I’ve been back for 5 months now and, for the most part, I’ve forgotten about this blog. I still have another year of hosting left, however, and there seems to be at least a few hits per day so I figure it doesn’t hurt to add a few new things. I finally got the picture from the Gobi trip I took in May (thanks Ruth!) and it reminded of how amazing this experience was (and that I actually miss it quite a bit). The pictures come from about three or four different cameras and the quality of some isn’t great, but there are some really good ones in there. I can’t really recall all the details and names of the places, so I won’t write a whole lot about it.

Two important things I will note:

Tourism in Mongolia, for the most part consists, of getting a group of people together and jumping in a Russian Jeep (Orosnei Mashin – looks like a VW bus with big tires), then heading out straight in one direction out of the city. The final destination is not as important as the journey to it, and it is pretty easy to find something interesting no matter which direction you head. Jeep drivers somehow have a sixth sense about which of the hundreds of intertwining barely visible dirt tracks crisscrossing the steppe to take, and getting lost is pretty hard to define. The real dangers are getting stuck, getting caught in a dust storm, and breaking down (especially in winter).

The most impressive thing about the thousands of square kilometres of nothing is just how different that nothing can look like: we drove through fields of green grass, fields of purple flowers, yellow flowers; red, white, brown, yellow, and black sand; parched scrub lands, dunes, rock fields, and areas with dump truck sized boulders and sheets of shale; rocky mountains, and dried up-lake beds. Also no matter where we went and no matter how dry and brutal things looked, there was always some kind of plant life happening. With that there was always rodents, and hawks, kites, and eagles to eat them; gazelles; Bactrian camels; herds of goats and sheep; herder families and even the occasional stunted village or town. So a basic, brutal cycle of life.

Here’s the rest of what we saw. It’s definitely a very exciting place for geology, geography, and zoology, but not much else.

Flaming Cliffs (Bayan Zag)

Singing Sands (Khongoryn Els)

Ice Canyon (Yolyn Am)

Dalanzagad Aimag Capital

White Cliffs (?)

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I’ve been back in Canada for a few days now, but I thought I should put on a closer post before everything gets mixed up again. (I’m still waiting for some photos from my Gobi trip, which I’ll post as soon as I can!) I don’t want to be too boring so I’ll just sum up the experience in general and make a few points about some key stuff.

This was definitely one of the bigger things I’ve done in my life and it will leave an impression for quite a while I’m sure. The experience for me was nearly all positive and I believe I was able to achieve pretty much everything I hoped to achieve in terms of getting outside my bubble of North American pseudo-reality, becoming immersed in a culture and language much different from my own, and doing something positive for the benefit of many Mongolians.

The overseas volunteering concept is definitely not perfect. I’ve seen first hand how it can be inefficient, condescending, and just plain wasteful. I’ve also seen many of the other manifestations of international aid and development and how completely off the wall they can be. So while acknowledging the faults of overseas specialist volunteering, i.e. VSO, I’m still a firm believer that it does many positive things and produces generally good results overall. I’d definitely like to volunteer again with VSO or another group in the future. After I’ve gained some experience working in Canada as an engineer for a few years, I’ll be in a better position to share my expertise in another country (maybe not in Mongolia again though). I also encourage anyone else who may be interested to consider it as well.

In terms of the cultural exchange that I experienced, it will take me a while before I can step on someone’s foot and not have a knee-jerk reaction to immediately shake their hand, or to point with one finger instead of my whole arm and give something to someone without supporting my right hand at the elbow, or the many other customs I picked up. Learning Mongolian, a language about as far removed in origin from English as possible, and achieving some level of rudimentary communication was one of the most worthwhile things I did out there. Even though I was never able to have an actual in depth conversation with anybody, I was at least able to connect with a few people in their own language and have communication occur at some level. Also the friends I made there both foreign and Mongolian had a huge impact on my life and world-view. I’ve learn all sorts of the things about Mongolians, but also about English, Scottish, Dutch, Filipino, Kenyan, Australian, and Japanese people.

The only thing for sure about Mongolia is that it is changing too quickly to be able to say anything for sure about it. In the nine months I was there, the changes to the city landscape, political landscape, and international makeup have been very noticeable. If I come back in a few years, I’m sure it will be a very different country. The saddest part about that is it is becoming just like everywhere else. How many capital cities around the world have neither a Starbucks nor a single American fast food chain? UB is likely one of the dying few. How many countries have a large nomadic population, with pockets of people living a traditional lifestyle nearly unchanged for thousands of years? Unfortunately, not even Mongolian herder families are immune to the forces of capitalism, globalization, and climate change, and eventually they too will have to adapt and change to fit into the “modern world”.

