Nomadic Gardens: Finished!

Here we are about 8 months after my first blog posts. I am excited to say that I have finished my project! Wooo! It's been one heck of a rollercoaster but I'm happy with what I accomplished in my research. Here's a brief recap of my final 3 trips to the countryside :)

My first last trip was to my Darkhan/Selenge site. My brother Bryan was visiting me in Mongolia before going to Japan for a year of study and he decided to come along. We had an... interesting trip... We got lots of good information about the gardens, and saw some excellent onions, turnips and carrots growing in the bottles. However, when I got back to Ulaanbaatar I realized my driver had robbed me while I went into a ger to do an interview. I foolishly left my pouch of money in my bag in the car and the guy had helped himself to $50-70 by my estimate. I expect people to pickpocket me on the street and watch out for it but I wasn't prepared for someone I'd hired to steal from me when I was paying him a good wage for easy work. Alas.

My second last trip was to Ondorkhaan. I hired a different translator because Chingerel found a permanent job. My new translator Yumjirka was quite good, but there turned out to be very little work for her in Ondorkhaan. Many of the families were away from home preparing hay for the winter or hadn't taken care of the gardens. Additionally, the driver I hired to go to both clusters of families demanded more money on our way to the second site. He was my driver for the first trip and one of the families I had given a garden. What had started off as a friendly trip soon turned ugly as he demanded more money than we agreed on. In the end he dropped us off in the city and I paid him half for the half job he had done and I forfeited the data of his family's garden. I ended up doing phone interviews, via Yumjirka, with the 2 families at the second site. One great success from this trip was hearing about a daughter of one of the families who had taken her garden to school in Choibalsan, over 200 miles away! There's a truly nomadic garden that will hopefully inspire teachers and students alike to plant their own gardens :)

For my truly final research trip to Arvaikheer, Chingerel generously offered to give up her weekend to be my translator. Having the same translator for the whole project definitely made a difference, and I had an excellent and productive trip to Arvaikheer. In addition, the driver we hired was friendly and delightful, a pleasant, sort of grandfatherly soul who told me he loved going to the countryside on my research trips to visit the families because he got to taste every family's fermented horse milk! We visited all the families and completed 9 interviews in one afternoon, a record, stayed in a clean and comfortable motel, and were able to take the bus back the very next day. A delightful and successful trip in every way, and a great way to end my project.