someone at my office asked if I would be interested in teaching at her sister's kindergarten (kindergarten being the catch-all phrase that Mongolians use to mean nursery school). I said I would love to, and yesterday, during lunch, she and I went over to this kindergarten. While it was my lunchtime, it was their naptime, and in each room I peeked into, I saw at least 10 AMCs sleeping happily on their little plastic cots.

I will be teaching English three times a week to 2-3 year-olds, and then to 4-5 year-olds. Needless to say, I have never taught English to people of any age before, although I did teach my brother how to add, and I did TA a class on Women Writers of Japan in college. Luckily, a friend of mine teaches first grade here, and so she is going to give me her workbooks, and I am going to create a one month lesson plan, by Friday. For, can I say again, 2-3 year-old AMCs.

Today, after work, I am going with a group of fellow Americans to HHH, otherwise known as Hash House Harriers. HHH is one of those things that is well known to people who live abroad, and entirely unknown by everyone else. According to wikipedia, it's "a more social version of Hare and Hounds, where one joins a pack of hounds (runners) to chase down the trail set by a hare or hares (other runners), then gather together for a bit of social activity known as the On In or Down Down with refreshment, humorous camaraderie, song and sometimes a feast." Here, apparently, we drive about a half hour outside of UB, do a walk-around, eat a sandwich, and have a beer.

One of my friends participated two weeks ago, and she said it was her and a lot of middle-aged women who are here with their bankrolling husbands. It appears then, that HHH may be all Mongolia has to offer for ladies who lunch.

My friend visiting from Beijing was shocked that somewhere as off-road as Mongolia could have its own chapter of HHH, but, as wikipedia tells it, Antartica has two chapters, and even Guam has their own. Apparently, there are also interhash activities where chapters of HHH meet up to compete. I could see a Mongolia-Russia-China HHH competition being particularly fierce.

Weather

2006-09-07T12:34:00.000+09:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain. When I opened my eyes, however, I saw not rain, but snow. It's September 7th, and winter has begun in Ulaanbaatur, Mongolia.

Also, I finally added more pictures to my flickr account. You can check out images from when the weather was still warm.

Does Mongolia have a large wealth disparity?

2006-09-04T14:47:00.000+09:00

Mongolia has a huge disparity of wealth, and not just between foreigners and Mongolians. Unlike other countries, however, below the super rich, there is a gradual decline in capital between classes, as opposed to a huge jump. The super rich here in Mongolia tend to work in the mining industries or in banking. Their ranks often include foreigners from China, Canada and the US. These people drive around in Hummers, Lexus SUVs and Range Rovers. They have drivers.

Beneath them, however, wealth is less apparent. Here in Mongolia you can buy clothes from brands like Abercrombie and Fitch or Miss Sixty or Sevens Jeans for a fraction of what you would pay in the US, because it’s all made in China. Often, the clothes will already have their US price tags on them. And, as I’ve said before, a lot of people will spend a lot of their incomes on clothes, making attire a difficult reference point as far as wealth goes.

A lot of the restaurants here too will have graduated pricing. At the one I go to most often with people at work, Crown Restaurant, you can buy a soup and a salad, or a soup and another small dish for less than $2, which is what we usually do. Main courses start at around $3 or $4 and are aimed at a different clientele, but one that will sit side-by-side with us. Then there are other restaurants, such as Millie’s, that are priced in such a way that no one but the wealthy can eat there.

The supermarkets are more separatist. Wealthier people will shop at the State Department Store, or stores like Good Price, that offer Western goods. Middle class people who live in central UB will shop at Dalai Eej, a more local supermarket that still stocks brands like Crest. The further you get from the center of town, the cheaper goods in the supermarkets are. Poorer people will shop at outdoor markets like the one next to the train station where all the goods from China come in. Here there are large shipping crates that operate as wholesale stores, with one filled with potatoes and the next with onions. Outside, women will sell kilos of rice that they take from large 50 kilo bags.

