7-3-2007

Nadaam

Hello all and happy Independence Day.

I hope all of you are celebrating our nation’s founding by drinking cold beer, grilling meat and blowing something up. Here in Mongolia we just celebrated / are still celebrating a festival of our own. It is known as Nadaam and celebrates manliness. It occurs at slightly different times each year and the national Nadaam often occurs at a separate time than many of the Sum Nadaam’s.

Nadaam has a couple of themes: horses, wrestling, eating hosher, and getting drunk…then shooting arrows. My Nadaam began at about 7:30 when my little brother woke me by announcing “Hoy Jep” NaaaDaaam. My little sister then presented me with a plate of Hosher. Hosher is essentially a homemade hot pocket. They are packed with onions and spicy meat and fried then eaten with ketchup. They are wonderful. After my hosher I went outside where I was met by a small heard of horses and ton of people (also eating Hosher)

We hung out for a while and my Dad insisted I put on my wrestling outfit (more on that later) and take pictures with people. We then all headed off to Nadaam which looked like most town festivals you have been to with a few notable exceptions. About half the people were on horseback.

Mongolians ride horses like most people walk. Seriously, everyone here rides and everyone here is a good rider. The general rule is that if you are big enough to climb on to the horse than you are big enough to ride it alone, if you are too small to climb on alone than you are probably a good size to race that horse.

The first athletic event is a horse race. The horses are grouped according to age and the course is straight but pretty long. This year they increased the minimum age of the riders from five to seven. The use of a saddle is still up to the rider. If you ever want to be truly impressed by another human being, strap a seven year old to a big horse without a saddle and tell him to go as fast as possible. These little guys go like hell and hang on for dear life. Again, it is pretty impressive.

Wrestling is the main event. Mongolian wrestling has no age or weight classes. People wear a special outfit and grabbing clothing is completely legal, the bout is over when any part of your body, other than your hands or feet, touches the ground. This year four of us wrestled and all of us lost in the first round. People were generally excited that the “Americans” wrestled and most everyone agreed that it was a particularly good Nadam because we chose to wrestle.

Drinking is a pretty big part of Nadam. People drink all day. I drank with my friends 82 year-old grandfather. I have subsequently become his favorite drinking buddy and he tries to convince his American to go get me so we can drink together.

The night ended with us all going to a dance. The dance was held in a gym and featured a Casio Key board. I did meet the tallest man in the world though which was really cool.

Yesterday we celebrated the fourth. It was great and it made me miss Budweiser and cheeseburgers. I hope all is well.

Cheers

Staszthemongol.