Never again will I be able to wonder about Mongolia, the word will no longer conjure up images of ice fields, mean-ass dudes on horses, or an endless vacant wasteland. I now have seen enough to know these stereotypes are seriously outdated and wrong, and I hope anyone who has read this blog or at least looked at the pictures will have changed their views as well. The only way to actually understand and get a feeling for this country, however, is to visit it. I would encourage anybody who has any interest, to visit as soon as possible, before it is too late!

Here are my top 10 Mongolian experiences in no particular order:

• My first day in the country, driving out to a ger camp in Terelj National park and being thoroughly happy to have chosen Mongolian (over The Gambia, my second choice).
• Sharing a very awkward elevator ride during Tsaagan Sar (lunar new year) with an old lady, two frozen solid sheep carcasses and a dog.
• The rush and exhilaration of defying the odds and arriving at work in the morning during the winter, avoiding the homicidal drivers, the ice patches, the -30C weather, the thick smog, the huge open holes in the sidewalk and the blinding sunlight.
• The novelty of having my nose hair and eyelashes frozen together and my scarf and hat caked in frost after only a short walk outside.
• Seeing an “Eagle Festival” complete with fox hunting, rabbit sacrifice, and a rousing match of Goat Polo.
• Climbing and sliding down the huge, perfectly uniform sand dunes of the Khogoryn Els in the Gobi Dessert.
• Partying it up with my roommates and Mongolian friends during our Halloween, Christmas, and St. Patrick’s Day parties. Plus, the bizarre stuff that always goes down at UB night clubs, including contortionist shows, Cwalk faceoffs, and huge circle dances to really bad Russian techno music.
• Coming across a herd of 1000 yaks and over 4000 sheep and goats in the middle of the vast steppe. They were being herded across Mongolia by 4 people on horse back and two dogs for 60 days.
• My short trips to India and China for giving me a lot of extra context and perspective to fit into my Mongolian experience, and being amazing in their own right.
• Arguing with taxi drivers, ordering food at the guanz, cracking lame jokes with some oldsters who had stopped me on the street, trying to impress girls, and making connections with Mongolians whenever they were available.

Thanks for reading!

In order to explain why I went out there and what I was mostly doing, I need to explain that Manoj, my brother, was born in this area of India and lived there for the first six years of his life before being adopted by our family and moving to Canada. He’s now back there working with a “micro-NGO” called Youth Helping Hands, promoting and developing musical and other artistic talents amongst the children in Coimbatore’s numerous orphanages. YHH was started and is run by a young man named Arun, who grew up in the same orphanage as my brother and is the same age. Arun has just finished up at the local music college specializing in drumming and singing, and, being a orphan himself, decided a good way to help other orphans would be to showcase their artistic talents in large talent shows. This kills many birds with one large stone: it promotes the children to develop their talents, gives them confidence and self-esteem, brings this often neglected and shunned part of the community into the public eye, helps raise funds for the orphanages, provides good entertainment to the community, and gives Arun and his fellow musicians a chance to promote their own band to a larger audience. So, Arun, who has already held a smaller event like this in February, is working with my brother to put on a very ambitious concert, featuring 6 hours of entertainment, several hundred orphans, and celebrities and dignitaries from the community. They hope to attract several thousand people and raise quite a bit of cash for their cause. I’ll be helping out with multimedia and fundraising in Canada, and maybe some web development for them in the future, so I’ll definitely post some details on this later on.

This big event is scheduled to take place on the 29^th of June, so most of my time in India was spent shadowing my brother and Arun as they made the rounds to different orphanages in the area and had meeting with sponsors and donors. This exposed me to quite a bit of the poverty and social issues in the area, which was pretty intense. Most of the orphanages were struggling to put food on the table and get medicines for the children, but were getting by through the heroic efforts of a few completely selfless people, who seemed to have fallen into the responsibility. It was definitely awkward for me, as a white dude on vacation to be visiting these places, but hopefully I can bring the experience home and help make the issues more visible.

I did make it out of the city for two days to see a bit of the mountainous country side where a huge amount of tea is grown. Our destinations were the tourist towns of Coonoor and Ooty, set in the mountain valleys and featuring many gardens and other attractions of interest mainly to Indian tourists. The highlights were speeding through the mountain roads listening to extremely load Tamil music (which is pretty good!) looking at the intense green, lush scenery; walking through the gardens (hence far too many pictures of flowers), and hanging out with some of Manoj’s friends.

