An American in Mongolia: Part XVIII

May 27-June 4:

Upon my return to Ulaanbaatar I scheduled a follow up interview with Deggie, a shaman who lives in Ulaanbaatar whom I met and spoke with at Harhira, and who agreed to a follow up clarification interview. Deggie clarified some of the ritual that I had witnessed as well as shedding some light on the origins of Tengereen Suld, and of course we exchanged photographs from the Harhira ritual grounds. I also got to meet with a shaman called Zaya who lives in Ulaanbaatar but is from Bayanhongor aimag. I developed a survey for laypeople and distributed it to artists while working on my prints at the artists union, and interviewed Ganbold the director of the Suki Theater.

I met Zaya through my tremendously helpful and caring host family in Ulaanbaatar. She is a young shamaness/hairdresser (her hobby is eyebrow, eyeliner, and lip-liner tattooing) who had the onset of her shamans’ sickness after the birth of her second child two years ago (as of 2008.) She was aware of her shamanic ancestry prior to the arrival of symptoms of shaman’s sickness; in fact she had witnessed the shamanizing of her ongod (her grandmother) when she was a little girl. She also showed me a number of beautiful talismans of ancient origins passed on to her as heirlooms, including a tiny chip of a meteorite and a bronze amulet that she incorporated into her shamans’ costume and her battag as protection from malevolent or unfamiliar spirits while she’s in trance. Zaya also told me that she found that she couldn’t shamanize in her apartment (although she has been looking into the practices of shamans around the world on the internet in her apartment), so she had built a ger specifically for the purposes of ongod worship. I wish that she had expounded upon this remark (Interview with Zaya in Ulaanbaatar, 5-29-08.)

While the responses that I received to my survey of laypeople were very interesting, they were very curt and the sample was too small, and therefore the results are inconclusive to include in this paper, but if the reader is interested, see the appendix for further information.

I watched the performance of the Moonstone at the Suki Theater and then interviewed Ganbold72, the artistic director of the show who was fascinating. The gentleman had evidently spent a great deal of time, much like an anthropologist, researching the subjects of mimesis. He told me about some of his research in preparation for the development of the costumes and choreography:

Shamanism began 5,000 BC, I researched the ancient shamanism of the Darhkad, Uriankhai, and the Tsaatan peoples, spoke with researchers of shamanism and read several books on the subject, as well as speaking with shamans themselves. From these experiences I learned that white shamans have 55 ancestral spirits; black shamans have 44 local spirits. The costumes of shamans are 80% different now than ancient shaman’s clothes, before 1930 they hadn’t changed/mixed with Buddhism. The costumes of ancient shamans were open in the armpit to connect with the sky; the drum is the shaman’s mouth, the stick the shamans tongue. All equipment is alive.

Shamanism’s not the kind of thing that can be studied in a book, rather one must have a special connection with the sky/some kind of sickness/a teacher. At first shamans use an old man’s cane, then drum after they have learned to use the cane--then they use an actual drumstick, designed for that purpose. On the drum there are pictures of animals the shaman has killed. Putting the picture of the animals on the drum makes the animal immortal. The drum is of course the vehicle that the shaman uses to travel in the spirit world. The most powerful drum is made out of moose skin. A black shaman uses a circular drum and a white shaman uses a more triangular one, the frame is made of a special wood. If there are 27 animals embroidered on the back of the shaman’s robes, then they are the most powerful. The left side of the shaman’s robes has good energy/luck for relatives. The right side of the shamans robes brings luck to regular people if you touch it. The back center of the costume brings luck and good energy to the nuclear family. Ancient shamans didn’t use a mirror to deflect bad spirits.


Despite Ganbold’s breadth of knowledge, the show was an artistic representation mimicking the sacred, spiritual, and nature-based act of ritual in shamanism that had been stripped of its symbolic and ritualistic meaning so that it would be digestible for tourists eager to glean a little bit of each aspect of Mongolia’s cultural history in an hour. It was an excellent aesthetic representation of shamanic ritual, and Ganbold was careful to say that while it was very highly choreographed, and based in the ancient history of shamanism as opposed to drawing from contemporary shamanic practices, it was attempting to balance the authentic with the aesthetic.

In the Moonstone a one hour performance shows tourists as much of Mongolian culture as possible in a short time. Black, white, green, blue colors are used in the shamanistic costume in the performance. I try to balance authenticity with aesthetics.

There’s a performance DVD focusing on shamanism, in August it will be ready.

I have seen shamanizing, and it is always different. I took general things like dancing, drumming, mouth harp playing, fire, etc. to recreate the dance in a performative context. The performance is one hour and fifteen minutes long, as for the shaman performance-it is difficult to use everything so we try to use as much as we can, for example becoming a shaman, shaman’s sickness, and women shamans (the first and now most powerful.)

My concern with the show was what it intended to portray, and who its intended audience was. Ganbold replied that the intended audience was outsiders visiting Mongolia with no cultural point of reference or prior education on the subjects of Mongolian shamanism, Tsam dance, or Khoomii. I found this honest response only problematic insofar as this audience was going to see the show and (perhaps) formulate their perceptions of historically and culturally rich Mongolia based entirely upon something that had its inherent connotations removed, and during the interview I told him so. However when he told me “at the Suki Center, we regularly bring shamans in to see the show and see what they think about it, and we’ve gotten a very good response so far.” I certainly couldn’t argue.

An American in Mongolia: Part XVII

May 16-26: In the countryside

At the onset of my fieldwork in Khentii and Dornod aimags, it became clear to me that my research (and my traveling companion Lea’s as well) was blessed (which in fact, was true, Zorigtbaatar had sent me blessings before my departure). With little to no planning going into the field in the countryside, and with few expectations except to try and meet with and interview as many shamans as I could find, and if permitted, to observe some ritual, I landed myself in the right place at the right time right in the thick of things, repeatedly.

Lea and I had been conducting joint interviews in Onderkhan, Khentii aimag for a week with the help of our translator Zulaa, and every single anthropologically qualified shaman51 (4/4) that we met there made mention of a summer-long chanar ritual in our next scheduled location, Bayan Uul, Dornod aimag (Interview transcripts with Tsetseg, Erdentorch, and Bayermaa, May 16-20.) Not only had we been unknowingly traveling to the right place, it was also the correct timing! This particular chanar ritual was for the shamans of an ethical shamans organization52 that I learned was called Tengereen Suld53, and it was to begin exactly two days after our projected arrival date. I was really excited to discover the existence of Tengereen Suld. We went to Bayan Uul soum in Dornod aimag for the second week of our countryside research on May 20th and discovered that we were headed to the chanar ceremony54 with the largest attendance55 in the country (and possibly in the world!) It was as if we had followed a straight shooting arrow right into the focal point of contemporary Mongolian shamanism.56 Then, we were told by Zulaa, (who is an excellent diplomat and negotiator on our behalf) that we were not only allowed to observe the ceremony for three days at the Harhira ritual grounds, but that we would also be granted a ger accommodation right on them by Oyunbaatar, the current leader of the countryside satellite location of Tengereen Suld. The NGO also has a headquarters in Ulaanbaatar lead in title by a professor of shamanism at the Mongolian National University named G. Gantogtokheen.57

Tengereen Suld was founded in 2003 by a well-renowned shaman named Tseren Bo with his students from Mongolia, Russia, Italy, China, the pamphlet from their registered NGO states, because every shaman must “make” chanar every year, develop into qualified shamans, and because the shaman’s social position in society is high and they must protect people. It continues, now that shamans are out in the open since the restoration of freedom of religion, there are many. The existence of Tengereen Suld helps people to pick out the good shamans from the bad. According to Tengereen Suld’s rules, one cannot shamanize until the end of the 4th chanar, and then one must lead a healthy, simple life in order to be able to help others. Shamans should be polite, and follow the words of Tseren Bo channeled through Oyunbaatar. Tengereen Suld is for shamans and nature, and the natural balance ONLY. All shamans in the organization must follow the rules.58 Some of the projects at hand are: Teaching young shamans traditional Mongolian so that young shamans can read ancient books. Another future purpose is to establish a white shamans’ hospital59, to create an archive of shamanic songs, and to facilitate a foreign shaman’s information exchange.60

During the opening ritual of chanar, when all thirteen of the male and eight of the female shamans in full shamanic regalia prayed and chanted “Om Mane Padme Hum”61 and called their ongod, I had the opportunity to witness my first shamanic possession. This is what it was like according to Lea’s field notes (mine are mysteriously missing)

Inside again, drumming. Getting dark and cold. Oyunbaatar starts calling his father's spirit in a chant that is low and strong, wavering. He chants for a long time drumming louder and louder everyone together thrum thrum thrum and suddenly he lurched forward eyes half-open? So fast I can't remember. The crowd poured like a river to see, we were behind, couldn't see anything. Rumors, Tseren [Zaarin] had come to Oyunbaatar, he was crawling. And then it was over just like that. Oyunbaatar sitting and laughing and smoking and discussing the message. But Zulaa couldnt hear. What did he say? What did he say?

