The Global Guy

Mongolia has an extremely rich history when it comes to its religious beliefs. Historically the native religion of the people was shamanism. Shamans would go into trances, dance, and pray to the spirits of the land for luck and health. Major beliefs in the religion included balance in the world, respect for the earth and living things, and personal responsibility. Shamanism isn’t really practiced any longer in the majority of the country, except for some isolated pockets in the far northwestern areas.

In the 4th century AD, Tibetan Buddhism was introduced but it wasn’t until around 1548 that it really caught on. The third incarnation of the Buddha visited Altai Kahn, and it was there that the title of Dalli Lama was born. Dalli is Mongolian for ocean, and Lama is Tibetan for wisdom. This visit was responsible for the switch from shamanism to Buddhism. In fact, the fourth Dalli Lama was the great grandson of Altai Khan of Mongolia. The only non-Tibetan Dalli Lama, he was first recognized as the reincarnation of Sonam Gyatso by Mongol leaders, who had no true jurisdiction to do so. He was deemed the Fourth Dalli Lama only after a long, contentious debate among a delegation from the three great monasteries of central Tibet.

However, the influence of shamanism never left the culture. Mongols still believe in the power of the land and animals. This is mostly visible in the "Ovoo", or a pile of rocks and sticks placed at spiritually important places. Ovoos combine the blue streamers and prayer flags of Buddhism with the earthiness of shamanism. Usually they are found at the tops of mountain peaks, and often you’ll find offerings of anything from money, to crutches, to vodka bottles. The ones that most tourists see are on the four holy peaks that surround the capital of Ulaan Baator.

In 1937 the communists from the Soviet Union had taken over Mongolia in every way except for formally annexing the country. They launched a campaign to exterminate Buddhism in Mongolia, and very nearly succeeded. Over 27,000 monks were executed, nearly one third of the population. One monastery was allowed to stay open, only under the condition that it became a museum, and conducted no ceremonies. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the religion quickly came back in force. Monasteries are being rebuilt, and many Mongols are training as monks.

Four of us from the Geekcorps expedition have successfully returned from a trip out to the countryside of Mongolia. We left Friday afternoon, and headed out to a place called Tsaggan Nuur, or "White Lake". We borrowed a Toyota 4 runner, and drove about 6 hours northwest to get to our destination. According to my GPS, we were only about 10 kilometers from the Russian border, but there was a big mountain range in our way so it wasn’t possible to actually go there. We stayed with a Mongolian family, who didn’t have any running water, and electricity for only a few hours a night.

Staying with the family was our first exposure to how much arkii (vodka) that the Mongolians actually drink. Our first morning we set out to visit a local herder, and have a picnic near the Selenge river. Before we left the house we’d already finished off a bottle of vodka, and by the time lunch was cooked, we’d finished two more! We did learn the proper Mongolian way to open a new bottle. It involves an elaborate ceremony where you offer a splash to the sky, a splash for the mountains, and a final splash for the ground. To do this you dip your fingers in a bowl of freshly opened vodka, and using your middle and ring fingers, you flick the vodka in the three different directions. If there is a fire nearby, you have to offer a splash to it as well.

After a lunch of mutton stew and noodles cooked over a fire we headed off to a herder’s ger. Apparently this family was fairly well off by local standards. Wealth in the steppes is measured by the size of a family’s herd of animals. This family had been lucky and survived the previous winter with few losses. This was our first experience with traditional ger hospitality. We entered (making sure not to step on the threshold), and sat down with the men walking to the left, and the women to the right. We were offered snuff from the man’s snuffbox, and his wife offered refreshments of milky tea and bits of hardened goat milk curds. Eating in the countryside is requires one to not be picky about what’s offered. Luckily it’s not at all bad tasting! The only person who had any problems with the food was Ryan who was vegetarian. We listened to the couple talk for a while about their life and family thru Hulan, our embassy liaison and translator.

That night it was decided that the men would go deer hunting, Kazakh style.

You might want to skip this part if you’re squeamish…..

So I figure deer hunting is going to be similar to the states. A bunch of guys get rifles, and go look for deer tracks, and stalk the animals. No…mongolian hunting is similar to an activity in the states known as spotlighting. Illegal in the US, and unfair everywhere. Basically the idea is that you drive around in your jeep at night shining a spotlight around, until you find a deer. The deer freezes in the light, and someone shoots it. Then, you run up to the deer, slit it’s throat while it’s still alive, and collect some of it’s blood in a cup. Add vodka to the cup, and pass it around. Yum. It was tasted a little weird, but I figured, when in Mongolia do as the Mongols do. Other than that, it was fantastic.