Other interesting stuff that I’ll remember for a long, long time include:

• Speeding through the crazy-busy streets of Coimbatore on the back on motorcycle with no helmet and a complete disregard for any sort of safety or traffic regulations.
• Getting tips on full-hand eating from a few of the guys. I had been timidly picking at the food (mostly flat breads or rice with sauces, and nearly all really good) with three fingers, before being strongly remonstrated and shown the different techniques for eating India food with your hand.
• Standing still for 30 seconds in any location and being swarmed with people wanting pictures, to shake my hand and ask my name, or to hold their babies.
• The unbelievable low-impact, sustainable life style of the people and far-sightedness of the government. There was almost exclusive use of solar hot water heating and electric fan cooling, most people don’t have appliances or personal transport and everything is shared. The city government is also introducing a policy banning high density plastics, most plastic bags, and vinyl sign boards.
• The nearly complete mono-culture of that area of India. I was the only foreigner from outside of India in the town of 500,000, and it was difficult to find a Chinese or even a North Indian restaurant to eat at. Even in Mongolia in most places you can find quite a number of western or other foods and influences.

As a side note I got to spend a half day in Beijing on the way home, as I had quite a long layover. The contrast between Delhi (of which I was only able to see the area near the airport) and Beijing was like night and day. Having been in Beijing for a few weeks in December, I was an expert at getting around the city on the metro and I took a few walks through the free part of the Forbidden City and another park nearby. The city was very sombre due the earthquakes, but was still a nice change over place to hang out in between India and Mongolia.

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Well believe me I don’t do it as often as other people, and to be honest the rest of my time is mainly spent in strange Mongolia bars and discos, or reading at home.

Anyways that’s about to end as this is my last month and I’ve got lots of great stuff planned. I would like to mention, however, two projects that I’ve recently completed, that I’m sort of proud of, and let you know that I’ve wrapped up my work out here and am feeling pretty good about it.

WWW.EQUALSTEPCENTRE.ORG

This is the website for the Equal Step Centre childrens’ charity (mentioned earlier), which works with UB’s street children. I did the theme (CSS and HTML coding, Photoshop) and got it hosted using Blogger blog software. This is by far the easiest, cheapest and most accessibly way of getting content online for small NGO’s with limited technical resources. For $10 a year and using some nifty “hacks”, the Blogger platform can be used to produce a traditional (Web 1.0) “Brochure/Information” site, that is fairly flexible and very easy to use. The site still needs some pictures added and content editing, and hopefully my efforts to make it sustainable will give it at least a few years of service, before they can upgrade to something better. Check it out and maybe donate to the cause in the future (still working on this functionality!).

WWW.MONGOLIANWOMENFARMERS.ORG

This is exactly the same sort of deal (Blogger based website) for a different NGO, VSO is partnered with. I think they’re doing some amazing work in the urban-farming area that people in the West could really learn from. This site is setup to be pseudo-bilingual and the Mongolian page will (hopefully) feature weekly farming related news and updates to help local farmers get there plants started on time. Also, for anyone interested in sustainable, eco-tourism in Mongolia, the Tourism page provides some information about coming to the farm to stay in a Ger tent and do some gardening and other work. Check it out!

For both these sites, the goals were low cost, ease of use, and sustainability, but only time will tell how well they progress. Of the other stuff I had planned to get done before I left: trainings with staff, another website project, and a few other consulting projects; most of it was carried through as far as I could and hopefully will serve as the start for future positive changes.

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Now for some plans for the rest of May:

May 8-18th: I will be in Coimbatore and Delhi, India, kicking it with my brother Manny and on my own, hopefully taking lots of pictures and posting some posts.

May 20-28th: I will be going to the Gobi dessert for a 7 day trip to see the sand dunes, the singing hills, the flaming cliffs and whatever else crazy stuff they have goin on down there.

May 28-June 1st: I will be in UB wrapping things up and buying some souvenirs (for you maybe!)

June 2-3rd: I’ll be making my way back to Vancouver (the long way round via London, because it’s somehow cheaper ?!).

Kalligraffity:

This French graffiti artist/DJ team was in UB doing their thing at a local night club last week. It being a weeknight and me being fairly into the whole street art/graffiti thing (not lame vandalism and tagging stuff though), I was stoked to check it out. I hadn’t heard of this particular artist, mark093, before, but his stuff was more of a fusion of performance art and street art than real graffiti. His big hi-tech gimmick of using light trials from a flashlight with a very slow shutter-speed camera to make graffiti wasn’t so impressive. My roommate and I recreated the same effect during the last power outage (see photos). The other aspects of the show included him doing some aerosol work in time to techno/hip-hop music and drawing on people. Somewhere along the line I thought it’d be a good idea for him to draw on my face, and the result of that decision was subsequently broadcast on TV across the city (country?), much to the interest of my co-workers, etc. Anyways a good time, and an interesting way of mixing two important elements of hip-hop culture together to make something new.