[We] found out later from Zulaa that Tseren Zaarin (in Oyunbaatar’s body) said that he sent the rainbows because the students were so good.

[Then, again the] shamans [were] chanting, no one else [went] into trance, Oyunbaatar was laughing at us for still being awake, the drums in the candlelight.

Oyunbaatar was possessed by the spirit of his father, Tseren Zaarin, and he crawled on the ground as the ongod entered his body. Lea and I were not privy to the information that Tseren Zaarin shared with the group of shamans, because we are laypeople and outsiders, but it was quite a thing to behold. While the shamans were shamanizing a rain storm had begun. When the shamans took a break and we left the prayer house where the shamanizing of the evening had been taking place, the rain stopped, and two rainbows stretched directly over the grounds (and I was able to run to the end of one!62), a supposed manifestation of Tseren Zaarin’s spirit.

Chanar in Bayan Uul amongst the members of Tengereen Suld was very interesting because it was both a Khalk and Buryat event, but while there were shamans of all three color identifications present and varying ethnicities, a great deal of the costume and most of the ritualistic practices varied very little.

Figure 10.

This was because all of the shamans in attendance were students of only a few teachers, who all learned their practices from Tseren Zaarin. For example, I only encountered three kinds of shamans del and headdress while observing chanar, although there were many participants. Most shamans appeared to have two dels, a black and white shaman’s del in Khalk style, (see figure #?...) however I did inspect one del that deviated from the norm somewhat, worn by a new shamaness or udgan during her initiation ceremony.

While in a small, enclosed space full of shamans calling their ongods in full regalia, it’s very difficult at times to remember that you are awake. Indeed, the headdress63 alone has a surreal affectation, it seems otherworldly, and indeed, that is the purpose it is designed for, as the headdress is what confuses potential unfamiliar or malevolent spirits from finding the shamans’ face during spirit travel. The Buriyat headdress is “Abagaldei, a monstrous mask of hide, wood, or metal, on which is painted an enormous beard.”64

Each individual “shaman’s chanar” ritual was a total of three days in length. The commencement ceremony acknowledging the opening of the sky door was an evening’s length, so Lea, Zulaa and I got to witness the magic that takes place during the first two days and nights of chanar for two shamans, a male shaman or zairan and a female shaman or ugdan. For three whole days and nights shamans “doing” chanar are continually chased by children65 around the a ritual fire66 and the trees that they use to climb while possessed by their ongod67 (this occurs on the third evening, so I didn’t get to see it myself) calling on their ongod.

On the second evening, after a whole day and night of sporadic partial possession, the shamans are usually successful in prolonging possession extensively enough to dance on broken glass barefoot, and then climb half-way up the ladder to the platform on which an offering of boiled sheep’s back is placed. 68 There are two platforms69, one for each shaman “making” chanar, the male shaman dancing on the easterly side, and the women on the west.70 After the possessed shaman has ecstatically been dancing on glass for some time (I saw a shaman dancing on glass for approximately 10 minutes) she climbs the ladder and then the ongod usually leaves the shaman’s body and the shaman blacks out. It was a frightening sight watching unconscious shamans falling off of ladders, but both times they landed in a specially prepared felt-blankets held by three strong men. The shaman is grabbed in the blanket, and three men carry her running between the trees71, until arriving back at a spot in close proximity to the original platform, where the shaman is dropped, and returning to consciousness, exhaustedly hobbles to a congregation area to have her feet inspected. I was told that both of shamans’ feet were unharmed, but I didn’t get to see them myself, as there was a crowd of family members and high ranking shamans whose examination took precedent over mine.

I didn’t get to talk to that many shamans while I was actually observing the ritual (they were mostly too busy participating), and it was important for me to return to the city to conduct further interviews with urban shamans so that I would have a basis for comparison after witnessing chanar and speaking with them informally and formally there. Unfortunately because of this I was unable to view the final evening of one set of shaman’s chanar, but I had material from observations (although I didn’t always understand what I was seeing, and Zulaa didn’t always know what was going on either, nor feel comfortable talking about what was going on during the rituals when she did at times) over a meager three days at Harhira to proceed.

An American in Mongolia: Part XVI

Research findings and analysis

May 9-16, 2008: In the city

Figure 4.

My first week conducting field research in Ulaanbaatar I met with an urban shaman named Zorigtbataar who practices in a ger in front of Gandan Monastery42, right behind a store that specializes in the sale of Russian groceries. When I had told residents of Ulaanbaatar in passing that I was going to try and meet with him, many people told me something along the lines of “You’re studying shamanism, why do you want to meet with someone who is clearly a showman?” I showed up at his ger with my translator and an open mind going into the interview nonetheless. You see, dear reader, I believe in magic, and I enjoy pleasant surprises.

There is a fence that surrounds the two gers that this urban shaman uses for his practice. I arrived there with my translator in the midst of what appeared to be a serious construction project (I was told a rumor wherein the lamas of the most central monastery in Mongolia had requested that Zorigtbaatar not practice shamanism in a ger directly in front of their premises.) The shaman appeared to be building a permanent sedentary structure, as there was a big pit directly alongside the main ger (although the two were the same size.) There were scores of people waiting to be granted an audience by this shaman43, and one of his women attendants, (clad in what I can only describe as something vaguely reminiscent of a del that called forth images of modern dance competitions, all sparkly and polyester and bright pink,) told us that we could speak with the shaman in a few minutes.

When we went inside, I noticed that there were three other young women wearing the same costume in various colors. The ger was one of the strangest places I have ever been to because of the range and sheer mass of bizarre objects it contained. Directly to the left and right of the entrance, there were two taxidermied eagles, their full wingspan extended. Hanging from the latticework along the left side of the entrance was a medieval style coat of Mongolian leather armor. Adjacent to the entrance, to the right, there was a giant screen television set that was playing a Japanese knock-off of Britney Spears’s seminal classic music video “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” Schoolgirl costumes and cheesy choreography were not compromised.

There were many things that looked like antiques from other parts of Asia, posters of Buddhist deities, shamanic paraphernalia44, as well as some dramatic looking indiscernible objects that looked like they had come out from the darkest recesses of a closet that might come from a nightmare a circus might have. Cluttering almost every surface, these objects created a sensory overload for me, and they co-occupied the space with a variety of goods one often sees in tourist shops in Ulaanbaatar. There were two altars across from the ger door that were covered in butter candles, one of the chests carved very beautifully with a reindeer scene that evoked petroglyphic art, painted in bright colors, and to the left of the altars was an ornately carved throne in fine Zanabazar45-ian form, behind which several shamans’ drums or hitz46 and costumes hung, inanimate. To the left of the throne was a leather wall hanging of Chinggis Khan, complete with coarse black hair glued to all of the right places.

The Mongolian shaman’s costume varies based upon ethnicity, color designation, and from shaman to shaman as it is created under the direction of the shaman’s ongod, and it has three basic components: headdress, del and tashoor47 which all become “alive” during a ritual when a shaman is in trance or partial possession.

Figure 5.

Figure 7.

(some other prints I can't find my photographs of...)

Figure 8.

However, this particular costume looked much more like the kind that I had seen the ancient shamans (professional dancers) wearing in a tourist show when I first arrived in Ulaanbaatar––meets day-glow powwow wear. The three versions hanging behind the throne came in an assortment of unusually jazzy colors had the basic components of the shaman’s costume I had become familiar with, with snakes dangling48 (in this case showy tassels) from them, mirrors49 (usually a necklace strung with khaddag, but in this case made of plastic and sewn onto the front.) But it was wholly unlike any costume I had seen thus far because it was a short vest, not a long, long-sleeved traditional style shaman’s del.

Zorigtbataar came in long enough after I arrived in this space that I had an opportunity to make notes of and digest some of my surroundings. He was clad in western style cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a plaid shirt, with two little braids that were wrapped in leather string to keep them from falling out of his curly black hair. When he sat down on the throne, one of the women in the matching costumes came and put a shorter, version on him that matched hers, of a more typically masculine cut and style.

Figure 9.

I introduced myself, and he began by telling me about his experiences going to shamanic gatherings in the U.S., next winter he said he would be in Santa Fe, California. He told me that it would be alright for me to ask him some questions, so I proceeded to do so. Zorigtbaatar has been a shaman for around 20 years, and he is a white shaman from Tov aimag. Unfortunately the few times that he answered a question directly, after I would probe him for a little bit further clarification he would change his answer. He told me that his ongod never left his head; that he had no teacher, and then later that he had had a teacher who was a lama; that he didn’t go into trance; and that he didn’t have shamans’ sickness, but he did have a rather outrageous origin story. He told me of an experience wherein he was wandering in the Gobi while in the army with no water while his two companions wasted away. He thought that he was going to die too, lying in the beating sun, parched, when a vision of cosmic creatures dressed in silver came to him in a dream, and he woke up alive.