Then there is housing. The well-paid Americans live in places like the Star Apartments, which are rentals. Many of the wealthy Mongolians are choosing to live in places like Japan Town, which are the newly-built gated communities. These houses are often located just across Peace Bridge on the other side of the river. They are totally anomalous McMansions with turrets and big windows that look out on other McMansions. They are packed incredibly tightly, and have no land whatsoever. They start at $250,000.

A lot of people, myself included, live in the Soviet apartment buildings that take up much of central UB. They are huge monstrosities that tend to be longer than they are tall, so they look like 20-story apartment buildings resting on their sides. Government officials that aren’t corrupt will live here, as will NGO workers and store owners.

As you get further out of the center of town, just past the Ring Road that circles the city, the shanty towns begin. The structures here are small make-shift houses with small dirt lawns. Some of them appear to have plumbing, others do not. These go on for a long time. They are tacked alongside windy roads, none of which are paved. Teachers at the universities may live in them, or large families just in from the countryside.

Beyond the shanty towns are the ger towns. These are where the truly poor live. Like in the shanty towns, the gers are placed on small lots next to thousands of other small lots. There is no indoor plumbing. Mangy dogs wander the streets and it’s not a safe area to walk around in at night, even for Mongolians.

Past the ger towns, the city disappears, instantaneously becoming countryside. Here, particularly upriver, wealthier Mongolians build their summer homes, or their regular houses, where they can have land and river views or mountain habitats.

Oh, and for those of you keeping track: it's snowed already in parts of Mongolia and it hit zero celsius here in Ulaanbaatur on Saturday night.

Lessons Learned

2006-08-31T17:37:00.000+09:00

I’ve now been at my office for just under a month. The first two weeks were hard. Everyone in my office but me is Mongolian, and while they all speak English, there are varying degrees of fluency. Also, they’ve never had a non-native working here before, and so even though we’re part of an international NGO, it took them a while to figure out what to do with me. In the beginning too, I brought lunch every day in an attempt to save money to travel.

Then, one day, I went out to lunch with a group of co-workers and my whole world changed. Suddenly, I was part of the group. And being part of the group meant being in on the jokes, finding out who had boyfriends, who didn’t, where the good clothing stores were, and where the good restaurants were that only locals know about. What’s more, becoming friends with my co-workers during lunch meant that, at work, they respected me more and gave me more to do. For the past few days, I’ve actually been overworked, which is awesome.

Also, through the Human Rights conference I went to for work, I met one of the Australians that I now hang out with all the time. She works for a Mongolian NGO too, and while there’s one other American that works in her office (sometimes) she’s essentially in the same boat I am, which is great, because we can give each other tips and the people we work with can laugh about us together.

Yesterday, while I was walking home from dropping a friend off at the train station, I saw a non-Mongolian girl, about my age, painting numbers on the sidewalk. She was Russian, and knew about as much English as I do Mongolian. But we spent about a half an hour trying to chat in this crazy English/Mongolian/Russian hybrid that neither of us really understood, and we had a great time. It turns out she works at the Russian school, and classes start tomorrow, so she was painting the class numbers where the kids will line up outside. She invited me to come by tomorrow morning at 11 to meet all the kids. And, just then, talking to her, I decided that everything here would be alright.

Peace Corps Partying

2006-08-28T17:48:00.000+09:00

Last Saturday night, one of the Peace Corps volunteers threw himself a birthday party, and invited me. I brought two Australians and one American who had just arrived in Mongolia. We walked in the door of this beautiful apartment to find 20 people surrounding a beer pong table. It was kind of surreal.

There are 90 Peace Corps volunteers in Mongolia, which seems like a huge number to me, 10 of which are located here in Ulaanbaatur. The one throwing the party is actually a 3rd year (Peace Corps volunteers are required to stay at their posts 27 months -- three months training, 24 working). There are actually several 3rd year Peace Corps people here in Mongolia, which really shows how much they enjoy Mongolia. In a lot of other countries, 27 months is more than enough.