Mongolian Wrestling:

Wrestling is one of the “Three Manly Sports” in Mongolia and every few months there’s a big tournament. During the summer Naadam festival they hold the biggest rumble of all to see who’s got the skillz-to-pay the-billz (so to speak). This particular event was held in, where else, the Wrestling Palace, not far from where I live. This was definitely a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and it was surely a man’s man type of gathering, with maybe only a few dozen females in the crowd. Had I known it would take close to 5 hours I would have been better prepared and would enjoyed it more. Also my camera ran out of batteries early on so I didn’t get many snaps.

For the those interested, the basic tenets of Mongolian wrestling are as follows:

The object of a match is to get your opponent to touch his back, knee or elbow to the ground. There are no weight classes or time limits in a match. Each wrestler must wrestle once per round, the winners moving on to the next round.

The technical rules between the Mongolian version and what is found in Inner Mongolia have some divergence. In both versions a variety of throws, trips and lifts are employed to topple the opponent. The Inner Mongolians may not touch their opponent’s legs with their hands, whereas, in Mongolia, grabbing your opponent’s legs is completely legal. In addition, striking, strangling or locking is illegal in both varieties.

In the case of a sacrifice throw, the first wrestler to touch the ground, regardless of who threw whom, is the loser.

The match I saw started with something crazy like 200 wrestlers and through 7 rounds they were widdled down to just two. Unfortunately, by that point everyone was tired and bored so they just kinda walked around slowly. The highlight came when a pair of wrestlers, bowled over the announcers table and sent the microphone flying, which woke up most people. Also check out this YouTube for some nice moves:

1. I’m foreign (a novelty I’m afraid I can’t help)
2. I can walk in a straight line, execute turns and stops, while not becoming lost, confused or falling over.
3. I can tolerate sharing a changing room with the very nice Mongolian models and spending the evening swaddled in fine wool, cashmere, yak and camel very likely making an ass of myself.
4. I was somehow able to keep a straight face through it all.

My future as a human clothes-hanger doesn’t look all that promising, but I can definitely say I have a lot more respect for the modeling profession — it’s harder than it seems for sure. Anyways, a very fun experience, and photos I will look back on for years to come and laugh my ass off (at myself)!

Mongolian music (to me decidedly a misinformed foreigner) seems to fall into one of a few categories: traditional stuff (Hoarse fiddle, long song, throat singing, etc. which I like for sure), country-pop stuff like this selection below (which, sorry, all sounds pretty much the same too me, but then I don’t speak the language and probably miss a lot), and finally the youthful hip hop and hard rock stuff that is frantically rebelling against the first two.

While I can’t really appreciate Javkhlan (sounds a bit like ‘javelin’), on a musical level, I can definitely vouch for his popularity, and this particular song shows some nice scenes of (romanticized) Mongolian rural life. From what I gather, he wrote this song as a tribute to his passing mother, and features a few hundred Mongolian mothers in the background. The title “Eejiin Chanasan Tsai” means “Mother’s Boiled Tea”.

Check out the video below or HERE:

A few days back was my 6 month anniversary of being in UB, FUNgolia, and it sort of passed without any explanation. This should be the end of my short-term NetCorps volunteer placement, but earlier in February I put in a request to extend for an extra three months and VSO was happy to have me continue on.

For the most part I am very happy about staying as there are lots of really important projects for me to work on out here, and there are many places around the country that I’d still like to visit. However, looking back on the past 6 months, I can’t say I’m super happy about what I was able to accomplish. If I was going home right away I would feel like my placement failed to make any really important changes even though a lot things got started. So these next few months are a bit of a rescue mission where I hope to tie up any lose ends and finish any projects that have been stalled.

A lot of the time placement descriptions and objectives are purposefully vague and open ended so that, in the very likely event something changes, other projects or needs can be addressed. My main objectives were to build a volunteers’ website for VSO and help with staff IT training, both of which pretty much fell through. The bulk of my time was instead spent helping other volunteers with their host organizations web/IT/networking projects and performing odd jobs around the VSO office. I’m pretty happy with this, though I do feel with a little extra planning and effort my skills could have been put to better use.

Looking back I also feel I may have slipped a little bit into the development worker/volunteer mentality of “relax, don’t take things too seriously it’s only a volunteer gig and there’s only so much you can do in 6 months”. The other self defeating trap that I’ve heard a lot from Mongolians and other people who have been here for a long time is that when something doesn’t work or progress is amazingly slow people just shrug and say “this is Mongolia” as an explanation.