As open as my mind was going into the interview, and even throughout (I thought perhaps that he was misunderstanding my questions, or at least that he believed most of what he told me) I became skeptical of his honesty and soundness of mind when the interview disintegrated into Zorigtbaatar talking about a book that he had written that was a bestseller in France, even though there was only one copy translated into French in the world, and he didn’t know its title in Mongolian either. Then came the numbers. He spoke of numbers that he could interpret that came from the eternal heavens from what he referred to as his “angels.” He interpreted the numbers into a kind of cryptic verse that my translator could not understand in Mongolian, except for this poetic prophesy:

Have to let people know about

The people from space that will come

The people who created earth

But people brought trouble to earth

Therefore trouble is coming

Big storm and flood, the black flood.

He continued,

You are sky messenger so I’m happy to help you, maybe you can deliver message of the shaman to the world—in trouble. I am also sky messenger. There are many shamans in Mongolia but I am the only one to deliver the message. Earth trouble is going to be first of all in America, so now many shamans in America. So only shamans know/can help with the Earth trouble.

My translator Zulaa was frightened that the tea (sudtai-tsai) one of his assistants had served us was poisoned or drugged, because at the time when it was served to us, after I had tried to conclude the interview, Zorigtbaatar had allegedly tried convince my translator and I to become his students “Because you have strong energy” and are “pretty girls” for the last half-hour. He did this while my translator merely nodded and tried to casually disengage. When we finally got up to leave (I was not included in the last half hour of conversation, but it was related to me later), my translator asked Zorigtbaatar in passing about the symbolic value of the eagles that decorated his entryway, to which he replied “Do you want to see a real eagle?” So we followed him to his second ger, his hands full of raw meat, to meet an eagle that was chained inside, looking reasonably perturbed at its imprisonment. Then, we left, and my translator laughed a great deal because she did not think that Zorigtbaatar was an authentic shaman at all. But I was uncertain, because he seemed to speak with the conviction of a man possessed, so to speak. When I discussed the interview with my academic advisor Bumochir later, he suggested that perhaps Zorigtbaatar50 was a teshren, or merely a showman, but most likely one who would fit into the “non-conventional” category. (Interview with Zorigtbaatar, 5-13-08)

An American in Mongolia: Part XV

Discussion of research methodology

Before embarking upon my month long Mongolian fieldwork period of intensive shamanic ritual observation and interviews in Ulaanbaatar, Onderkhan, Khentii and Bayan Uul, Dornod, with my translator Zulaa and my traveling partner Lea (who was comparing embodiment rituals in Buddhist Tsam dance and Shamanism) I developed a number of guiding research questions. Some of these guiding research questions were later formulated to be questions appropriate to pose directly to a shaman during an the beginning of an interview. The questions were devised through favorable and less favorable (that is, more or less informative) responses I received during my early interviews, along with the help of multiple advisors, all Mongolian anthropologists at the National University in Ulaanbaatar. After a shaman answered this initial set of questions, I could decide which more specific questions I should ask from there. Of course people sometimes launched into a lengthy monologue of their life’s story before I could even begin asking questions, and often these monologues answered my questions before I even asked.

At an early stage in the interviewing process a tension emerged. I had an interest in accruing very specific data that would support a thesis detailing the primary differences or similarities between shamans practicing in radically different settings (the countryside and the city) and the factors that determined these discrepancies and overlaps. I found that certain (pre-) prepared questions that were instrumental in supporting my thesis were inflammatory or offensive to some parties and were best not asked. Sometimes I needed to use my best judgment and steer away from these kinds of questions. These situations were few, (although I felt at times that I may have put my pinky toe just a wee bit over the line) and the occasions that they did occur it was always when I was asking questions regarding shamanic ethics. I began with an etic approach and quickly switched gears into an emic approach38, defining shamanic ethics based upon what the anthropologists told me and what the shamans told me.

The anthropologists told me that a real shaman would be candid about how they became a shaman, how becoming a shaman has changed their lives, and how becoming a shaman was only a choice insofar as they must either become a shaman, or they must face supernatural consequences that would lead to physically dangerous consequences. This idea of being a real shaman came up many times in conversations with Mongolian anthropologists, but also with laypeople in Ulaanbaatar. Mongolians in general seemed to think that interviewing anyone who I met who claimed to be a shaman, or someone who I was referred to by others as a good potential interview subject was impractical and futile, because I would inevitably be interviewing people who they didn’t view as real shamans.

This perception that I came across time and time again was very intriguing to me, because the general anthropological literature that I had read up until that point regarding shamanism was pretty inclusive in what qualified as shamanic practices, and trickery and foolery were included in that broad definition. Because of this intriguing, culturally specific contradiction between the familiar literature in the field and the skepticism of Mongolian laypeople and academics as well as shamans themselves39, ethics and authenticity ended up being the focus of my interviews. By that I mean I was often inquiring if shamans had some accountability to a community, which was really a question of ethics, because if the shaman held no accountability for their practices and were powerful or popular, there was the potential that a shaman could do harm in a community. Whether it was a community of other shamans or a community of laypeople who sought their help was of interest, but so long as there was some community to answer to it didn’t matter. If a shaman avoided that question, or called every other shaman in the world a fake when I brought it up, it would usually lead to a question about charging tariffs, casting curses and the make-up of the shaman’s clientele, which got at the Mongolian perception of authenticity as well as what laypeople viewed as dangerous practices.

The anthropologists told me that some real shamans performed for tourists, charged a wad of cash, and were truly in communication with the realm of ancestral spirits (and/or land and water spirits), but that this was very rare. If a shaman was charging a lot of money, I should be wary that she might not be a shaman at all. Many shamans in the city have day jobs, and many shamans in the countryside are full time herders or schoolteachers. After skirting the issue sometimes for five minutes or so during an interview with a shaman, I had a few testy moments when I asked: point blank “Do you charge a tariff?” To which the shaman would almost always retort “No!”40 at times apparently aghast at my audacity to even imagine such a thing. But nothing seriously negative occurred during an interview; even in these tense, potentially provocative instances it may offer the reader peace of mind to know that all of the shamans whom I asked about curses shuddered and denounced them.

The first question set that I devised was designed to verify that the urban shaman met the fundamental qualifications of being a shaman, although I ended up using these questions in interviews with countryside shamans as well. Said qualifications are not for me to call my own, they were outlined by ethnographers of Mongolian shamanism Professor O. Purev in his book Mongolian Shamanism and I think that they are generally agreed upon within the academic community in Mongolia because they were also suggested to me by biological anthropologist Erdene Myagmar during a meeting at the Mongolian National University, and later by cultural anthropologist Bumochir Dulam. Erdene helped me to come up with ideas to refine, around which I should form a shamanic qualification inquiry.41

Once these quality questions were answered I could proceed with a more specific question set. The queries that followed were generally concerned with amassing the subjects’ own expressed principles, who they felt they were accountable to, and also with helping me to navigate the strikingly sundry shamanic aesthetic. Within Ulaanbaatar the aesthetic or artistic aspect of personal shamanic representation seems to be concerned with appearing to be a certain kind of individual to attract the attention of the much-desired consumer of spirituality. For example, ostentatiously shamanic (that is, garish and performative and shamelessly self-promoting) was one aesthetic that I observed amongst city shamans. From there I would often attempt to observe the ritual of the informant, sometimes by invitation, and sometimes to no avail. I decided that I could far more effectively analyze the information obtained during an interview if I had a point of reference for the sometimes convoluted or befuddling or remarkable responses I received to my questions based in the observance of an actual ritual of the subject. If I had the opportunity to observe the ritual of an informant, subsequently I could see for myself the consistencies and contradictions (and sometimes just plain poorly explained processes) between ritual and interview. The rituals in the city often took place at the subject’s home ger, and in the countryside all of the ritual that I observed was in Bayan Uul, Dornod during chanar at the Harhira ritual grounds. This helped me to attain a better general understanding of what being a shaman meant to my subject, and if there was praxis (within my limited frame-of-reference.) Then, I could return to my anthropological texts, and see what the subject’s views meant in relationship to the general academic community’s views, and the Mongolian community’s views and go forward with my evaluations.