One of the girls at the party had blow-dried hair, highlights, and ironed clothes, while the rest of us were in jeans and t-shirts. The thing is, she's spent the last year living in a ger with a dirt floor all the way in the East of Mongolia, without any other Americans around. I couldn't do it. So it makes sense that, on a weekend off, she might want to dress up.

The other strange part of the evening was that all the Peace Corps kids kept talking about events as if they were yesterday, but it soon became clear that much of what they were talking about happened at least a year ago. For many of them though, they get out of the countryside so rarely, and they see other Americans so rarely, that memories from a year ago are their most recent memories outside of their ger lives.

Oh, and on Saturday, I saw the Dalai Lama, which was pretty incredible. He just finished a week tour of Mongolia. China was so angry about it (because they don't recognize the Dalai Lama) that they suspended Air China flights to Mongolia for a little while, which further fostered the animus Mongolians tend to feel toward the Chinese. Mongolians, however, were wildly happy about the Dalai Lama's visit -- his seventh. The word Dalai is actually Mongolian, and 80 percent of the Mongolian population is Buddhist, so seeing the Dalai Lama is a huge deal.

Does Mongolia have fast food?

2006-08-25T17:02:00.000+09:00

As of now, there aren't really fast food restaurants in Mongolia.

Mongolia does, however, have cafes and bakeries that offer carry out service and there are often people on the street selling buuz (dumpling-like treats that sometimes contain hot liquid along with meat) and khuusuur, which are essentially vegetable or meat empanadas. There are also places like Indra, and Berlin Burger that are kind of cafeteria-style fast food places. Right now though, there's no McDonalds, Burger King or Pizza Hut.

The one ostensibly Western fast food restaurant is BD's Mongolian Barbeque, owned by Billy Downs who runs a chain of these restaurants in the Southern US, and recently decided to have a Mongolian outpost. BD's is essentially a sit-down, make-your-own stir fry place.

A woman from the London office of the organization I work for was here this week, and she was saying that she had been in the Ukraine when the first McDonalds opened there. She had made some disparaging remarks about it, which really offended her Ukrainian friends. "How dare you deny us our place in the world?" they said to her. "We are finally joining the global market, and you are trying to hold us back."

Apparently, McDonalds recently sent a survey team to Mongolia to scout out the country as a potential market. The rumor is, however, that they decided against opening up a franchise here. Part of the supposed reason is that they couldn't compete with the pricing of items like khuusuur, which you can get for around ten cents apiece, and partially, Mongolia has such a low population density that UB would be their only possible market, and it just isn't that big. A lot of other Western companies, such as HSBC, have resisted participating in the Mongolian economy for the same reason.

At a certain point, however, I imagine that Mongolia will become enough of a tourist destination, and there will be enough other enticing factors, that companies will come, and Mongolia will join the global McDonalds market.

Are Mongolians fashionable?

2006-08-22T15:35:00.000+09:00

One would think that citizens of a landlocked country with little access to basic items such as wheat would be similarly confined when it comes to fashion. Not so. Mongolians are incredibly fashionable.

I don't mean that Mongolians are wearing knee length shorts, or whatever is trendy in New York right now, but they are very conscious of how they look. UB has a large young population, as anyone who can comes into the city for university, and young people are likely to stay after they finish school. What this means is that you have a huge number of men and women in their late teens, early 20s who are unmarried and have disposable incomes.

The girls tend to wear outfits that people in the US might wear to go out on the weekends, or on special occasions. Women wear high heels almost all the time, and glittery tops are popular, as are short skirts. Men tend to wear button-down shirts and to have a generally sartorial look about them.