There are many problems with the whole overseas volunteering work concept and there are probably quite a few other ways to work towards the same development goals. Many of which wouldn’t involve bringing in people from the other side of the world to work in a country where they don’t speak the language and only have a year or two to make something happen. But from what I’ve seen out here so far, most people are working as hard as they can and are doing some really good things. A perfect example of a volunteer placement going “right” is Cory, a networking engineer from Ottawa who was here last year for 8 months. He was able to plan a computer network for the main hospital in the city of Darkhan, secure funding from a local gold mining company and setup a well design network with good quality equipment for the hospital. He also setup a training lab and hired a local IT student to perform maintenance and provide technical support. Last week I visited the hospital to check up on the project and make sure all the equipment was functioning and that there were no problems. The response from the doctors and nurses at the hospital was completely positive. Many of the staff had never used a computer or the internet/email before and processed all the hospital’s records by hand on paper. The project was a success because the right need was addressed at the right time, by the right volunteer, and very importantly the money was found to make it happen.

These are the main projects I will be working on over the next three months. I think if they work out moderately successfully I will be quite happy with what I was able to do here:

MOVE.org.mn – This is the first website that I completely planned and developed on my own. It will serve as a bi-lingual information portal for the Mongolian Network of Volunteer Organizations (MOVE stands for Mongolian Organizations for Volunteer Empowerment), which is a group of a dozen or so Mongolian NGOs who work to promote volunteerism within the country. When I say I developed it myself what I really mean is that I organized the webhosting, installed a CMS (Content Management System), slapped on a few plugins and tweaked a template. The content, style and translation were all done by other people, so it’s not as amazing as it sounds. There’s still a lot of work to do on it, but check it out at http://www.move.org.mn/.

Equal Step – Equal Step is a children’s charity which works with ‘street kids’ and other disadvantaged and vulnerable young people from Ulaanbaatar. They work with families and mothers providing skills training and support, plus they have a summer camp and lots of other good stuff. Read more about it on my fellow volunteer Ruth’s blog. The plan is to create a website and database for this group to help with fundraising and management. I’m really stoked to help out with this project, as I think it’s exactly the right way to use technology to empower people. Hopefully, it will workout and I will post a link once things go online.

MWFA – This project is also working with Ruth and will involve setting up a simple information website for the Mongolian Womens Farmers Association to promote their work and advertise for ecotourism at their farms. This group of women agriculturalists works by growing and selling vegetables and eggs in different areas of UB’s poorest ger districts, simultaneously raising income and stabilizing their food supply. In addition, they provide skills training, support for women and have an ecotourism program for people to stay and work at their farm. Please read more about it at Ruth’s blog. This is another example of a grassroots organization working towards their own change, which is always the best way to do things. I hope I can help out by developing a cheap, easy to use website they can update themselves, which will allow them worldwide exposure and increase their access to funding sources. Again I’ll post more in the next few months as we get things developed. (I’m also hoping I can do some “electrical engineering” work by consulting about solar panels and other methods to heat their greenhouses, which should be interesting and a little more my stylo.)

Darkhan Institute – The Institute is a college/secondary school in the second city of Darkhan were VSO Mongolia works by providing language teacher trainers and other teaching methods trainers. I will (hopefully!) be visiting this school in the very near future to consult with them on setting up a computer network and shared internet access for their 800 students. I’m not an expert on networking and the like, but if I do some initial needs assessments, planning and budgeting, it will hopefully lead to a well defined and accurate placement description for another NetCorps IT volunteer to come out in August. There are a few other “consult and plan” type projects at two local hospitals and health districts were I will be able to contribute at least a little bit by offering my free “technical opinion” on things and help the organizations decide on a way forward.

MATA & Mongol Vision – These are both Mongolian health NGOs: MATA focuses on TB prevention and treatment and Mongol Vision works towards promoting better sexual health for men. These groups both would like websites developed to increase peoples’ access to health information and to increase their exposure to potential donors. This project has been stalled for a number of months now, but hopefully can be restarted before I go. Again another case where even if I am unable to do the actual website development, I will still be able to offer advice and get the ball rolling as far as the planning and budgeting is concerned.

So that’s it, sounds ambitious, but working on my current success rate of 33% for getting projects off the ground it shouldn’t be too bad. I definitely feel very lucky to get a chance to help some of these different groups out. I think they are all doing some amazing, cool stuff, and if computers and technology can be a piece of the puzzle that can empower and lower barriers for them, then it is surely worthwhile. A process of continual assessment and objective analysis is needed, however, to make sure the tools stay tools and that technology doesn’t become a burden instead of a blessing.