Towards the end of my research period, I began to explore public acuities of shamanism in Ulaanbaatar and in Mongolia today, first conducting an interview with a layman who identified as an atheist, whose granddaughter was about to undergo shamanic initiation rights in Bayan Uul. Back in Ulaanbaatar, I interviewed the director of a performance intended for an audience of tourists that included an artistic representation of shamanic ritual. Finally, I handed out a survey at the Mongolian Artist’s Union (a place where I have spent a great deal of time, learning to craft traditional style Mongolian woodblocks to illustrate this paper with visual reference points during discussions of ritual that include important instruments, costumes, and paraphernalia), inquisitively inquiring about that particular demographic’s understanding of shamanic activity within the city and the countryside currently. The results of all of these scholastic ventures were equally intriguing, and will be discussed and analyzed within the next section of this paper.

An American in Mongolia: Part XIV

The shaman in Ulaanbaatar, which has been influenced by Soviet culture and is now being influenced by Western culture

The phenomenon of the urban shaman is a very relevant field of study in Mongolia currently, while both more and more people are moving to Ulaanbaatar, soum and aimag (province and township) centers increasing the likelihood of shamans in their midst, while simultaneously increasing the demand for shamanic guidance in those areas. Urban migration has been increasing steadily since the early nineties and before, and this often looks in Mongolia like rural nomads moving their gers to the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar (creating ger districts), and attempting to continue their lives in much the same way as in the countryside. The problem is that in Ulaanbaatar there is a relatively concentrated population (it contains approximately ½ of Mongolia’s 2.5 million population.) Therefore there is also a greater demand for pastures, as well as higher pollution and herd mortality (in the ger districts most people burn coal and old tires for most of the year to stay warm, etc.), and less possibility for subsistence herding, creating the necessity of taking up occupations that provide wages (and often don’t exist.) Because the urban situation is less than ideal for herding animals and jobs are scarce, many people negotiate their time between the countryside (and perhaps family members that have been left behind there) and Ulaanbaatar. Additionally, for the first time in centuries there is the presence of commercial foreign interests in Mongolia, beyond direct imperial powers (Manchu, Russian)—tourists, mining companies36, international NGO’s, missionaries, etc. creating a new demographic landscape. Most importantly, unless a shaman’s family has lived for generations in the area where Ulaanbaatar now stands, the shaman will have to go to the countryside every summer (shamans in Mongolia call this “making chanar”) to become more powerful and to reestablish contact with their ancestral, land, and water spirits. It is not an ideal situation for shamanic practice (keeping in mind the Mongolian idea of shamanic authenticity) on the one hand and on the other hand the demand is high on several fronts.37

Remarkably, I have been able to find no published research analyzing the specific phenomenon of urban shamanism in Mongolia using qualitative and quantitative data (though I have found an article examining the phenomenon in Siberia by Caroline Humphrey.) Now that Mongolia has entered a period of democratization, nationalism is back and that means people are getting interested in their ethnic origins, and their cultural heritage, which extends to traditional religious practices as well. Therefore, a comparative study of rural vs. urban shamans in Mongolia would not only be groundbreaking in that it would shed some light upon a(n arguably) newly emerging trend and virtually undocumented phenomenon, the research might also serve as a tool for those urbanities who are now becoming re-acquainted with their national historical spiritual roots, are spiritually curious, or need guidance as to what they might be able to expect upon visiting a shaman in the city (vs. the countryside), and also what that shaman might expect of them.

An American in Mongolia: Part XIII

Mongolian anthropologists’ definitions of the “authentic” shaman

In Mongolia, a shaman is defined as a human being who is chosen by a spirit to be the link between worlds because she is “talented, clever, and moral.”28 Mongolians, despite being traditionally strict adherents to the animistic tradition of worshipping the eternal blue sky or tenger, say there is no such thing as a “heavenly sign”; ancestral spirits alone can chose people to become shamans. When the chosen shaman (hopefully) learns that she has been chosen she will experience a number of symptoms that are recognizable to Mongolians as “shaman’s sickness.”29 As an interviewee poignantly put it,

I was 17 years old while still in high school and I would black out. My parents were very worried and took me to the doctor but no diagnosis. I had very bad dreams, and some places I would go I could feel the bad things that were happening there. My parents took me to a shaman who is now my teacher. I didn’t want to be a shaman. I thought it was very funny. I didn’t believe it. But the bad dreams I could no longer separate from reality and I was going insane. Now I’m ok.30

In order to complete shamanic initiation and gain more power yearly from then on, the shaman must undergo chanar31, a three day ritual in the summer during which a shaman is partially possessed32 continually over the course of three days and nights, under the guidance of a teacher, who is a more experienced shaman. As a result of initiation, the new shaman will develop skills with the aid of her spirit, either in healing sickness, casting curses or curing curses. The ancestral spirits (usually of deceased shamans), according to Mongolian cosmology, are able to learn new abilities and increase powers in the realm that they typically occupy which they can impart to the shaman who they possess. Alternately, the shaman may gain the knowledge of new skills or increase their own power directly when their own (1/5-1/9 according to both gender and the cosmologies of different ethnic groups within the political boarders of Mongolia) soul travels into another realm. The guiding spirit who initiates contact with the shaman may be of several origins, either a protector spirit of a piece of land or a body of water that used to have a human or animal or plant form or the ancestral33 spirit of the shaman. Thereafter, the shaman’s (usually) ancestral spirit or ongod34, as well as local spirits are appeased with offerings of milk, vodka, and meat three times a month according to the lunar calendar (these rituals fall on the 9th, 19th, and 29th of each month of the Gregorian calendar.) Other days of the month the shaman may ask her own ancestral spirit or others to perform tasks during ritual35s, and ongods are interested in helping because of a personal investment, which is appropriate, because shamans are more accountable to human needs than spirit needs.

An American in Mongolia: Part XII

The shaman according to the anthropological canon and the Western public

According to Dolfyn, the North American new age author of Shamanism: A Beginner’s Guide,

If you ask what shamanism is, the answer you receive will depend upon whom you ask. Although the term comes from a native Siberian people’s language, anthropologists have adopted it to describe a range of spiritual beliefs and practices which are many thousands of years old and which are found, in one form or another, among the native peoples on every continent.20


David Abram, an eco-phenomenologist magician who lived with shamans in Southeast Asia, discusses the disconnect between the way that anthropology characterizes shamanism on a surface level and the way that members of the new age community utilize this surface characterization, and how the mainstream community has picked up on it since. Dolfyn’s writing is a text for aspiring shamans, which is predominantly disseminated within the New Age community in the U.S. to use a practical guide. Dolfyn might be what American Indians call a “twinkie”21, or a peddler of shallow and co-opted spirituality lacking in content. He could also be the well-intentioned humanist that Abram refers to, or maybe he’s a little bit of both.

Anthropology’s inability to discern the shaman’s allegiance to nonhuman nature has led to curious circumstance in the ‘developed world’ today, where many persons in search of spiritual understanding are enrolling in workshops concerned with ‘shamanic’ methods of personal discovery and revelation. Psychotherapists and some physicians have begun to specialize in ‘shamanic healing techniques.’ ‘Shamanism’ has thus come to connote an alternative form of therapy; the emphasis, among these new practitioners of popular humanism, is on personal insight and curing. These are noble aims, to be sure, yet they are secondary to, and derivative from, the primary role of the indigenous shaman, a role that cannot be fulfilled without long and sustained exposure to wild nature, it’s patterns and vicissitudes. Mimicking the indigenous shaman’s curative methods without his intimate knowledge of the wider natural community cannot, if I am correct, do anything more than trade certain symptoms for others, or shift the locus of dis-ease from place to place within the human community. For the source of stress lies in the relation between the human community and the natural landscape.22

This passage from early on in Abram’s work The Spell of the Sensuous brings us to one possible conclusion about the incredible possibilities of shamanism when it is practiced by indigenous peoples around the world, and the impossibilities of effective practice by non-indigenous peoples in the Western world.23 The possibilities in the indigenous world have to do with the extent of liminality in its various manifestations and in its importance beyond being able to go into trance and communicate with the spirit realms (of deceased human beings) and traveling between them, it is also about being able to communicate and cooperate with the animate planet (or microcosm) and exist between the animate animal and plant world and the human world effectively, and this is of equal importance. In every sense of the word the shaman is a liaison. From my experiences from forays into the new age world through my parents, and also the world of ethnographic research on indigenous shamans in parts of Mongolia Abram’s assessment would ring true.

