Questions about Mongolia

Some friends sent me some questions regarding Mongolia, my answers are below.

1. What does it smell like, the air outside, during the day and at night?  It smells dry.  The Gobi Desert is one of the driest places on earth.  It smells of dryness and dust at all times.  During the few rainfalls, it smells muggy and stale.  This does not take long to change, the sunshine is exceptionally bright here, and the moisture in the air soon disappears.

2. What noises do you hear at night?  The desert is silent on most nights.  In the past two weeks, the wind has been blowing all day, every day.  At night when every thing else goes quiet, you can hear the strength of the wind.  It’s crazy how strong the force of the wind hits my window; you’d think it’s going to break.  I live in a one level resident block, so it’s not too bad but the guys that live in the gers have it much worse when it's windy.  A Mongolian Ger is a wooden post structure covered by layers of fabric and sheep's wool felt for insulation and weatherproofing.  The sheep’s wool will act as a barrier for the wind, so the Ger is a homely place to live but the sheep’s wool cannot insulate sound.  The straps that lock down the fabric to the wooden structure can flap very loudly.  

Remember if you are ever in Mongolia, it is a Ger; do not call it a Yurt.  It does not insult the Mongolian people by calling it a Yurt, but it is not proper to refer to as so.  The Ger has been used for thousands of years by the nomads of Central Asia and is still a common sight throughout Mongolia.  They are designed to be easy to take apart, transport, and reconstruct; perfect for the Mongolian Herder.  Despite this portability, they are warm enough to keep the coldest winter temperatures (-40C in winter) at bay and strong enough to withstand heavy winds. 

The Mongolian Ger

3. Do you have different dreams when you are over there?  Interesting question, I’m a constant daydreamer, but rarely do I remember my dreams.  When I first got to Mongolia, I had several dreams about my love ones back home.  They were not pleasant dreams.  I dreamt that bad things were happening to them.  These dreams were probably a result of me leaving home and worry about not being there for them.  As I got use to my new home, these dreams stopped.  Now that I think about it, I don’t remember a single dream I’ve had here, except for the ones involving my family.

4. Do you find the air quality there better or worse? Do you have more allergies, less allergies, more sickness or less?  The air quality in Mongolia is, lets see, how do you say this politely, well there is no way, it’s horrible! Ulaanbaatar, the Capital of Mongolia, is the second most polluted city in the world.  The city’s main power source is coal and the plants are right in the city, as you can see in the picture.  The Gobi Desert’s air is a lot better then Ulaanbaatar but still horrible in comparison to home.  The Gobi is extremely windy and it hardly ever rains, so there is nothing that can keep the dust down.  The dirt in the Gobi is very fine and with the wind, you tend to breath in a lot of dust.  It is so dusty here, that when I comb my hair at the end of the day, my hairbrush is covered in dirt and I need to wash it daily.  All that dust that is collected in my hair, is what I breath in everyday. 

My allergies are worst in Mongolia then anywhere else I have ever been too.  I have to take an allergy pill everyday, if I don’t, I can’t stop sneezing and it feels like I have a feather up my nose.  Mind you, I have bad allergies back home, but they are seasonal.  In Mongolia, they are all year.  I had two-sinus infection in my first month living in Mongolia alone.  Since I’ve been in Mongolia, I have had four-sinus infection and two cases of tonsillitis.   In 10.5 months of living here, I have been on antibiotic’s six times; I’m averaging getting sick about every seven weeks and that is not including the times I simply have a cold. 

I don’t think I can blame all my sickness strictly on the dust; working ten-hour days, working 52 days out of 56 before I get a break, may have something to do with me getting sick, but the dust doesn’t help.  I never get this sick, this often at home.  I’m on antibiotics once maybe twice a year tops!

Ulaanbaatar

5. What is the weirdest outfit you have ever seen while over there?  I wouldn’t call it weird, certainly different from home, but not weird.  The deel or kaftan, is the garment traditionally worn in Mongolia.  It can be worn on both workdays and special days.  It is a long, loose gown cut in one piece with the sleeves; it has a high collar and widely overlaps at the front; the deel is girdled with a sash. Mongolian deels always close on the wearer's right, and traditionally have five fastenings.  They can also be very warm.  I have seen these tradition garments worn by the locals on numerous occasions.  Mongolians are a very proud people and their traditions are kept very close to their heart.

