So this is a post I started writing in early October and finally decided that I should at least post what I had started to write and sum it up the best I could after three months sitting on my “to do list”. So without further ado…
I can’t decide if I like fermented mare’s milk.
Yep. That’s right. Somebody milks a horse (without somehow getting kicked). Then they let the natural yeast in and from the horse, ferment the milk. Then it is served as a special occasion drink at room temp or a little colder.
I hadn’t planned on having to drink airag (the name for the fermented mare’s milk) until I went out into the countryside…which I figured wouldn’t be until the spring. But in the last four days I’ve had it twice. And I’m still very much in the city.
All 50 or so staff who work at the V.E.T. Net offices here (the Non-Governmental Organization, or “NGO”, that I am now a part of) decided to have an office retreat and prayer day on Thursday and Friday. Everyone really looks forward to this as it happens almost every year and is a lot of fun.
On Thursday, we all piled (quite literally) into some vans and drove to a retreat center just outside the city. We were on the very edge of a mountainside and could see the span of UB from there. The ger district on the north slopes of the mountains and tall downtown buildings in the center. To top it off, it had snowed in the tallest mountains the night before. Totally beautiful. We weren’t even in the real countryside yet and I was loving the nature around me!
The retreat center is one very nice two story building with a conference room at the top and a giant dining room at the bottom. The “hotel rooms” were fake gers. Which to me was really really cool! The differences were that 1) they had an attached shower and toilet, which never happens in real life and 2) it was made of cement and was thus totally immobile and would be totally useless to a nomadic family. But. It was a start. I like gers so far.
My camera has died (may it rest in peace) and so I will try and describe a ger for you…at least a fake one.
All ger doors face south. The doors are short…maybe only 2/3 the height of a standard door and slightly wider too. They are usually decoratively painted either on the inside or outside or both. Usually in bright reds, oranges, or greens. It’s rude to step on the threshold of a ger so you have to step over it as you enter. Inside it is much bigger than it looks on the outside. The one round room has a peaked round ceiling with a small hole at the top for the stove pipe to stick out of. I’d say the peak of the ceiling is maybe 10 feet high. The wooden frame that supports the walls and roof is also decoratively painted with flourishes and little flowers (kind of). It looked a lot like Scandinavian Rosemaling painting actually.
If you are standing in doorway, the area of the round room directly to your right would be the “kitchen” area. Then as you continue around in a counter clockwise direction there would be at least 2 or 3 narrow beds, maybe a short dresser or two, a mirror, some pictures, and perhaps some Buddhist idols or charms. In the center of the ger is a wood burning stove with the pipe that goes up through the ceiling. Just behind the wood stove is a short rectangular table and some square stools. Now, maybe it was because it was still warm outside at night (in the 30’s I think) or maybe it was because the ger was made of cement. But. It was utterly amazing how hot the ger got from just the little stove! It was super cozy!
Sleeping in the ger made me feel as though it was a place for community and closeness a place where family was really important. There’s not much privacy to speak of…but the sense of community even for one night with my “ger-mates” was really cool. Except for a normal lack of indoor plumbing…I think I could get used to living in a ger.
I forgot to mention that it rained almost all of Wednesday and part of Thursday. So. Technically beginning Wednesday I started a long list of “first time experiences”
1) First Mongolian rainy day (very unusual in the fall!)
2) First time in an almost-ger.
3) First time almost out of the city.
4) First time I saw Mongolian cows. (They are somehow nicer than American cows…)
5) First time I saw the city skyline at night. (It’s really pretty)
I’ll continue it in a bit.
Meanwhile, we had a day of prayer in the big conference room…complete with breaks for food every two hours. Every 2 hours. We worshipped God through music and prayed for each other briefly in groups of three. Then we had “tea time” with tea, coffee, milk tea and lots of cookies and Mongolian donuts. Then we had a short talk on the importance of prayer and unity within God’s family and continued to pray for each other. Then we ate a huge lunch…something like mutton stroganoff. It was good. Then we gathered for some more time of worshipping God through music, shared stories of what God was already teaching us. Then we had a second “tea time”. Then we regrouped to pray for our organization as a whole and each department. Then we had dinner – really tender chicken. It was really good. For an hour we had time to go our “gers” and just chill. Then we came back for a huge party. With lots more food…mountains of fruit, chocolates, soda, meats, veggies and …. airag.
Fermented mare’s milk. The first time I had it, it was a little fizzy (although not carbonated), cold, and tasted like a collision of lots of yeast and sour yogurt. I couldn’t decide if I liked it at first…then after some more tastes I decided though I could politely stomach the stuff…I definitely didn’t like it. It wasn’t really the taste, it was the after taste that did me in. To me the combination of yeast and sour yogurt was a bit akin to stomach acid if you catch my drift. Not entirely pleasant. And this was supposed to be “mild” tasting stuff. My future trip to the countryside with lots of airag suddenly got a little more difficult. How was I going to be able to politely drink a full mug of this stuff!