Mircea Eliade, a writer of Religion who traveled extensively but also collected accounts of turn-of-the-century explorers and anthropologists, within several different cultural contexts is considered to be one of the headiest academics on the subject of shamanism (despite valuable critiques of his phenomenological approach and his work on shamanism in general.24) He wrote a seminal text that has been used by anthropologists all over the world for decades as a primer on shamanism, and he happens to find the approach, and very definition of shamanism employed by Dolfyn rather problematic. Eliade comments on the mistreatment of the word, as well as possible other uses within different cultural contexts in his classic Shamanism

Since the beginning of the century, ethnologists have fallen into the habit of using the terms “shaman,” “medicine man,” “sorcerer,” and “magician” interchangeably to designate certain individuals possessing magico-religious powers and found in all “primitive” societies. […] For many reasons this confusion can only militate against any understanding of the shamanic phenomenon. […] We consider it advantageous to restrict the use of the words “shaman” and “shamanism,” precisely to avoid misunderstandings and to cast a clearer light on the history of “magic” and “sorcery.” For of course, the shaman is also a magician and medicine man; he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians, whether primitive or modern. But beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be priest, mystic, and poet. […] Shamanism in the strict sense is pre-eminently a religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia.25


With this revised definition of shamanism (derived from the language of the Evenki people’s language of Tungus, the word saman), we learn that the best way to describe the shaman is broadly, as a caretaker for the needs of her tribe or community. The usage of the now antiquated terms of psychopomp and fakir brought the idea of liminality to the foreground once again, clearly a very important concept to shamanism (that begs that the language of anthropology be de-mystified.) A psychopomp is an ambassador between worlds, a being who has the ability to exist in the liminal space and offer guidance for transcending to the spirit realm and through the pathways of consciousness and unconsciousness. The fakir, on the other hand, is traditionally a Hindu or Muslim ascetic, with a focus on miracle production through spiritual practice (self-deprivation, fasting, and breatharianism are all associated,) specifically aimed towards a physical path of development.26 But in Central Asia, a shaman is also a potential glossolalia27, a seer, a diviner and a storyteller. She might go into a trance induced by psychoactive fungi, namely amanita muscaria harvested from a forest in the mountains, by playing the mouth harp, by playing the drum, by dancing ecstatically, or chanting. The reason why this definition is so broad, is because at its heart, anthropology’s concern is with understanding the internal logics of cultural phenomena rather than devising new classification systems.

Shamanism, prior to the heyday of explorers and anthropologists, was an oral tradition. There are sacred objects, but no sacred texts--only a sacred environment, sacred beings in the form of animals (humans & ancestors included), plants, landmasses, and deities. Shamanism is a reflection of the indigenous and especially, the nomadic existence in its highest form—it is the human attempt at symbiosis.

An American in Mongolia: Part XI

The shamanic ethic

In Mongolian history, one might note the recurring themes of the mixing of cultures, uprisings to independence, upholding of dynamism, transience, and fluidity; folkloric spiritual practices and traditions are the only thing that has been consistently present throughout Mongolia’s history, even in hiding during the age of socialism. Petroglyphs from prehistoric times in the steppes depict reindeer herds and shamans amongst the nomads as spotted amanita muscaria mushroom heads…

Figure 3.

…and NPR reported “Shamanism Endures in an Evolving Mongolia” on the November 25, 2004 edition of Day to Day. You can find other evidence of the fortitude of shamanism in Mongolia without immersing yourself in the culture of the country in other media as well, from the French made film Khaddak, to the book Riding with Windhorses, to academia’s own Caroline Humphrey in her articles and books dealing with shamanism in Mongolia, Russia, and Siberia.

In Mongolia, there is an age-old tradition of shamanism19 that even the most valiant efforts on the part of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party could not wipe away in a mere 80 years. That said, there are a great many revivalists and anthropologists who are now devoted to the study of shamanism as an important component of the country’s history, and it is a great source of pride and interest amongst laypeople in Mongolia and the international community. Because there are so many Mongolians studying shamanism within an academic context in the country, and because of Mongolia’s ancient shamanic heritage, anthropologists there have formulated theories that deviate somewhat from the more inclusive, general definitions and theories of western anthropologists. Instead of utilizing basic anthropological theories on global shamanism generated by making broad observations about shamanism throughout the world, Mongolian anthropologists studying shamanism seem to place more weight upon theories and observations that are specific to Mongolia and its own rich magico-religious legacy. Because there are specific ideas of what being a shaman constitutes and how a shaman behaves to a certain extent within the context of Mongolia, a shaman who deviates from this relatively broad ideal is often understood as either not being an authentic shaman, or being some kind of misidentified other. The other could be a range of things, from an unknowing gurten (someone who can deliver prophesies, usually within the Buddhist tradition), or one who is possessed by a ghost or teshren, or someone with some kind of other spiritual orientation but no religious vocabulary: a common problem arising from a socialist education, or even an imposter profiting on the title of shaman. This other category of non-shamans which was given to me by Mongolian anthropologists is what I will call those who I suspect fit into it the “non-conventionals” for the purpose of this paper. I prefer it to the words inauthentic, or corrupt (which I think is an over-simplification), though I suspect this is often what the anthropologists meant.

An American in Mongolia: Part X

Corruption and Nationalism

The supreme treasure is knowledge, the middle treasure is children, and the lowest treasure is material wealth. Greed keeps men forever poor, even the abundance of this world will not make them rich. -Mongol Proverbs

*****

Now that some of the issues facing Mongolian society today have been discussed here, the question that still remains is: why aren’t these problems being dealt with? Why, after ten years, has the Mongolian government failed to generate mechanisms for dealing with alcoholism, unemployment, and the healthy maintenance of the family unit? Why, in this most brutal of climates, is there no subsidized housing for newcomers to the city, struggling households headed by women, or a home provided by the government for abandoned children? While I might offer a simplistic explanation that serves as a buttress for my own dissident ideology, that would be imprecise and uni-dimensional to say the least. I can’t begin to describe (or even grasp, for that matter) the intricacies of all of the goings-on in the post-Soviet Mongolian socio-political-cultural landscape. But I do know, like many fledgling governments, that Mongolia is still forging its own path and has its own fair share of mistakes to make (while the general population in desperation tends towards a nationalism bordering on racism), and free-market capitalism soothingly steers it on a course of unabashed corruption in favor of profit-driven interests.

Which brings us back to shamanism.

An American in Mongolia: Part IX

Domestic Violence, abandonment, and street kids

Men and women sleep on the same pillow, but they have different dreams.

Once you have locked your door you are the emperor in your own domain. –Two Mongol Proverbs

*****

Early on in my stay in Mongolia I wasn’t sure if I should continue to pursue the study of shamanism because my activist and political instincts were drawing me to social causes. A brilliant young activist named Undarya, who helped to form the feminist coalition MONFEMNET, came and lectured to my class at SIT in Ulaanbaatar. I was very moved by her passion and wanted to work in solidarity with her cause. She spoke of a variety of women’s and queer issues that generally weren’t being taken very seriously by the Mongolian government or in the dominant discourse within society. Some of these included excessive un-prosecuted domestic violence, the status of homosexuals and transgender folk, and the impossibility of being out in Mongolia, human trafficking, child labor, dispossession, and the shifting role of women in the ger in contemporary society.

As a result of the shift to a market economy without sufficient infrastructure, as well as of traditional social norms, men are overwhelmingly leaving their countryside subsistence herding families in search of work in the big city. Unfortunately, they are largely not finding work or are unable to send economic support home, and they turn to liquor or domestic violence or both in a sense of utter helplessness. This puts women and children into a desperate position, leaving women as the (often battered) sole providers of income as well as taking on all of the responsibilities of the family and the herds of animals, and when women can’t get by in these circumstances, their children work. The UB post article entitled “Market Children in Mongolia”15 revealed a number of troubling statistics regarding how widespread child labor in Mongolia is today.

There are over “4,300 child workers in Ulaanbaatar” working for an average of a measly “Tg16 3,000 (about US$2.50)” pocket change per day to support their families and themselves. 84% of child workers are under the age of 16, and 64% of them are male. 60% of child workers had dropped out of school or have never attended. In the case of many child workers there is no possibility of going to school because of the need to work during the day (often a fruitless task because of police harassment, forcing children into more dangerous and potentially exploitative situations created by the drama of the night.) This is because “schools also demand resident registration” excluding an additional 21% of children who are homeless or, as the children of nomadic herder families often find, without permanent residence. While “UNICEF estimated that 36.6 percent of children in Mongolia ages 5 to 14 year-(s)-old were working in 2000” there’s really no way to know, because in the countryside, children “herd livestock and work as domestic servants.” In a study conducted by a local NGO in Ulaanbaatar where 1,000 children were sampled from grades seven to ten, it was found that almost 60% of girls working as prostitutes are between the ages of 13 and 16, and 70% have dropped out of school, while 10% are homeless and “cannot get free health cover, [as…] hospitals are reluctant to treat them because they will not get paid.”

My biggest concern prior to my departure for Mongolia was of becoming desensitized to extreme poverty, and more specifically, to street kids. While I never became desensitized to their existence or presence, I did see them everyday, and often gave them food or crayons (unhelpful, I know, but they usually traveled in gangs and if you take change out of your wallet to share, your wallet just gets snatched and then you’re in a foreign country without your passport.) One day, there was a boy following me for several blocks past the State Department Store, a major stop for Westerners and a hub of street-kid activity. I started chatting him up in part to divert him from his relentless requests for money that I didn’t have on me anyway, except for enough to take him out to the chain of national-cuisine restaurants, Khan Booz. I ordered him some khorshur and while he ate the first three voraciously (carefully preserving the last two oily fried dumplings in a napkin for later), I found out that the skinny boy, who had some kind of serious skin irritation, was fifteen years old, and had been living on the streets of Ulaanbaatar since he was twelve.

