Field report from May 30:
What a day! Our mission in coming to the countryside was fairly complex, so we have a lot to do in just a few days. We needed to check up on the Dayan Derkh Monastery that the Tributary Fund rebuilt, find gers for the childrens summer eco-camp, and find food suppliers for the summer camp. And what I learned from today, is that you ought not expect quick results when working in the rural Mongolia, where most everyone is far apart, daily life is a struggle, and the pace is a little slower than in the city.
First we headed out early to visit various homes of rural families to find out if anyone had an extra ger they would be willing to rent to The Tributary Fund as housing for the children in the summer camp. It was really neat to go into homes and sit and listen to Chimga conduct business. Sue and I of course, had no idea what was going on until Chimga filled us in, but we would just sit and listen and soak it all in. Each home would give us a nice hot cup of milk tea (which reminded me of cream of wheat, but liquid form) and pass a bowl of cheese curds and sometimes bread around. Occasionally we would receive fresh yogurt instead. It became apparent that dairy products are a key part of the diet. The houses are mostly one room log cabins, as folks are in their summer pastures now. Some families still use gers when they move to their winter pastures, but many are starting to build permanent structures for winter as well. The walls were lined with beautiful carpets and materials and at the center of the room there was always an old wood stove. Also, interestingly, almost every home we visited had a t.v. While it was fun to just experience the life of these people, we had to find some gers, and we encountered some difficulty. Often, people had them, but the stove pipe was being borrowed by the neighbor down the way, or someone else was using it, or something was broken. We got told a few times to come back in a few days and check, which was funny, because we don’t really have more than 3 days here.
Finding someone to supply dairy was difficult as well. The local community can potentially benefit from selling some of their dairy products to the Tributary Fund during the summer camp for food for the kids. That would be ideal. Unfortunately, many families felt they couldn’t spare the little dairy they were getting by with as it was. Hopefully tomorrow will yield more favorably results regarding that as well.
After our home visits, we set out to the Dayan Derkh Monastery so Sue could check out how it’s been maintained and talk with the caretaker, Bimba. We arrived and found that Bimba’s son had gotten ill and he and his wife had taken him by motorcycle to the nearest town (about 2 hrs away) to see a doctor. We stayed at the monastery for a while, eating lunch (even though I was stuffed from so much milk tea and yogurt and cheese curds already) and letting Sue have a look around. Consequently, Bimba happened to comeback just as we were leaving, and thankfully his son seemed to be okay. We decided, in light of the stressful circumstances, to come back tomorrow to have Bimba give us tour.
So then we went back to fishing camp (by driving across the river in the jeep, and stalling, and almost floating down the river) and had dinner with the guys at camp. It was delicious food and talking to all the clients were interesting too. Plus, I got some good quality rock-skippin’ time down on the river after dinner.
We’ll head out again tomorrow and hope to finalize some deals on gers and dairy!
Cheers
Grace
No comments:
Post a Comment