Humanitarianism in Uliastai

Sure, there are no paved roads out of town, livestock regularly wander through town, and most of the toilets are holes in the ground. Mountains surround this place, and two vagrant rivers run through it. Walk a few miles out of town, and you could very well be a few miles from another living soul. But don’t be fooled; this is not the end of the earth. Or at least, if it is, it is a place populated not by dragons, but Samaritans.

Yesterday, after classes, I walked to the local Bolorjin Supermarket to buy eggs, applesauce, etc. and ran into Ulzii, the director of one of the local NGOs in town. Seeing her reminded me how many people there are here working for the betterment of this little town tucked into the Mongolian mountains.

Last February, two Japanese volunteers arrived in Uliastai, and after a few weeks of searching in earnest, I finally made their acquaintance. After a meeting with a potential sponsor for an upcoming seminar, Tsogoo (my amazing hashaa father) and I stopped in the post office to pick up a box I’d received. A girl was there getting packages, too, and I noticed the word リンゴ written on the side of her box. I turned to the girl and asked, “Nihonjin deshou ka?” She smiled in surprise and responded in the affirmative. And so began my friendship with Miho.

I had heard from Tuya, a woman I work with occasionally from the local museum on a few of the amazing projects she’s trying to start in the community, that one of the Japanese volunteers was teaching an origami class. Tuya signed me up, but I later found that the time conflicted with one of my clubs. The teacher of the origami class called me to let me know the other times she taught. She began speaking in Mongolian; I responded in Japanese. So began my friendship with Yumi.

Miho is a mid-wife working at the local hospital, while Yumi works at the Child and Youth Center helping organize programs for children in the community. Their presence here reminds me that, as I work to try to help the Mongolian people, I’m not alone. People from all over the world, from Japan and Australia to Korea and the Philippines, are here to help. And while, being American, I may have come a little farther than most, I’m reminded that the world isn’t nearly as big as it sometimes seems.

In the end, though, it isn’t the Japanese or Americans here that impress me: it is the Mongolians. Ulzii and Mongolians like her aren’t in this for the short-term; she’s here for the long haul, working tirelessly to help her fellow Mongolians—and unlike many of us who, despite our meager stipends, have had and continue to have a wealth of opportunities and resources to pull from, she is working with what little she has to achieve truly phenomenal, sustainable good in the community.

So when I look around this town and see the wandering livestock, the dirt roads, the outhouse toilets, I don’t despair. When I see the lonely mountains cradling the town, and the two rivers babbling through it, I don’t feel alone. There is an incredible amount of hope growing here, born partly out of international philanthropy, but mostly out of the hearts of the people who call Uliastai home. It’s a small town, but living here, I feel I’m part of something far larger, something bigger than the world: the aspirations of the Mongolian people for their beautiful, rugged, flourishing Mongolia.

Cheers,
Karen

Arrival of Spring

The snows are melting. In early March, spring revealed itself in an ebullience across the languid mountains that rise into view through my office window. The matted snow was melting; in the day it dissolved to water and, when the temperature dove like penguins back to icy depths, froze again: It looked like the mountains were slowly slipping out of white satin.

So if I don’t write often, it is merely because Mongolia has enraptured me.

But like all fondnesses that don’t spring out of children’s fairytales or romance novels, my fondness for Mongolia is touched with a kind of tellurian (and necessary) ambivalence, an accepted reluctance (and, at times, disappointment and I admit occasionally even revulsion) that makes me deeply appreciate my time here, my service, and incites me to great (if relatively brief) dedication to and love of a country that isn’t wholly my own (then again, are countries every really our own?).

I was unaware how much I longed for this vernal arrival, how much I needed the snows to be gone, the macabre winter to slink away and let the carcasses of creatures claimed by cold  (and accosted by crows and other scavengers) sink into the earth. It is only by contrast, seeing the cows eat newly-found shrubs rather than tossed cardboard, seeing the surviving puppies no longer curling up for warmth against their dead sibling, that I look on spring with relief.

Autumn makes me feel wistful, diaphanous, and delicate, but spring is a roborant; it clears my purpose while tempering my deleterious self-perceptions; it fills me while emptying me. It is a wind blowing through me (at times more corybantically than others). There’s an easy, tempered hope efflorescing before the trees. When I feel a trembling, it doesn’t feel quite as violent as when dying fall leaves trembled with me.

No lush grasses lie in wait beneath the snow; only the sandy dirt. No flower will grow from this soil, whipped by winds and treaded by hungry cows. But something about the grim terrain, the desolate winters, the infertile soil breed people of remarkable good-humor, dedication, and hospitality. They are persevering; regardless of what is or is not accomplished, it’s difficult not to become endeared to them, to root for them, to delight in their joys and despair in their sorrows. Just like in love.

But I know that, like most loves I’ve had in my life, Mongolia won’t be able to contain my restlessness. In 14 months, I will fly away with no plans of returning. But the brevity of my time, and knowing it is brief, makes me value it. Ephemeral things tend to be beautiful--in a heartbreaking sort of way.

I suppose that’s how I feel about Mongolia as she steps into the bluster of spring on the steppe. And like the weather in this tempestuous season, my feelings may change. But for now, I am content to be here, in this moment, feeling like I’m echoing the light across the mountains and the warmth in the winds. The snows in me have melted at last.

Cheers,
Karen