An American in Mongolia: Part VIII

On Alcoholism

He who drinks, dies; he who does not drink, dies as well. -Mongol Proverb

*****

Drunks! Yes, alcoholism is absolutely rampant in Mongolia and compounds all of the other problems of the developing economy and political and social transition. Of course there is the presence of the melancholy, drunken condition in all countries and societies, but it is especially common in poor ones. In poor countries or societies where appealing options in terms of labor and daily commitment are few and resources and education as well as help for alcoholism are more meager still, while the drink selection is broad, alcoholism (and other drug abuses) abound. Beyond this obvious point, there are several explanations for the extreme problem of drunkenness in contemporary Mongolia that have been offered to me. One is a genetic predisposition identical to that of the American Navajo, which is to become drunk very easily and not experience very bad hangovers. The BBC News proposes instead that “Mongolia’s appalling level of alcoholism is, quite literally, a Soviet hangover.”12 Another justification is the climate, which in the case of Mongolia is of the bitterly cold, extreme continental variety, and liquor warms the body in the often long hours spent outdoors and wiles away the dark hours indoors. Furthermore, other drug use within the country, if it exists (which it must to a small degree, but penalties are enormous) is virtually un-documented, leaving vodka: the old standby inebriant in which to drown woes.

I inevitably and unwillingly had my eyes opened to the hellish condition of a great deal of the Mongolian population when I realized how rampant drunk driving is there (especially apparent in Ulaanbaatar), and how it was a reality that I needed to be aware of on a daily basis to stay alive while walking to school. This awareness was informed by the appearance of daily roadside casualties of drunk or reckless or uncaring drivers, such as puppies, street kids (who lived huddled in alleys or in the sewers to keep warm in the winter), older women carrying buckets of water or milk to or from the ger district13, and everyone in between. This reckless driving even played out on film. I went to see a movie on my 21st birthday with my host brother that could roughly be translated as “Hello my life!” (Sain uu mini amderdag) in which one of the strands of the story line is a young man dealing with the near loss of his mother’s life to a drunk driver at an intersection (near the Military Palace) that I had to walk through everyday to get to school. Perhaps more tellingly, one afternoon my roommate came home hysterical because, while she was walking home, a reckless driver killed a young pedestrian right in front of her; her head smashed into a windshield a block away from our hostel.

My next awakening to the crisis of alcoholism arose when I was informed of the melodrama that had been unfolding in the weeks before my arrival in Ulaanbaatar. A two-week ban on retail vodka sales had been placed after the Mongolian government forced a recall, because distributors were carrying methanol-tainted batches from zero-regulation factories. The ban resulted in an extreme (ridiculously extreme) decrease in crime rates for two weeks, approximately 90% of crime and hospitalizations were eliminated for those two weeks, despite the fact that around 15 had already died from consuming the liquor and over 100 were hospitalized immediately, initially leading to the ban. Notably, the recall resulted in a protest in which hundreds of small vendors filed a lawsuit against the national government for profits lost in vodka sales for those two weeks.14

Finally, I had an experience that made me even more wary of drunks in late April of 2008 I went to Bayan Uul, Dornod province along with my translator and my traveling partner. We took the trip to interview shaman and observe a yearly ritual called chanar in which new shaman are initiated and already practicing shaman gain more power as a result of having their ancestral spirit repeatedly possess them over a period of three days. Before heading to the countryside, and the grounds where this ritual would take place, I was staying with a Buriyat family of primary school teachers (the father was also the local governor) with their two charming children, who were three years old and six, respectively. We had just arrived, and Buriyat tradition called for us, the guests, to present the family with two bottles of vodka that we would drink later that evening over dinner, which we would be cooking in gratitude of the family’s hospitality. Therefore, we went to the local grocery store to pick up the fixings for dinner and the bottles of vodka. We procured some wilted, harried looking vegetables, milk, juice, chocolate, vodka and eggs, and because the selection at the shop was limited, and Buriyat frontier-style homes of logs typically have a big clay oven that heats the entire home throughout the winter despite its lack of insulation, we thought we’d make a frittata.

I was charged with carrying the carton of eggs and the sweet little three-year-old boy, and my two companions were loaded up with the remaining groceries, the little girl running ahead excitedly. Shortly after we emerged from the shop the wind started to pick-up and the toddler in my arms started crying as sand blew into his eyes (Oh shit, this is a seriously violent dust storm!) I was running as fast as I could with this screaming little boy in one arm, and a carton of eggs in the other, my hood was up and I had my eyes closed, just making a mad dash towards the gate of their home, which was about 100 yards away when I felt myself yanked backwards. This sensation was accompanied by the acute feeling that someone was digging their fingernails into my arm (this was through my thick Carhartt padded sweatshirt and three or four other layers as well as wool long-johns, mind you.) I turned around, and behind me there was a man yelling at me, his nails still digging into my arm. This man was the same one we saw earlier that morning wearing a dirty green del hanging around the police station while we were letting the authorities know we were in town (we were right on the border of Siberia, and we didn’t want the border patrol to think we were going to try to flee into Russia.)

I knew his kind well already, Mr. dirty green del. Ulaanbaatar and the countryside were teeming with men in dirty green or navy blue velvet dels who had given up on herding or searching for some scarce short-term work in favor of vagrancy and would drink all day along with others in dirty dels occasionally harassing people who looked worth harassing (in this case, me, a foreign female who spoke only enough Khalkh Mongolian to get myself into trouble for being friendly.) This man in the dirty green del had been drunk in the morning, and curious about my nose ring. I was cordial with him but didn’t linger or oblige his request to see me take my nose ring out of my nose (it’s kind of a hassle, and I had been advised not to dilly-dally as we were in a rush.)

He was digging his fingernails into my arm, seemingly unaware of the fact that we were standing in the middle of a violent dust storm. He didn’t seem to notice that I had a carton of eggs in the hand of the arm he wasn’t releasing. He didn’t care that there was a screaming babe in the other hand who was upset at the whole absurd situation. He was intoxicated and all that he could do was chase after me and grab me, only to slurrily request once again that I “show my nose ring.”

An American in Mongolia: Part VII

On Ethics

Of the good we have an understanding, for fools we keep a stick upstairs. -Mongol Proverb

*****

From the very moment I arrived at the airport terminal in Ulaanbaatar my professor offered a warning, and as people continued to caution me throughout my stay in Mongolia, I began to internalize their warnings. The early advice given to me by my professor was presented by nearly everyone that I met thereafter, including my host mothers and brothers, lecturers, strangers, language teachers, friends, religious leaders, shaman, U.S. Peace Corps volunteers, politicians, translators, interview subjects, and NGO workers. 11 The warnings they gave my classmates and me all amounted to the very same “beware of bad people, don’t trust anyone, and look out for drunks.”

I always took these warnings to be in earnest, but also with a grain of salt, eager to see the good in people, and schooled in the rough history of Mongolia as well as critical thinking. Nonetheless, while I was studying in Mongolia there were several indicators that the country was going through a period of immense transition and social upheaval, and that it was being heavily influenced by a shift in government and spiritual life, an uncompassionate economic system, and foreign interests. All of these factors as well as others, such as a lack of infrastructure, job availability, and a limited understanding of world history and (even) Mongolian history beyond the reign of Chinggis Khan were contributing to a state of crisis in the realm of ethics.

The crisis in ethics, if you want to call it that rather than the inevitable corollary of raging structural inequalities colliding within a poor-but-precocious society, manifested itself in many ways. The symptoms were sometimes unobservable to me because of my outsider status and minimal language skills, or were sometimes observable only because of my outsider status. Some of the symptoms might include (depending upon who you’re talking to) unchecked corruption within the political system, widespread pick-pocketing, endemic alcoholism fueled by the prevalence of poverty or vice-versa, ubiquitous racism (directed mostly towards Chinese people), dissolving familial structures, lack of civility, etc. Instead of analyzing all of these seemingly insurmountable issues using anecdotal evidence, I will elucidate the few that were glaring to me from my position of privileged outsider, utilizing at times a Ulaanbaatar based daily English news periodical called the UB Post.

An American in Mongolia: Part VI

On Modern Art and Culture

If you want to build high, you must dig deep. –Mongol Proverb

*****

Many an Ulaanbaatar art gallery is filled with what appears to be innovative art, yet as soon as you look at the image next to the one you’ve been gazing at, it is clear that even the artist is unable to deviate far from the prescribed style of imported masters, and the content is almost always a horse. The composition seldom holds interest, or goes beyond the basic boundaries of the traditional landscape. One becomes tired at the repetition. It’s not that the horse is a boring subject; it’s merely that the manner in which it is depicted rarely changes from one image to the next.