The Mongolian party was really unique and I liked it although it took some getting used to. My friends from the office like to dance…to electronic sort of modern disco music. It has a good hip hop beat but with disco sounding music. And instead of just gathering in a big mass of people on the floor all dancing together (which I am comfortable doing) they all form a giant circle to dance (which is slightly more uncomfortable because you can’t be inconspicuous that way. If you’ve been…uh… “privileged”… to see me dance and haven’t died laughing afterwards…you understand why I like to be as inconspicuous as possible!).
Then the music changed to the equivalent of the Mongolian waltz. And couples waltz around the dance floor for a while. And finally when the music speakers went out temporarily, the singing games began. Mongolians know several hundred folk songs. And they love to sing around the table after a meal…just singing until they feel it is time to stop. After about two lines of a song, everyone joins the person who started it. So, to ask three teams to come up with as many songs with the theme of “mothers” as they can in turn without repeating any songs…is really no hard task. I don’t know how long the game lasted. There were probably more than 30 songs sung before the first team couldn’t think of a new one! Then the music speakers turned on again and the dancing commenced.
To continue my list of first time experiences…
7) First Mongolian party
8) First time attempting to dance a Mongolian waltz (To say I was horrible is an understatement!)
9) First time I tasted airag.
Then it was back the ger and time to light one last fire in the little stove before heading to bed. Between me and my American friend who has lived here 8 years we got a total of zero fires started. Granted we had no matches, lighters, blow torches, etc…We just threw some toilet paper on the glowing ashes (which then caught fire) but we couldn’t get the wood to catch fire from the burning toilet paper.
When our nine month pregnant Mongolian friend came in she started the fire on the first try, in about 5 minutes. And she couldn’t bend over and reach in the stove as well as we could either. This is what I learned: Let the Mongolians start the fires. They are just better at it. Unless you want them to laugh at you when you decide to add Purell to the fire because “it has alcohol in it so it must be flammable”. While flammable…I learned that Purell is not good for starting fires.
10) First time I tried to start a ger stove fire. (Stove: 1, Me: 0)
The next morning we woke up at about 9am for “morning excercises”. I opted out of this part and continued to sleep in. J After a breakfast of a hearty mutton soup, we went upstairs for a short time in Scripture and then it was “game time”. My bad. First we had another “tea time” then it was game time. We went on a scavenger hunt (I found the clues at least, because I couldn’t help to read them!) and ended up creating a costume for one of my team members to make her into a princess. It was hilarious! Then it was time for “khorkhok” or Mongolian BBQ. This meal is so unlike the “HuHot Mongolian Grill” back home I wanted to laugh. It is a meal that is saved only for special occasions. Basically they take a ton of mutton…like a lot. And put it in a giant metal canister with some carrots and potatoes and water and some large black stones.) Then they put in a fire for several hours. By the time it is ready to eat (with just your hands mind you) the meat is so tender and juicy from being stewed that it is absolutely delicious. And the carrots and potatoes are good too. The only problem is that my hand got super greasy and messy! Finally we packed up and went back into the city.
So I wrote this post in early October. I wrote it before I wrote the post entitled “Sunshine on a Sunday”. I hadn’t been in a real ger or in the countryside at this point. And clearly I was very excited about all my first time experiences. To update the post as of 1/6/12, I do like airag. I’ve had it several times now and I like it. It’s not exactly my favorite Alley Cat Chai Latte, but it’s pretty good.
In addition, what I didn’t have time to finish writing is that while on the prayer retreat, I kept asking God, “Why did you bring me to Mongolia? Why am I here? I feel so numb…so out of place…I feel like I have no purpose here…nothing I can do for the greater good…why? Why am I here?” And God didn’t give me a direct answer. But as I stood alone in the cold night air looking at the city skyline all lit up, God reminded me that this city –dusty, crowded, and ugly as it was to me – is a city that God is deeply concerned about.
The people living in Ulaanbaatar are people that God desperately wants to know Him. God deeply loves and cares about these people’s lives intimately. And I am here to be His ambassador of love and hope to these people…even though I couldn’t see how that was going to happen through me and my English classes. Even though I didn’t feel a deep compassion for these people at the time, even though I still didn’t understand why God sent me to Mongolia, all I knew is that God loved this city, and He DID bring me here, for a reason that He alone knew. And so I had to trust in that.
Since then, I have still asked God why I am in Mongolia. He still hasn’t spoken out of cloud and directly said, “Here’s why you’re there…”. But I have seen different glimpses of a shadow of a reason I’m here. From the things that I have learned and that have changed me forever, from the people that have poured into my life and broadened the scope of my heart and mind, to the people God put in my path so that I can encourage and pour into their lives…I don’t understand it all (I certainly am still not in love with UB with it’s smog and bland cement apartments) but I’m just trusting that God’s got all the details worked out.
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