Sunday, October 28, 2007

Murphy and Me
Most American’s are well acquainted with “Murphy’s law.” A universal principle which states: if things can go wrong they will. Mongolians are also well acquainted with this law except they call it “going places”.

My trip from UB to site began haphazardly. I thought I was travelling with my Aimag-mate Greg. He had been informed earlier in the day that we would be leaving at five that evening, which, in Mongol time means anywhere between 5 and sometime the next day. Thus, I was rather surprised when my Director interrupted my morning cup of coffee to inform me that she was waiting outside my hostel. Unfortunately, I was enjoying my morning cup about ten blocks away. After sprinting back to my place and throwing the contents of my room into bags and loading those bags into a “jeep” we were ready to begin our journey.

We started by touring most of UB. We visited various family members, my director needed to stop by the ministry of education, we went to the bank, and hung about various other spots for a good four hours. After five hours in the car we embarked on our twelve hour car ride.

Before I continue it is important to clear up a few aspects of Mongolian culture. First, a car is not considered full until all of the seats have been loaded up with bags and people are sitting three to a seat. The back of our two seater jeep contained five people plus luggage. Add to this a small child and you are in business. I was lucky enough to sit in the front seat and only shared my seat with my luggage. All told we had seven people plus several hundred pounds of luggage in a vehicle slightly smaller than a “geo cruiser”. Second, the word road is loosely applied. It can mean a paved stretch of land or it can mean open field in which a car may pass. For the most part road means a dirt path that doubles as a testing site for bunker busting bombs.

Upon leaving the city limits I took some Benadryl and prayed for sleep. Despite the late start and the road condition the beginning of our trip went smoothly. We knocked off a good 100 kilometers in about six hours stopping occasionally for gas, food, and smoke breaks. The little kid in the back was remarkably well behaved and a benevolent God had answered my prayers. The next hundred kilometers would not go as smoothly.

The road went from bomb target practice, to nuclear accident. The only difference being that nuclear accidents, I am told, leave flat surfaces. To make matters worse many roads were under construction. When roads are being worked on here the construction crew deposits a giant mound of rubble across the road to prevent people from driving on it. These things are hard to see at night and we almost hit several of them. At one point I woke up in the act of crashing. We did not hit anything.

Sometime between sunset and sunrise we got stuck in the mud. It was late and dark and the driver decided that we would sleep in the field rather than try to un-stick ourselves. I woke sometime around dawn and helped push us out. Three kilometers later we ran out of gas. I found this particularly vexing as I had offered the driver twenty thousand Tugriks for gas earlier in the night. We eventually found some gas and got into Tsisterlig or about 26 kilometers from my site.

We broke a leaf spring in Tsisterlig and had to wait until the jeep was repaired before we left. Our time in Tsisterlig was pretty nice. We were not moving but the town is pretty and I was able to entertain my-self. More importantly, it had an outhouse which was great because I had Guardia at the time. With the jeep repaired we finished off the remaining 26 kilometers without incident.

28 hours after leaving UB I had travelled two hundred kilometers and found myself at home…sort of.
You do or see anything enough and after a while it will just start to seem normal. We adapt to our surroundings and what seemed exotic only a few months ago now fails to even gain attention. October has been a normalizing month for me. It no longer surprises me to see my students riding horses to school. Or to have my class interrupted by a women wanting to use the internet. I am no longer surprised when drunks (I do not mean that disparagingly) wait outside school to chat with the “white guy” or when my students slide down the stairway banister.

Somethings I have grown quite accustomed to and will miss when I am gone. I will certainly miss the ability to send students on personal errands. And I will defiantly miss the “Jijurs”. A Jijur is a cross between your grandmother and a ninja. They live at the school and spend half the time washing windows and sweeping floors and the other half beating students with a bow staff. I love these women. I mean it, I actually love them and we have a great relationship. They know that I only pretend to understand what is going on in school and help maintain that illusion through daily beatings. Any student who is even suspected of fooling around in my class is shown the business end of bow staff and perhaps a round house kick or two. On my end, I turn a blind eye when they are mopping the carpet with Mongolian Vodka. It has been a while since high school biology but I believe this is called a symbiotic relationship.

All that said, there are still moments which give me pause. Consider this headline from our local newspaper. “Herder Boy Has Plague” as in bubonic plague, as in the Black Death. Like most Americans I believed that the bubonic plague was something that had decimated Europe’s population in the 14th century and died out. I was unaware that it still existed and that people still actually got it. I was even more surprised to discover that my province has an unusually high rate of infection. Finally, I was amazed to learn that I have the cure to the bubonic plague in my med kit.

Yet another health related surprise came via text message. My safety and security officer sent me a text message coyly asking if I had heard about anyone getting sick. I replied that I had not. A few moments later I got a separate text message from my counterpart asking for my regional supervisor’s number. It is important to understand that in general no one likes to talk with the Peace Corps office. The folks there are exceptionally good at what they do and do not adhere to the laissez fair life style of the Hudo Folks. Hence, most calls to the Peace Corps office equals a dramatic increase in ones’ workload. That my counterpart was voluntarily calling the Peace Corps set alarm bells “a-ringing”. After a little digging I discovered that reports had surfaced of an anthrax infection only a few kilometers from me. Anthrax!!!??? That’s right Mongolia is one of the few nations in the world that boasts naturally occurring Anthrax. Thus, in a land area roughly the size of Alaska, with a population smaller than the state of Rhode Island and a climate similar to Siberia one can find Bubonic Plague, Anthrax and Bird Flu. Fortunately for me Mongolia is a member of a certain willing coalition so I do not have to worry about my felt tent being targeted by a freedom defending smart bomb.
uch Love
Stasz the Mongol.