Maybe the horse is the image that most thoroughly permeates the average Mongol consciousness, and therefore is the topical image most desired to depict. However, I fear that with a combination of a supply and demand economy and a dreadful fear of free thinking, which is a remnant of the Soviet regime, are in fact the true culprits that give way to these less radical forms of art, the conceptual art camp, and the suppressed art of the 1960’s excluded.

From the lecture on ancient and contemporary art in Mongolia that I attended at the School for International Training in Ulaanbaatar, I’m tempted to say that even those are not fully understood, even if they are now acceptable and maybe even embraced forms of expression. Perhaps my conceptions of “radical artistic expression” are warped by a Western perspective; I’m certain that to some degree they are. But SIT’s lecturer on visual art9 seemed to concur that many contemporary artists block themselves into a particularly uninteresting artistic niche.

As far as musical expression goes, it’s clear that the ancient art of Morin Khuur (horse head fiddle) construction and musicianship has disappeared during socialist repression. The basic shape (form) of the instrument is still available and widely used, and Morrin Khuur fiddlers play in performative forums, nationally and internationally. For example, there is the Mongolian National Morin Khuur Ensemble who I saw perform at SIT’s Ulaanbaatar premises. Both the ancient traditional use of materials (which consist of animal skins, very similar in construction to the ancient drums used by shamans to transport themselves between worlds) in production and style of playing, accompanied epic song, Khoomii (throat singing), and to soothe the herd have virtually disappeared from what was once a hallmark of nomadic life.10

Mongolian society is enthusiastic about its heritage, and the Mongols certainly have one of the more interesting and best-preserved cultural histories in the world. Indeed the Soviets should have been concerned about nationalistic tendencies here. Every Mongolian that I’ve interacted with embraces the revitalization of the traditional arts and culture, and not in the least bit cautiously, which I would deem a new generation’s subversion of Soviet conditioning. Mongolia is at a critical point in its historical evolution, its people at a critical point of transition. Mongolians are eager to re-identify themselves in relationship to what they know of themselves and also to define themselves in relationship to the global landscape, in both opposition and collaboration.

An American in Mongolia: Part V

Religion

The distance between heaven and earth is no greater than one thought. –Mongol Proverb

*****

That said, with democracy in and socialism out people are relatively free to pursue whatever their hearts desire insofar as what has been made available to them in equal parts by cultural revivalists and globalization. So many now identify themselves as Buddhists, but with the loss of cultural history under socialism, the content of that statement is empty. The sentiment is sincere, but the knowledge of what being a Buddhist actually means is lacking. Outside forces are entering Mongolia to educate the masses in their own (often Euro-centric) style as to what (one of) Mongolia’s own chosen “national” religions means, how to practice it, and what its substance is.6 Likewise, many people call themselves shamans, and many believe in shamanism, but the perception of many Mongolians is that shamanists are easily duped into believing that the cheap con-artist who calls himself a shaman will be able to help the believer transcend the immaterial boundaries to communicate with the otherworld, and the con-artists are multiplying at a speed far more rapid than the genuine shamans. The con-artists find shamanism an easy to mimic and infiltrate as well as a lucrative profession to engage in for the purposes of performing shamanic ritual for foreign seekers (tourists) and also to prey upon those who are marginalized by society and uneducated and generally less wary of the possibility of being exploited.7

Christianity is quickly proliferating because it is novel (though the Vatican and Mongolia have had a relationship since the Middle Ages) and it is intent upon converting believers for life, and it is linked in the minds of many Mongolians to the success of the West. Of course, Christianity has other benefits associated with it. For example, the Catholic Church came to Mongolia by request of the first political administration after the Iron Curtain was lifted to help the country in the areas of education, social work, and morals/ethics. The goal of the Catholic church is not to convert in Mongolia, but rather to rehabilitate a country of people who are “drowning in their own freedom”8 Father Patrick of the Catholic church compound in Ulaanbaatar outlined the many ways in which the church can help Mongolians without forcing them to convert to Catholicism. Indeed, when I spoke with him he seemed interested in providing services for rather than converting parishioners. The compound contains four kindergartens, two middle schools (both secular), and informal poor education, English school, Street Kids Center (120 children call it home), Soup Kitchen, House for the Elderly, two medical clinics, a 200 hectare farm, AA, Women Against Violence, and meetings with other religious groups for peace, in addition to church services and spiritual education. But Catholicism is not the fastest growing sect of Christianity in Mongolia, born again Christianity is. Because its Evangelist ethos generally makes greater efforts to convert the masses, and there is something appealing to Mongolians in its performative spiritualism akin to shamanism. In Born Again Christianity Mongolians are convinced to make a commitment, and “shopping around”, a common practice amongst Mongols since the time of Chinggis Khan and in contemporary Mongolia, is strongly discouraged. Mormon missionaries seem to feel the same way.

An American in Mongolia: Part IV

Society & Political Life

Times are not always the same; the grass is not always green. –Mongol Proverb

*****

Democracy since 1990 has triggered a revitalization of Mongolian traditional culture, though it hasn’t served to preserve it. The free market capitalist system that was adopted alongside of the democratic governmental system has been a destructive force for Mongolian culture while helping to bring innovative industries and foreign aid to stimulate the economy. Whenever tackling a topic as potentially controversial and confusing as this one, particularly as an outsider, and therefore a cultural illiterate, the very first thing to define is terms. The governmental system of democracy itself hasn’t necessary brought ill affects (that is, the degradation of/or) upon Mongolian culture and society per-say. However the free market economic system that was adopted along side of the democratic governmental system certainly has helped to bring contemporary era (style) globalization to Mongolia.

I use the peculiar phraseology of contemporary era style globalization because it can be argued that the Mongols, and Chinggis Khan5 in particular, were the first harbingers of the menace of globalization, and were the founders of the concept. Author and anthropologist Jack Weatherford was one of a six-person team of researchers from various disciplines and nationalities (American, British, Russian, and Mongolian) who had the privilege of being involved in the interpretation and translation of The Secret History of the Mongols, one of the only historical accounts by Mongols about the Mongols written in the newly introduced Mongol Script during the reign of Chinggis Khan. In his book about the journey and all that he uncovered, Genghis Khan: and the Making of the Modern World, he makes observations garnered from field research at historical sites. It is his reading of the Secret History that lead me to make this claim about the Mongols and the early manifestations of globalization. He describes in detail the creation and regulation of paper currency throughout the many states governed by the Mongols, religious freedoms granted to all of the satellite states, diplomatic immunity ensured by proto-passports, and a complex and effective minuteman system: from Baghdad to Kiev to Beijing to Istambul.

With contemporary age globalization inevitably comes Mongolia’s consumption and absorption of varieties world popular culture with dimensions of Mongolia’s long, previously, and carefully (both voluntary and involuntary) preserved values and tradition getting lost or assimilated into the swiftly evolving, post-modern, multi-cultural, high-tech hodgepodge that as of yet is difficult to come to terms with. Indeed it seems in our day and age “free market” and “democracy” (a word usually used in reference to what is actually a republic) are treated as synonyms, or are at least always associated with one another, and while they may well be intrinsically intertwined, they are definitely not the same thing.

Certainly, there are always unintended consequences of every institutionalized system, economic or governmental. In this case the democratic system has opened up a great deal of space for citizenry to take up traditional cultural practices that were once deemed too nationalistic, religious, or bourgeois to exist under socialism. At the same time, it seems that socialism has had the crippling effect upon Mongolians that they are still uncomfortable with deviating from the usual; that is, exercising their full creative potential, engaging civically and spiritually and ethically. A great deal of history and tradition was also lost during the reign of the M(ongolian) P(eople’s) R(evolutionary) P(arty), an extended claw of Soviet repression, perhaps forever.

Of course, one would be foolish to ever assume that society or culture is static.


Even in a closed society, and indeed in a society that is practicing painstakingly well-monitored isolationism as an experiment in socialism as a satellite of the Soviet Union, there will be small tremors of creativity in the realms of the spiritual, the artistic, and the righteous. The Mongols have a lengthy history of being declared under various ruler-ships while also at one time claiming an empire that encompassed most of the known world. The Mongols have never been a static society. They have instead nurtured an attitude of openness, tolerance and interest in visitors and foreigners. This attitude is expressed in daily elaborate rituals of hospitality, and is a symptom not only of nomadism, which is inherently an isolated and individualistic existence anyway (while at the same time very much oriented towards community), but also of this history of fluctuating boundaries and imperial regimes. Thus, the Mongols are particularly susceptible to the influence of other cultures, pragmatically oriented as a herder must be to fulfill the needs of her difficult existence, she can easily integrate that which is practical when it is introduced to her.

