Thoughts From Mongolia I

(Rich had the opportunity to travel to Mongolia recently to work with the NGO’s there. These are his journal entries.)

DAY 1

I left Denver on Friday at 10:30AM and flew into San Francisco to catch a flight to Seoul Korea. The flight was about 13 hours and every seat on the plane was full. When I arrived in Seoul the airport was incredibly modern and attractive and I ran to make my flight with Korean Airlines to Mongolia.

I left Colorado on Friday morning and arrived in Ulaanbaatar (UB) (the capital city of Mongolia) at 10:30pm on Saturday night. Tuya and her husband were waiting for me when I cleared customs after the custom’s officials searched my bags. Immediately when I got off the plane I smelled the smoke of burning coal and wood and the stench of air pollution.

This is my first trip to Asia and certainly to Mongolia. I haven’t had much time to really get excited for the trip because I have been jammed at work with our office move and I have been giving almost nonstop speeches on how nonprofits are going to survive these challenging economic times. However my level of excitement increased with every hour that I was getting closer to my destination.

I have been volunteering with the US Mongolian community for almost two years and was excited about having the chance to visit this country. Mongolia is a very large country about twice the size of Texas with a little over 2 million people. About 40% of the people live in the capital city that is referred to as UB and the rest of the country is made up of nomadic families that move their homes (gers) frequently on camels or horses to follow the vegetation 4 times per year. In fact it is one of the last nomadic societies in the world where they live off the land and their animals.

There is a strong value and dependency on the land because it is survival for much of the population. That is one of the primary reasons why I am here for about 2 ½ weeks. I will be conducting a scoping visit with environmental and some human rights organizations to see if there is a need to become involved in helping to design and execute programs to strengthen the leadership, fundraising and governance capacity of many of these organizations that are working on a wide range of issues. I am also going to do some consulting, workshops and training with nonprofit (nongovernmental) organizations during my visit.

When Tuya and her husband picked me up at the airport we drove about 30 minutes into UB. The roads were pretty torn up and we passed a very big and very old coal fired power plant bellowing smoke all over the place. The pollution is one of the first things you notice and it is particularly bad in the winter time because UB sits in a bowl and the city is surrounded by gers (one room round felt tent home traditionally used by nomadic people). Approximately half of people live in these homes and burn wood and coal for heat. UB is the coldest capital city in the world so the appetite for fuel is great.

We arrived at my living quarters at around midnight. I am living in a Russian built concrete building where they turn off the power on the elevator early in the evening so we walked up 5 stories into this very Spartan apartment. There is a tiny bathroom and the walls are sparse. I looked out the window and I saw a courtyard of a series of 10-12 story concrete buildings circling the area. The rooms are small but the living room has a big cable television that gets programming from all over Asia, Germany, UK, US and Austria. The woman and her family that I am staying with is taking English lessons and all over the kitchen walls are words in Mongolia and their English counterparts written on beige walls in black ink. There is a very small refrigerator and a pot to boil tea. There is a small cooking stove that sits on the floor. She served us a ½ cup of sweet tea. Probably the best thing is that I will get some exercise walking up these flights of stairs.

I asked Tuya and her husband about walking around the neighborhood after dark and they were very clear that it is not safe for a foreigner to walk around after dark. I have heard that before from people but it was clear to me when I walked into the building with my bags there were 15-20 young kids getting close to us and saying something in Mongolian to me. Some of the kids had too much to drink. Probably Vodka. The area that I am staying in has very few foreigners and I need to be careful because it seems they will assume that everyone from the west has a lot of money and they are more than willing to relieve you of your money

The diet will be a challenge for me because it is mostly mutton (Sheep) that is generally boiled and very fatty, with potatoes and sometimes rice. When you are in the capital city you could get other kinds of food and vegetables but most everything is has meat with it. Outside of UB the diet is much more restricted.

Tomorrow my hosts are picking me up and we are driving with their three children to the country about 25 miles to see a new statue of Genghis Khan.

