pina colada, Beatles blaring Let It Be, smoke in the air, expat
atmosphere. How does anyone ever go to sleep here???
- Goat. My last experience was in Kenya, and I swore I was off goat
for life. Just goes to show. The flavor is unmistakeable, and has a
tendency to ooze out of the pores the next day, a goaty odor in a haze
all around...
- Blue. Every ovoo I saw was wound with the blue silk scarves
available at stores outside of Buddhist temples. From a halting
conversation: blue=sky, yellow=god/spirit, white=mother (mother's
milk), red=family, and green=the earth or the ten thousand things (a
little lost in translation). The scarves are usually in packs of 5,
one of each color. I am not sure why, starting with the more
Shamanistic peoples of Baikal, all the way through primarily Tibetan
Buddhist Mongolia, but at every pile of stones (ovoo) or likely
looking tree / other natural landmark, the blue scarves are
predominant. I would also love to find out what about a site makes it
likely for a scarf/stone shrine. In Mongolia, these are everywhere,
but definitely in high places with views or especially lovely natural
features (like the Orkhon waterfall). We stopped at a few on the
drive, and the driver would walk 3 times slowly in a clockwise
direction around the shrine, adding another stone at the end. What is
it about the human tendency to pile rocks? And, in the case of
Mongolia, how is this more shamanistic practice woven into buddhism?
On our last morning in the ger camp, we had an early morning cup of
tea in the host family's ger, which of course is more richly decorated
than the guest gers, with a small shrine, more intricately painted
wood, and - lovely in early morning light through the removable center
roof panel, a single tattered blue scarf draped from the tiny bit of
sky entering the ger to one of the center supports.
- Bones. It is easy to rhapsodize about the exoticism of Mongolia,
but to balance it out a bit: nomadic presence in the Orkhon valley was
anything but a "lightly on the land" ideal. The manure of yak, sheep,
and goat is literally everywhere, and the bones are scattered just as
thick: fragments of pelvis and scapula, skulls, piles of whole furred
legs discarded as butchered. The grass is cropped incredibly close to
the ground from complete overgrazing, and the bare patches of sites
where gers camped in the summer and then recently moved to their
winter grounds are always in close proximity to ad hoc middens of
plastic, discarded clothing, tin. This is not a place you can walk
with bare feet: shards of glass glitter in the afternoon sun, and
there is an endless stash of empty vodka bottles in rock crevices, and
along the river. By contrast, the inside of the gers we visited were
always a miracle of homemaking, with everything exactly in its place
and an entire family sharing the same circle of space. The little
girl of the family we stayed with in Orkhon had a split in the crotch
of her trousers: diapers were not an option, and with one pair of
pants, the obvious solution. Still, I watched as she was clearly
included and loved in the family circle- the circumstances were not
neglectful.
I admire the lifestyle still practiced by so many in Mongolia, because
of the skill and toughness and knowledge about the land required, but
can't help but compare it in some ways to the many dilemmas facing
Alaskan villages.
Below I've included a comment by a friend of a friend, Wallace
Kaufman, to an article in the WSJ:
Story: Wall Street Journal: The Global Downturn Lands With a Zud on
Mongolia's Nomads (132 days ago)
Comment: The US, Japan, World Bank, and European nations have poured
foreign aid into Mongolia, much of it for rural communities and
herders--most of it sadly mistargeted. A few years ago I attended a
briefing where the head of one of the largest projects summed up by
saying he was afraid most of the foreign aid efforts were intended to
do little more than "to make poor herders better poor herders."
The emotions and cultural misperceptions that drive many aid projects
came home to me as I was traveling through roadless Mongolia with
World Bank and other foreign aid workers advising banks and
businesses. They praised the pastoral simplicity of the herders'
lives, their closeness to the land, their love of horses, their
apparent health. A Texas banker said, "Look, they have grown up riding
and they are bow legged from spending so much time on horseback." The
visitors in various ways expressed a longing for such a healthy and
simple life and a desire to preserve it. A week later in the capital,
Ulaan Baatar, an American doctor told me that the bow legs came from
the vitamin deficiency rickets. A few months later a winter 'zud'
(harsh and prolonged sub zero temperatures and deep snows) killed
hundreds of thousands of animals and plunged their owners back into
poverty.
Mongolians, like other Central Asian herders, have to make the
transition from traditional herding to a modern technologically
efficient economy. They have resources. They have an intelligent and
hard working population. They have universities and teachers ready to
develop the human resources. So many rural women have headed to Ulaan
Baatar's schools and universities that the men left behind complain.
Despite recent troubles, Mongolians have a democratic structure that
worked through several changes of ruling party (more than any other
Central Asian country can say).
Rural aid projects have also focused on cashmere production. That
production is not only highly volatile, it relies on ecological
devastation. The best cashmere, with the thinnest fiber and highest
price, comes from animals grazing on stressed rangeland. Almost all of
Mongolia is terribly overgrazed. A foreign aid project found that if
present areas of range were protected, its short stunted growth grew
tall with grasses and forage.
Much of the overgrazing could be avoided by clear and enforceable land
and water rights, assigned to individuals, families or cooperatives.
Such "enclosure" would cause some disruptions, but in the end it would
allow the best herders to optimize their production and encourage
those who do not have the talent and desire to be herders to find
other occupations.
No comments:
Post a Comment