The Deel

Breaking the Barriers

I want to discuss my new family here at site and some of the stuff we've gotten ourselves into.  Every day of my life I’m learning.  Sometimes the information you acquire is not wanted.  Sometimes its information you’re shocked you never realized before; but most of the time it’s something that is simply useless, yet worth discussing anyway.  When you decide to move away from your home for whatever the reason, one thing is guaranteed; you will have an adventure.  I believe life is an adventure and if you are not learning, growing and having a laugh, then you’re dying or living a mundane existence.  I want to focus on my interactions with my co-workers and how we have been able to begin ‘Breaking the Barriers’.  For the record, this entry is very crude, so to warn all of you, if you do not like swearing or potty jokes that are extremely juvenile, then stop reading. I am warning you!

As my surroundings and the people around me have changed, I’ve found that different qualities in my character have come out of hiding; some good, some I’m not so fond of and some that would simply result in an aggressive slap to the back of my head by my Grandmother.  I’ve been here for a while (10 months) and have come to know my co-workers well, far better than my co-workers on average at home.  The work environment here is very different; I actually prefer the work life style here more than at home.  Mostly because it is more laid back and you can say what you are thinking with a smaller penalty.  Everyone that knows me knows I have a ‘little’ bit of a trucker’s mouth and suffer regularly from foot in mouth syndrome.  I use the word ‘little’ loosely, what can I say, I grew up in a hockey rink where the ‘f’ word can be easily used as a noun, verb and adverb with complete acceptance.  So as you can imagine, I fit right in here. 

Sitting at my desk at site is more entertaining than at home, where Human Resource's has a larger presence, but here, it is not uncommon hearing, ‘I spent an hour in the shitter, that beef hit me hard,’ or ‘You got to be f**king kidding me?’ or ‘Give me a f**king break’ or my all time favorite, ‘I f**king told him’ (aka site equivalent for I TOLD YOU SO).  And for all of you, who think I’m making this up, I'm not, I hear this stuff every day; people do not hold back.  If you are not seeing the painting I’m trying to paint, think of a five year old child telling you what they think, then add in some profanity.

When you work with your co-workers, have dinner with your co-workers, drink with your co-workers, become as absolute drunk mess in front of your co-workers, they are no longer simply co-workers, they become friends and in a way, an adoptive family.  In my adoptive family, I’m known as the ‘token’ and probably several other things that aren’t spoken in my presence.  There are a lot of women at site, but very few white women, and hardly any under the age of thirty, so the ‘token’ kind of stuck.  This is just one of many somewhat not kosher decisions we’ve made.  When I say we are ‘Breaking the Barriers,’ we are doing just that.  For the first month I was here, I took it somewhat conservative, till you are left with nothing to talk about with your co-workers. When you live and breathe around the same people all day, every day, the conversations start to get a little dry come month two. So you begin opening up, and holding back begins to be something you do back home. I’m sure a group of us may need to be re-house broken, when we move back home.

I’ve commented a few times in this blog regarding the food.  Yes, it’s not great but one thing I haven’t mentioned is that it screws with your internals.  I remember the first and only time I ate the meatballs, let’s just say, I felt I was reenacting Ridley Scott’s famous Alien scene when the Alien popped out of the guys stomach.  But instead of something popping out of my stomach, it was being popped out of something else.  The first time a co-worker mentioned a similar story; I was sitting eating dinner, and shockingly had no problem finishing my food.  This was the moment where the barriers of common social behaviour began to be demolished (can you hear the glass shattering?).  A lot of the humour discussed at site, I refer to as ‘shit humor,’ because we literally discuss shit or things that any normal person wouldn’t give a shit about.  I’ve learned that it is possible to have a several hour/multi day/month conversation regarding other cultures bathroom habits.  Seriously, this conversation never gets old.  It really doesn’t get anymore useless then bathroom conversations, but I’ll bet half of you who are reading this are slightly curious to what was discussed.  And I can guarantee you will not find it in a Lonely Plant book.

