For this assignment I had to write about one of my favorite places or people. Mongolia was a place where I felt the most of every emotion, so I chose to write about the time when I was there.
I shiver as I slowly start to awaken. A distant dog bark pulls me out of my sweet dreams and into reality. I shove the five layers of blankets off of me, and as I quickly put my feet into my shoes, I get up. Making sure not to hit my head on the low ceiling, I throw a shirt over my pajamas and proceed to boil some water. I crawl back in bed while the water is heating and curl up into a ball. I look up at the orange painted prongs which make up the support for my ger or yert. As I look more closely at the designs on the prongs, I notice that the quite intricate paintings are nothing more than a series of swirls and lines – something a child might do. But somehow all the twisting and turning of the bright colors has a sophisticated simplicity to it.
Ah! But the water is boiling now. I switch off the boiler and switch on the one solitary light in the center of my circular ger. I walk the five paces to the other side of the ger and get some instant oatmeal, a bowl and a glass. I pour myself some of the hot water and drink it slowly. I feel the warm liquid travel down my throat and defrost my insides, reviving me at the same time. After making my instant oatmeal, I open the dwarf-sized door and am instantly flooded with warm new sunshine. I would find out later that gers are always made facing the east for just that purpose.
Some Newsboys’ songs are playing across the street and into my ger, bringing a small bit of western culture into this vastly different world. I sing along as I eat my oatmeal. More sounds flow through the open door: hammers pounding, a solitary car roaring, people talking in their strange tongue of whispers. I just listen, for a while, to the whispers of every day life dance across the hills and along the breeze. All the sounds are peaceful, even the hammer pounding away. The cloth walls of the ger don’t hide much of the world around me. I can hear my neighbors in the next hasha, a wild dog walking along the deeply rutted road, people carrying home their next day’s water from the water pump, calling a friendly “sanbano” to other passing travelers. There is something quite relaxing about hearing all the sounds of an everyday simplistic lifestyle. It makes me feel not alone, like I am part of something, like there is more than me. But today, like the other days, I find myself frowning – something about the people.
I walk outside to the outhouse and risk falling into the abominable chasm for relieving myself. Carefully, I place my feet on the two boards that are the only things keeping me aloft. I make it out alive and give my hasha’s watch dog a friendly pat. He jumps up to give me a hug, and I reply to the gesture by pulling out some leftover bread to give to him. He gladly starts eating away, and I leave him to finish his meal.
Far away, outlining the capitol, there are the hills with westward sweeping robes of pines. The apexes of these magnificent peaks are green, the only time of the year they will be so. Along the southeast side of the mountains lay rocks arranged into pictures or words, which I would have been able to read if not for my incapability to read the strange tongue. In the valleys below the bare points of rock is the capitol. The towering buildings compete with the mountains, but to no avail. Cranes are scattered here and there, absently waiting to finish what they’ve started. The concrete apartments look out of place, waiting, like the cranes. But they are much more foreboding. Their hollow windows and gaping doors – empty, staring back at you – are cold. It’s like the whole place was under a spell waiting to be awakened, waiting for life. That’s what’s odd. The people of this city are much like that. Hollow and empty, waiting. Yes, they are part of something bigger, a community, but the community is lost. They are waiting for a leader, waiting for someone to show them the way. Waiting for someone to awaken them. The question is, who will it be? Will these people be lost forever wandering the emptiness of life? Or will someone show them the way? They can’t stay nomads forever.
The people of this city wander its streets going here and there. There is still a city feel, even though the city itself is small. My eyes follow a street along, up to my side of the hill. The scene rapidly changes from an urban modern lifestyle to an almost archaic one. Concrete apartments turn to single room gers. Houses become shacks. Schools and running water cease to exist. But one thing stays the same: the people. The brown, rough skin, the deep dark eyes, the whispers of a language, a single need – those are all the same no matter how high you go up the mountain. The noise of a father pounding away for a better life, or one out of work, waiting for the cranes to start up again. A watch dog barking away at an unwanted visitor, or an alarm system beeping at an unknown menacing presence. These people are resourceful, adapting, determined. If only that determination would be captured.
A single need. Starvation, illiteracy, hunger would mean almost nothing if this need was met. If only the Mongolians had a leader.
Dear Friends and Family,