Cell phones are the key accessory for any outfit. I bought a used cell phone upon arriving in Mongolia for around $30. It's one of the original Nokia pre-flip phones that everyone used to have, six years ago. It works fine, all the controls are in English, and it gets good reception. Mongolians, however, practically pity me for having such an old phone. People here tend to buy new cell phones about once every six months, and they spend huge amounts of money: many cell phones here cost around $300 -- that's 25% of the average Mongolian's salary. On some level, I'm embarrassed for having such an ugly phone, and I want to say to people "I have a razr at home in New York, I swear!" but, at the same time, being a foreigner here I feel somewhat immune to social mores.

My boss recently, who is in her late 30s, was talking to me about the obsession with clothes and phones here in Mongolia. She was saying that Mongolians by nature are adaptive people; they are nomadic and used to change. They can adopt other cultures very quickly, almost unconsciously. She worries though that the adoption of style and image is occurring on a very superficial level. "I keep thinking they are going to wake up one day," she says, "and realize that they have no sense of who they really are." But then again, she says, maybe they won't. Either way, for now, they look great.

Mongolian Law

2006-08-18T14:50:00.000+09:00

My office is putting together a huge document on how to train people to become paralegals, and so they are having me proof the English version, which is actually pretty good. My favorite paragraph so far:

"In law faculties moots are usually conducted formally and learners dress in robes and argue the appeal in a simulated moot court environment. This is not necessary for training paralegals. A simulated court environment can still be used but it is not necessary for learners to dress up in court robes."

I can just imagine the relief these paralegal teachers felt when they learned they did not need to find court robes........the paragraph also reminds me of why I'm not planning on going to law school.

This week I have been at the Northeast Asian Human Rights Defenders Conference that is going on here in UB. It's a kind of random assortment of people in the sense that I never knew that Cambodia constituted Northeast Asia, but people from Cambodian NGOs are here, along with people from China, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea, and, of course, Mongolia. In all, there are about 60 people here, only four of whom, myself included, are native English speakers. Still, the entire conference is in English.

Mongolia appears a lot worse off than I thought as far as Human Rights go. Like China, it is developing whole economies around trash collection, and other jobs that cause people to tramp around in some pretty gross stuff. Right now, there's no such thing as recycling in Mongolia, nor is there the understanding that trash doesn't just go away....not that Fresh Kills is anything to be proud of....So there are organizations that are trying to work with the trash collectors and to educate their children in an attempt to prevent them from spending their whole lives amidst waste. It's interesting that these people's occupation has made trash management a human rights issue.

In other news: I got my first set of business cards today. Who knew that coming to Mongolia would make me professional? They have English on one side and Mongolian on the other.

Where I live

2006-08-15T10:57:00.000+09:00

Here's a photo of my apartment building. The shipping crates to the right are where my neighbors park their cars.

A friend of mine is currently in town from Beijing, so we took a trip this past weekend to Terelj National Park, where we pitched out little tent alongside a river, and just sat around and enjoyed the view.

Is Banking Easy in Mongolia?

2006-08-14T13:43:00.000+09:00

This is one of my other gripes with Michael Kohn of Lonely Planet-Mongolia fame. Lonely Planet is the only travel guide company out there that makes a Mongolia guide, so Michael Kohn, the latest author, has a monopoly on tourist information. And sometimes he's wrong. As in when he says that "banking in Mongolia is a snap."

The one thing I'll give Kohn is that there a zillion banks in UB. I read the NYT article last week A Bank For Every Block and determined that Manhattan has nothing on Mongolia. Here, there are 17 different bank companies. All of which have the majority of their branches here in UB.

In another country, this might make it difficult to determine which bank to go to. Here, it's fairly easy; there are only three banks that are considered "clean" in the sense that they don't pay off the government: Xac Bank, Xhan Bank (which used to be the National ie, only bank in Mongolia), and the Trade and Development Bank. Otherwise, there is little to differentiate the banks. Almost none of them have ATMs, and it appears that just has Pepsi has a monopoly on soda in the Mall of America, Visa has a monopoly on debit and credit cards in Mongolia. A few banks accept Mastercard, but only when they feel like it. Most pretend they've never heard of Mastercard.