DAY 2

I really did not sleep more than two hours even though I have been traveling for 24 hours without sleeping. My room is small with a bed and a closet but it opens up so I could see the sun coming up over the 10 stories concrete complex of building. There is a little bit of snow but it is not so cold. It is about 20+F that is a lot warmer than I was expecting. However it is suppose to get cold on Tuesday. The smell of coal and wood burning permeates the air.

The woman and family I am staying with are very nice. Her first name is Suvda that means pearl in Mongolian. She is studying English at school 4 evenings per week. She is hoping to become a translator that will pay her more money. She has her sister who stays here who recently had an operation on her heart and her husband that just left for his job in a small town about 40K from UB.

Suvda is very warm and nice and I am trying to talk a lot to her in English and she understands some of what I am saying and she is teaching me simple words in Mongolian. Her mother still lives in the country in a town that has the largest cooper mine in the country and one of the largest in the world about 400 K from UB (the capital).

Watching cable Mongolian television is a interesting because the news and shows are from many countries including China, Russian, Korea, and Germany. UK, Australia and of course the United States where they get C-Span and Fox News Extra. They even get ESPN and basketballs games from the US. I am presently watching C-Span where they are talking about the events of 9/11. This is very different than in Ethiopia where the government controlled the media and few people had cable because of the costs

I was very interested in watching two channels from China last night where one was in English and the other was subtitled. On both of the stations the news and stories were entirely positive about the human rights issues, the events with Tibet and even the stories about how incredible the Chinese government is doing with helping people get thru the economic mess that is impacting the world. The quality of Chinese television was almost on par with US and I was surprised to see the advertisements during the programming. Capitalism and communism are working well, side by side in China

I just returned driving from a 50K drive to see this 40+meter statue of Genghis Khan. It was impressive the size of the statue in the middle of the countryside and a private entrepreneur was developing this as a for-profit venture.

The drive to see the statue reminded me of Wyoming in the winter time. Very desolate, with snow on the ground, and mountains in the distance that were essentially bare of trees. Animals were running wild in unfenced areas that mostly had people living in gers with smoke coming out of their home that were all heated by coal. Every once in a while you would see an abandoned military installation and a series of concrete apartment building.

This was my first time to see UB in the daylight. About 40% of the population in Mongolia lives in this sprawling city that is dotted with small shops everywhere and the majority of the people live in concrete apartment buildings built by the Soviets 60 years ago. However in some of the newer areas of the city they had apartment buildings that looked more modern and enjoyable to look at.

I certainly didn’t see the poverty and destitute conditions as in Africa, but it seems very drab, grey and old and wearing out. I am sure it looks much brighter in the summertime when the country is greener rather than closed in because of the extended cold and winter conditions. There were new building in various stages of construction, but most of the building has stopped mid-stream because of the worldwide economic conditions impacting even this most isolated country. The city is lacking any green space or parks even though the rural areas and the mountains that surround UB are wilderness and protected spaces.

DAY 3

Today was my first work day and Tuya and I took a taxi to our appointments with people that work for NGO’s (nongovernmental organizations). I started to get really energized meeting with people who were struggling with many of the same issues that I have been dealing with for decades. I am preparing for a training session on Wednesday evening for about 15 NGO leaders from around the country that are working on environmental issues around river issues. Most of these people are charismatic leaders who have very small organizations trying to minimize the impact on pollution in their streams and rivers and are working as part of a coalition of organizations to gain strength and have a collective voice on these issues.

We had another meeting with a tremendously impressive Mongolian woman who was a PhD economist educated in Europe. She is a senior advisor to this coalition. We spent along time just talking about the economy in Mongolian and her work. She has an ex-peace corp volunteer who is working for her that will be helping with the translation at my training session on Wednesday evening.

An exciting thing to see and feel is the sense of optimism that these people were feeling for the future of Mongolia. Each of the people I have met was part of the future growth and development of the country. Because of the small size of the country (2+ million people) each felt that they could make an impact in setting the direction of Mongolia. People I met had direct access to the Members of Parliament and had personal contact with the Ministers in charge of different portfolios.

We drove taxi’s all around UB and we got to see a lot of government building including the Parliament house with its large open air gathering place that has large rally’s and other events during the Soviet era. Some of the architecture downtown is very modern mixed with old concrete buildings.