The office I work in is a large portable that is across from the Concentrator.  When I first started working here, I didn’t really think to much about the design of the building, sure, my cubicle was tiny, but no big deal.  Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for all of us to see the one major design flaw in this particular office.  I’m not sure who or why someone decided to put the washrooms in the middle of the building, away from all doors and more importantly away from ALL windows.  Surely, someone at some point would have seen the error in putting office cubicles surrounding bathrooms. Sadly, they didn’t.  Everyday during last summer, we were greeted at our desk by the fresh smell of decaying feces.  First thing in the morning wasn’t too bad, but after everyone had their coffee, yeeeaaaahhh, run and run fast to the field! 

I was lucky that my cubicle was further away from the black hole then most people.  There were a few days where my coworkers came to my area of the office to work cause they couldn’t handle the smell.  There were several emails sent out to the staff regarding this issue, letting us all know that they were addressing the problem and trying to fix it. The subject of the emails were ‘Bad Smell,’ not kidding, I actually saved the emails. They give me a good laugh when I’m having a bad day.    

There are a few comical incidences/conversations that have happened here that would not be possible unless you have a mutual understanding amongst your coworkers or rather a mutual understanding that any conversation is up for discussion.  While in the company of men, conversations can get very deep and detailed.  They don’t simply scratch the surface of a conversation; they dive right in and discuss the good, the bad and the inappropriate. 

I remember one particular conversation we had in December, which till this day makes me laugh.  To give you some background to how this conversation even came up for discussion, I have to first explain to you that the toilets here can’t handle having anything discarded into them.  Of course people don’t read nor pay attention to the signs hanging in absolutely every stall, so plugged toilets are a common problem.  One of the rules here is if you go into a stall with the toilet lid closed, approach with caution or better yet, move to the next stall.  So as I said, a group of us were having drinks and talking one night when the problem of the plugged toilets came up.  I was the only woman in this conversation, so I didn’t realize that the toilets in the men’s bathroom were always plugged.  And it didn’t occur to me before that men only use the toilet for one thing, or rather for a number two thing. 

So as my coworkers told me, there are times when every stall is plugged and when you got to go, you got to go. What do you do, when you got to go but there is nowhere to go?  Do you risk the back splash and go for it?  As my friends explained to me, if you got to go, you go and hope for the best.  As I said before, this is a regular occurrence and sometimes you forget how high that poop line really is.  My coworker described a story of a time, when he was finished doing his business and went to clean himself and before he knew it his hand was covered in shit.  Yeah, that’s not a time you want to have a mind fart, especially when your hand is covered in someone else’s fart.  This story led into the next plugged toilet story of another coworker who said he was squatting over a toilet, when his legs were getting tired, so he decided to lean up against the side of the stall, and when he did this, part of his ‘man parts’ dipped into the toilet.  Now if you are not completely disgusted by all of this, I haven’t even told you the worst part.  After these two conversations were told, we actually discussed what was worst, having your hand or balls covered in shit and on top of that, we voted on it!  I forget which one won, but this conversation will stay with me till death, certainly one of a kind. 

My last little site story is about a prank-gone bad, well gone better, depending on whom you ask.  One of the guys grabbed a friend’s camera and took a picture of his ass.  Unknown to my friend and all of us, while he was showing us the photos he took of site that day, this guy’s ass showed up while he was scrolling through pictures.  We all had a good laugh and after some non-orthodox research we found out who took the photo.  My friend thought that to one up this guy, he’d print out the photo, fold it up and slip it into the guy’s cap.  He thought when he put in on, he would see the photo, well, that’s not exactly what happened.  The photo went unnoticed all day by the guy and while he was in his office with a vendor, he took off his hat to scratch his head, when a piece of paper fell to the ground.  This guy picked up the piece of paper and opened it right in front of the vendor, and there it was, his own ass staring up at him.  It’s lovely when someone gets exactly what he deserves in front of company!  Don’t worry; everyone had a good laugh and no one was sent to the principles office. 

This is the stuff people get themselves into when they live in the middle of nowhere, and remember I warned you!!!