Mongolians are also a fan of lines, by which I mean they hate lines. By which I mean they shove to the front and pretend the line doesn't exist. Bank managers therefore like to exact pain on Mongolians by creating as many lines as possible. They often have you wait on one line to tell them how much money you would like. You may then have to wait on another line if you don't have an account there, where they will swipe your credit card or debit card, as though you are "purchasing" cash. For this you will get a receipt and you will watch the teller count out the proper amount of cash (all the money is on display here -- they seem to have no concerns about holdups). The teller will then walk the cash over to another teller whose line you will have to wait on to receive the cash. At which point you may snap, which could be what Michael Kohn meant to say.

Is Mongolia going to get its own Palm Islands?

2006-08-10T11:21:00.000+09:00

This is the land of Xanadu after all....

Michael Schuman of Time: Asia thinks Mongolia could become the next UAE, given its natural resources. John Macken of Ivanhoe Mines doesn't believe that's a problem. Many Mongolians feel otherwise.

What's the food like in Mongolia? (How do Mongolians avoid scurvy?)

2006-08-09T10:48:00.000+09:00

The Lonely Planet guidebook tries to pretend that UB has a wide food selection -- I believe it suggests that Ulaanbaatur is in the "upper echelons" as far as variety of cuisine goes in Asia. I beg to differ. Mongolia is a land-locked country that, for much of the year, is covered in permafrost. Nothing's growing. The fruits and vegetables that you can buy are limited in variety, and, because they are almost all imported, they're expensive.

The nomadic diet consists almost entirely of what they have on hand: a lot of milk products, from goats and yaks, many of which are fermented, so they can last through the winter, yak meat, and mutton. The other big ingredient is wheat. I was legitimately amazed they all didn't have scurvy until I learned that unpasteurized milk has some vitamin C in it, and, apparently, lamb liver contains quite a lot of vitamin C.

A friend of mine here who works for CHF International, (which, like Mercy Corps, is an organization that works on poverty reduction and sustainable change across the world) was telling me that two of the big funders of CHF's Mongolian operations are United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Apparently, the USAID tends to give money, and USDA works with CHF to help "monetize" American wheat. The USDA currently subsidizes wheat production in America. Then, because there is a surplus of wheat in America, the extra wheat gets shipped off to countries like Mongolia. CHF sells the wheat to Mongolians and uses that income to subsidize their programs.

In countries like Mongolia where it's difficult to grow wheat, this is a really effective way of giving people access to wheat. In countries in Africa, however, where this apparently also occurs, and where there is already wheat production, it can be devastating to the market as the surplus lowers the overall price of wheat.

NYT Discovers Mongolia

2006-08-07T16:46:00.000+09:00

Ed Wong calls the roads here "bone-jarring."

The Steppe Inne

2006-08-07T13:39:00.000+09:00

On Friday, I was invited by one of said older banker persons to the Steppe Inne, which was described as "like an eating club." As someone who is more used to eating ramen than anything, I was a little intimidated before going, and the barbed wire, guest list and mandatory i.d. check didn't help any.

As it turns out, the Steppe Inn is the British Embassy's kind of private bar, and, on weekends in the summer, they have relaxed barbeques....for people on their guest list.

I was talking to the woman flipping burgers (it's embassy staffers and their spouses that do the cooking) and she said the Steppe Inne opened in September 1988, which is really early (still Soviet-era) and even before the Peace Corps arrived (they're at year 17). Early in the sense that I was amazed there were enough of a scene in Mongolia at that time to warrant an exclusive bar at an embassy. I expressed surprise, because there is a bar on every corner in UB, and Mongolians are notorious for their vodka-swigging, and so she said, "well, you know, it was because there was nowhere to drink here then." Then she got kind of embarrassed, and I realized she meant there had been nowhere for Westerners to drink without Mongolians around.