When we got back from the hunt we found that the women had been entertaining themselves quite nicely. They’d opened a few more bottles of vodka and were smashed. The matron of the house was singing traditional songs to the rest of them, and they were all cracking up together despite the language barrier.

The next day, hung over but happy, we headed back to UB, to try to recover enough to go to work the next day.

SARS has hit with a vengeance here now. Actually the disease hasn’t, but fear and paranoia of it have. There were two suspected cases of the disease in the southern part of the country where the train from Hohhot, China stops, but they were later proved to be nothing more serious than a bad cold or flu. That hasn’t stopped the population from going disease crazy. Half the population is wearing surgical masks, and a lot of buildings will not let you in if you aren’t wearing one. In fact the State Department Store has a guard in front who won’t let you in unless you show him that you have a mask…not that you have to actually wear it, but you have to have it on you.

The strangest thing about the scare is the way they are treating incoming flights to the country. My friend Steph who I spent a lot of quality time with in Vietnam and Thailand has come to visit for a while. When her plane landed, no one was allowed to get off until they all had their temperatures taken and filled out health questionnaires. The funny thing was the outfits that the people who were doing the screening were wearing. You’ll have to look at the picture, because I can’t do justice explaining how dumb they looked!

Well, I’ve been in Mongolia for almost a week now. I’ve met the other "geeks" and they seem to be a great group. We haven’t officially started our projects yet, so we’ve had a bit of time to go out and explore the city. There are a lot more restaurants than I’d have expected. You can get just about any type of food you want. From what I can tell, there is a huge class gap between the lower and upper classes. The lower economic class lives in near poverty, living on less than 10 dollars per day. This is probably 95% of the country’s population. The rest are extremely well off, driving western cars, wearing western clothes, and living the good life. I’m a little surprised to see that this is the population that we’ll be here to help. Hopefully I’m being paranoid and we’ll actually do some good.

Anyway, I’m liking the city itself a lot more than my first impression coming home from the airport. It’s got tons of old Soviet monuments and statues all over the place. For some reason the people in charge of the city decided to buy a bunch of garish fake plastic palm trees and put them all over the place. It’s really quite surreal!

Getting around is easy. Taxis are everywhere and cheap. You can get just about anywhere in the city for less than $2.00. If you don’t see an official taxi within a minute or so, just raise you hand, and someone will pull over and give you a ride for the same price as an official taxi. We did get into a traffic accident on our way to the US embassy for a meeting, but luckily the traffic moves slow enough that no one was hurt..I can’t say the same for the cars. You’ll see everything in the streets. Land cruisers share the same lanes as horses pulling carts. We’ve even seen one guy who’s trunk was open with an entire side of beef stuffed inside!

I was pleasantly surprised about how smooth the flight was to Mongolia. I flew the leg from Seoul to Ulaan Baator on MIAT, the national Mongolian airline. I’d heard awful things about it (for example MIAT standing for "Maybe It Arrives Today"), but it was a normal flight on a 737. The food was decent western beef stew, but for some reason the in flight entertainment was a repeating videotape of the Eagles on their last tour.

I was met at the arrival gate by a representative from the US Embassy and the gentleman who I’d be working with for the next four months. Immediately they decided that we had to go shopping which considering that I had just come from the tropics and didn’t have any cold weather clothing was a good idea!

The ride from the airport was surreal. I’d never seen anything like Ulaan Baator. The city was covered with snow, but it was all a depressing grey color. We drove past old soviet memorials, underneath flaking heat pipes, and past a neighborhood where everyone lived in gers with electric wires running haphazardly through the streets. Finally we arrived at the main downtown area where I’d be living. The apartment blocks were in better shape here, but still based on the soviet concrete block model.

We stopped at the main department store called "Ik Del Guul" which basically means state department store. It has recently been privatized but the name has stuck. It’s got everything you might need there…a grocery store on the bottom floor, electronics on the 2nd, clothing on the third, and tourist stuff on the top. I found a decent coat for about 30 US dollars(expensive I thought!), and then we headed to my apartment. It turns out that it was right across the street from the store in a very central location. I was amazed at the size of the apartment. It might have looked ugly from the outside, but the inside was obviously well cared for. Geekcorps was renting the apartment from a family who was out of town for the summer, and it was furnished with all their stuff. Everything from graduation pictures of children to non perishable food was waiting for me just the way they’d left it. I knew I’d have a roommate in the next couple of days from the program, but it was nice to have a day or so to myself to get used to the area.

By the way, the pictures below are of the places I’ve described, but in much warmer weather. I was too busy trying to absorb everything I was being told by my guides to actually take any photos!