This time my friend and translator Khongor was unavailable to come to the countryside, but she connected me with Chingerel, a friend of hers who was looking for translation work. During the trip Chingerel told me her interesting story. She had been a Buddhist nun for the last 8 years but she had recently decided that the nunnery wasn't the place for her. In her own words, she was "too much of a free spirit" to be told what to do day-in and day-out. She had decided instead that she wanted to make a lot of money working for a mining company as a translator. I thought this was a rather drastic career change, but it was lucky for me that she had decided to abandon the monastic life, because she turned out to be a fantastic translator and ambassador for my garden project. While Khongor's translations were good and always got me answers to my questions, Chingerel's fluid ease with the English language led to much richer interviewing experiences. For example, I asked one man how far his family migrates each time they move and he said "oh about 20-30 kilometers, sometimes as far as 100 kilometers". Him and his wife spoke for a moment and then Chingerel burst out laughing, and explained that the man's wife had told him "don't be a liar, we never move 100 kilometers!".
Another interesting moment on our trip was when we visited a relative of our driver. The woman of the ger was his sister-in-law and she had one daughter, about 7 years old. The woman was keen to show me some English language letters her daughter had received that had been translated into Mongolian. It turns out that her daughter is one of those "sponsor a child" kids. I was surprised and intrigued by this, because the profiles of kids they post on those websites or send in letters seem so removed from the lives of westerners, but there I was randomly sitting in their ger, sipping milk tea, eating lunch with them, and talking about gardening. Also, her daughter was wearing a pair of TOMS shoes, a company that gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes purchased. Meeting this family definitely made the world seem a little bit smaller.
Besides meeting many delightful herder families, we stopped at a giant horse monument outside of Arvaikheer. It turns out that the city of Arvaikheer is named after a famous racehorse from 300 years ago. Mongolians name their horses by color, and they have hundreds of words to describe the different coats of horses. 'Kheer' is a dapple bay colored horse, and "Arvai" means swift, hence Arvaikheer, or Swift Bay city. The monument was decorated with Buddhist and Shamanist prayer flags and, at the back, a long line of skulls of famous and beloved race horses were covered in khatag, or prayer scarves, and faced west. It was an interesting stop off on our trip.
After a long hard day of interviews (9 in one day!) we finished up and headed back to the hotel in Arvaikheer. The next morning we headed back to UB on the 7 hour bus. The road is paved so it's not too bad of a drive. Overall it was a very productive and energizing research trip. Besides visiting many welcoming families, and the momument to Arvaikheer, I saw lots of wonderful wildlife including exotic ducks and geese, steppe eagles, enormous vultures, and even a wild hare. This research trip was a nice break from the hectic day to day busy-ness of UB and since I've gotten back I've been pumped up and working on making my hydroponic planters with renewed enthusiasm.
That's all for now!
Oh and here are some photos:
Monument to Arvaikheer
The row of horse skulls, knotted together and draped with prayer scarves.
Facing the same direction as the horse skulls, into the wonderfully open and empty landscape.
Me and Chingerel.
A preview of the incomplete planters.
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