The crowd at the Steppe Inne was mostly British Embassy folk, American embassy people, UN staffers, and people from the World Bank crowd. There was one Mongolian there. He seemed to know no one, and, spotting me (I can only assume) as someone else seemingly out of their element, came up to me and, finding out I was from New York, asked if I had ever climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty (I had) and how many steps it took (I had no idea). The only other non-White person there was, randomly, the owner of one of the best Indian restaurants in town.

As someone who has now been on the guest list, I can apply to be a guest member of the Inne, provided I get my boss to write a letter attesting that I do work here, fill out the application form, photocopy my passport, and provide them with two passport photographs. We'll see.

Oh, and when I was talking about the expat scene, I forgot to mention the Christian scene. It's huge here. Most older Mongolians are Buddhist, but a decent percentage of the younger generation is converting. The Mormon Church is the only church here legally allowed to proselytize, but there are a lot of different christian groups here that do less proselytizing, but maintain large public exposure by owning some of the big television stations, working with homeless kids, and generally doing a lot of civil projects around the country.

Are Mongolians Bad Drivers?

2006-08-04T10:40:00.000+09:00

My first inclination is to say that they are the worst drivers I have ever seen. My second inclination is to qualify that statement. First off, you need to differentiate between Mongolians who live in UB (the only city in Mongolia over 100,000 people,) and everywhere else in the country.

In the city, there are no street lights. Okay, there are a few, at the massive six-lane four-direction intersections, but otherwise, there aren't any. Which means that cars have no reason to stop, and they don't want to stop. But pedestrians need to cross the road, which means that as a pedestrian, every time you cross the street, you have to take your life into your own hands and just walk out there and trust that the cars will stop or at least swerve a little. This always works better when there is a group of you.

Mongolia has one road that goes East-West across the country and it is not paved. Well, all but two small, random parts of it are not paved. One part, apparently, and this could very well be apochryphal, was paved by the Chinese, and, to make a larger profit, the Chinese apparently only made one and a half lanes instead of two, so it's not wide enough for two cars to fit. It also hasn't been repaired for a long time so it's pretty cracked. The other paved part, according to the same potentially apochryphal tale, was made by the Japanese, and that area is nice and smooth. It's almost like a mirage in that the dirt road suddenly becomes smooth asphalt and then, about 30 miles later, it abruptly becomes dirt again.

After a while, parts of the East-West road get so cut up and bumpy, in a bbbbbbummmbbbbummmm humming way, that drivers start making their own roads in the dirt next to the main road (Land Cruisers are the cars of choice here for obvious reasons -- you'd be nuts to drive anything that doesn't have 4-wheel drive outside of UB). The second roads tend to run parallel to the main road about 20 feet away. Sometimes the two roads intersect, and sometimes it's hard to tell if you are on the main road or the side road. The side road, however, tends to go BUMP! BUMP! as though you are on an trampoline and only spend half the time on the ground.

There's actually a big drama here about whether to fix the roads, because if the roads were fixed, people would drive on them more, and so it means that a lot of the really natural, beautiful places in Mongolia would be easily accessible by car and, if people went there, it would cause further disintegration of the nomadic lifestyle.

Another issue with Mongolian cars is that because they are all cheaply refurbished, they break down a lot. Probably every mile you will see a broken-down car. While this means that all Mongolians have to be really good car mechanics -- when you're in the middle of nowhere Mongolia, you need to be able to fix your own car -- it also means that quick fixes like sawdust to improve the gears are used regularly not as quick-fixes, but as completely valid methods for fixing one's car.

To further compound the Mongolian driving problem, gas is really expensive in Mongolian. It's essentially equivalent to what it is in the United States, which, while not expensive for the rest of the world, considering that the average Mongolian makes around $1200 a year, is really expensive for a Mongolian, so they are always trying to find an angle to make their gas last longer.

One more thing about Mongolian cars -- Mongolians hate seatbelts. I think they think seatbelts are for wusses. Seriously. Mongolians rip all the seatbelts out of their cars as soon as they buy them.

Part of me thinks maybe Mongolians are such crazy drivers because they are used to riding horses and so they are used to "off-roading" and they're also not used to having to worry about other passengers or drivers. Part of me also thinks that Mongolians are just really bad drivers.

What side of the road do people drive on in Mongolia?

2006-08-04T10:37:00.000+09:00

In most countries, this would be a relatively simple question. In Mongolia, it's more complicated than right or left.

Mongolians do drive on the right side of the wheel as we do in the states, but......some of their steering wheels are on the left, some are on the right. That's because a full 90 percent of cars in Mongolia are bought second-hand, and they are bought second-hand from all over, including countries that drive on the left side of the road. This is only one of the many many reasons that sitting in a car in Mongolia or trying to cross the street are dangerous enterprises.

How do you tell the difference between expats and tourists?

2006-08-03T15:48:00.000+09:00

The first thing that will help you is to know that is a limited expat community in UB which appears to fall into two very distinct categories:

1. The young people. This group of people, of which I am one, range in age from about 23-32. They are here because they are in the Peace Corps, working for a non-profit, on a fellowship, or some other job that likely pays them Mongolian-style wages.

2. The old people. This group seems to consist almost entirely of men. They are usually at least 50 and they are here for business. They work for banks, as consultants, for oil companies, for real estate companies. They almost all make American salaries and have drivers and do not need to or try to speak Mongolian. Still, many of them have Mongolian girlfriends, almost all of whom are much younger. They live in places like the Star Apartments, which is where all the embassy folk live, and where rents are at Western rates. They speak in loud voices in restaurants and always order in English.

Tourists tend to travel in packs, and to be fairly young. Most of them look like they are here to go camping. Pants that have many pockets and photographer style vests are popular. So are restaurants that are in the Lonely Planet guidebook. Millie's Cafe, which is in the guidebook, is mainly older expats who can afford the high prices (the equivalent of $7 for a salad) but some tourists do make their way to it. Expats hang out at the cheap dvd store where they build up their dvd collections with $2 movies from China. And those are the major differences between expats and tourists.

What's Ulaanbaatur, Mongolia like?

2006-08-01T12:33:00.000+09:00

God, I wish I could say it's nice. Mongolia is a beautiful, beautiful country. UB is the ugliest capital I think I've ever seen. It consists almost entirely of slabs of concrete -- Soviet-style apartment blocks with windows cut out of them. None of them appear to have been renovated, ever. Furthermore, since they're concrete, they're not going to fall down any time soon. So they just stand there, balconies sloping downward (every apartment here appears to have a balcony), paint (where there is any) peeling, looking entirely unliveable.

Outside of the buildings, UB is similar to just about every other big city. There are supermarkets, department stores (2), lots of little cafes and restaurants, a circus, an opera house, and all the other accoutrements that go along with city living. The big difference is the mountains that are visible surrounding the city. They're huge and beautiful and remind you of how gorgeous the rest of the country is.

Almost all signs are in Mongolian, but an increasing number are in English. In the US, signs are often in French to signify class, here, it's English. Sometimes you'll get a mixture, like "Moda Mongolia" a "fancy" re: cheap quality Italian clothing store.

Currently, there are a lot of tourists around, a lot of Europeans, particularly French, some Australians, and fewer Americans. There are a lot more tourists than you would actually expect for Mongolia. Apparently, however, come the end of August, they will all be gone, only expats will remain, and no tourists will reappear until late June next year.

2006-07-19T12:07:00.000+09:00

I am currently ten days into a year-long stay in Ulaanbaatur, Mongolia. A lot about life in Mongolia is surprisingly similar to life in the United States, but a lot is also very different. Rather than write a straight blog documenting my life here, I thought I would answer questions put to me by readers and friends concerning Mongolia. This will hopefully make the country more accessible to them, and, also, to myself. We'll see how it pans out. At any rate, welcome to Mongolia.