An American in Mongolia: Part III

A Horse Released Can be Caught, a Word Never. -Mongol Proverb

*****

Conveyance is a means of travel (to define it very broadly.) Simulacrum is a representation of a representation of something perceptible by someone. Feuneur is the act of gazing through windows or cameras or lenses of our own creation, rather than immersing oneself fully into the at times painful reality of the other; the other her/his self being an important concept to grasp because if one is going to travel one will come face to face with the other and have to grapple with why she is so similar or different from one’s self. Liminality is betwixt and between time and place, and even sometimes one’s understanding of the world’s existence. Utopia is nowhere, a magical fantasyland just out of grasp, or the ideal somewhere. Impersonality is the product of a lack of communication, either intentional or unavoidable because of verbal/non-verbal language differences/disparate articulation techniques, or lack of effort or care. These are all concepts necessary to understanding the mindset and experience of any adventurer, foreigner, tourist, or traveler. I’ve described my own recent experiences traveling as a student in Mongolia last spring within the context of these terms.

Conveyance for me was limited to horses descended from the Тахь (or if you prefer, Przewalski’s wild horse), a camel or two, motorcycles driven by my host father or brother and his neighbors, Russian Jeeps driven by the bag doctor with multiple layers of humans per seat. Microbuses arriving in a rush and leaving just as quickly, occasionally skidding on ice or falling though slightly; jalopies in Ulaanbaatar driven by men who have left their families in the country side in search of work, finding nothing but taxi-driving and vodka instead and nearly crashing into me and each other, and constantly breaking down, leaving a trail of assorted casualties (at times) including puppies, children and old women balancing too many water jugs and buckets of milk. Range Rovers driven exclusively by the SIT staff, usually Ulzii Ach (brother Ulzii); trolleys at 100 tugrogs (about 7,800 tg =$1) each with the most absurd juxtaposition of Mongolian music videos on state of the art silicon flat screens but no integrity of engineering or safety of design with huge gaping holes in the wooden floors (and also forever breaking down.) Trains I took and missed and sometimes dreaded would take me to China without papers if I fell asleep. For the shamans who I observed, the chosen conveyance of spirit was drums and mouth-harps, song calling forth the ancestors, and ecstatic dance.

Unconsciously, I created my own simulacra; my own block prints were created with the help of photo-references of shamanic representations of ongod (ancestral spirits.) The originals were only created to try to fill the abyss of human craving for the tangible answer to the disembodied answerers, but they certainly outshined my shallow mimicry—my meta outweighed my merit. Amusingly, there was an artist at the Mongolian Artists Union with esoteric leanings who made paintings depicting shamanic artifacts done with a surrealist slant for he only believes in surrealism—“realism is the death of art.”

I was forever watching, removed, a feuneur. Hopelessly, earnestly, honestly, intentionally, consciously, cautiously, excitedly watching because despite probable blood-ties I am never a “real” Mongol (though jokes implied otherwise, that I was a Mongolian man—smoking/sniffing tobacco, drinking airag (fermented mare’s milk) and ayrahk (vodka distilled from airag) sitting on the floor cross-legged, wearing a masculine hat, spitting, drinking enormous quantities of sudtai-tsai (boiled milk tea) so as not to be rude, decent horsemanship, teasing.) Not eating meat (mutton, yak, horse, fat, blood sausage, entrails, etc.) makes me a voyeur into the life processes that the maintenance, production, slaughtering, and consumption of meat so integral to the life of the Mongolian family involve, and also uniquely removed, separate, and different.

In observing the ritual of the shaman, I was shown a whole new creative liminality. There was my own, being between my world and a foreign one, not knowing where I fit or what I was doing, not recognizing the usual signs of being in a place that I could call home or even staying in any one place long enough to imagine such a thing, mirroring the patterns of the nomadic culture that I was immersed in. Then there was a reality created by the ongod and shaman, while they were traveling together to other dimensions of reality that I could never comprehend despite continued observation or bulking up on my reading. For the Mongolian shaman, the necessities of liminal travel are costume, headdress, and boots (all alive) necessary to guide and protect one’s spirit while traveling betwixt worlds, an ongod, a drum, and symbolic climbing of sorts.

For years I had it in my mind that I must visit Mongolia, my fantasy wonderland, my Utopia that I hardly believed really existed. I had done some reading, watched some movies, and gazed at the photographs of my maternal grandfather’s parents, and wanted to go to one of the cradles of romantic nomadism and shamanic journeying. I thought that if I went I Would Be In Touch With My Roots. I Would Push Myself Beyond My Own Limitations. I would experience hardship, and I would grow. Some kind of transcendental awakening. Some kind of adventure seeking. Some kind of academic appetite and taste for the outlandish. I got there and discovered that the evidence that others before me had collected was correct, there is far more land than people. And livestock outnumbers the few humans inhabiting the basically unchanging landscape in the short recollection of humans (but for desertification due to shifting livestock ratios.) Seemingly endless white or tan steppe, semi-steppe and desert, occasionally populated by a herd of goats, cows, yaks, camels, horses, or sheep, and one lonely herder.

My first day living with a family everything sounded so foreign I couldn’t distinguish laughter from yelling. It was the ultimate experience of impersonality, but I soon discovered that not sharing a mother tongue didn’t need to bar communication, and that verbal communication is often just a source of confusion (and farce) anyway.

An American in Mongolia: Part II

It’s true! I’ve got a hint of Mongolian in me, and I’m proud of it! Learning this has helped me come to terms with my fierce distinctiveness, and an interest in and attraction to nomadic peoples. I went to Mongolia to get radical and get back to my roots, and I went with the intention of studying the practices of shaman amongst the nomadic peoples there, and how those practices compare to those of the new city shamans in the emerging urban post-socialist landscape. Despite having these express purposes in mind, early on in my journey I was open to studying other dimensions of Mongolian life2 in depth other than shamanism, but eventually re-focused on the role of the shaman in the swiftly shifting setting.



Modern Mongolia

While father is alive, get to know people

While a horse is strong, travel to see places. --Mongol Proverb

*****

From a journal entry written in March, 2008

While on my two week home stay in Galut Soum, Bayanhongor Aimag with a nomadic family of four (plus the assistant herder, a relative of my host father’s), a daily routine began to emerge as I honed my observation skills. Usually, I would wake up and immediately wish that I was still asleep because it was so cold, then I gradually would come to my senses around 7 AM listening to my host mother and father, Battuya (Tuya, 35) and Ariunbold (Ariun, 38) talking and laughing in the dark. Within 15 minutes of my awakening, Tuya would be dressed in del3, have a small fire going in the stove, and would have exited and entered the ger4 several times. By the time I had greeted my family with my usual “Sain Bainu!” acknowledging that I had awoken and was happy to see them, it would usually be around 7:30, and Tuya and/or Ariun would be outside hollering at the herd of sheep and goats and fetching dried dung to keep the morning fire going. Around this time my littlest sister, Lxamjargal (Lxam, 6) might decide to get out of bed and put her pants on to help them. By this point, there would be water boiling on the stove in the togo, the pot that fits directly into the stove to access peak heat, and Ariun or Tuya would fill up my water bottle for the day with the boiled water. Then, it was time to make the day’s tea.

The preparation of sudatsai (boiled-milk tea) was an interesting process to watch. First, of course, the tea must be chopped from a block and placed into a cotton tea bag with a drawstring, which is unceremoniously thrown into the pot of boiling water. It has little opportunity to steep however, because after about thirty seconds when it is removed, the water hardly has gained a tint of color. Next it’s time to add the milk. The ratio of water-to-milk is approximately 1:2; it’s always more milk than tea. The watery milk is boiled for a minute or two, and is occasionally mixed with a deep pink plastic ladle. The first time the ladle goes into the pot, there are two tablespoons of salt in it. Then the tea is taken off the stove, and distributed in various vessels: two-army surplus sized thermoses, a metal teapot, and a milk pail. This is the tea that will be drunk throughout the course of the day by all of the family members, myself, and any other people who might drop by and have it offered to them. The thermoses keep the tea scorching hot, and the kettle and the pail stay by the stove, retaining and gaining warmth by proximity.

Tuya or Ariun would then clean the pot, (depending upon who was busy outside with the animals, collecting dung or snow) using hot water, then put the previous evenings’ leftovers on the stove for breakfast. If Ariun is outside at this time, I suspect that he’s leading the yaks to pasture, because the yaks mysteriously have disappeared from their sleeping area, as have the young yaks that are tied up for the night so that they (and their mothers) won’t wander off in the night. Usually once the food was cooking, or earlier, depending upon how warm the ger had become, I would sheepishly emerge from bed, one limb at a time and quickly put all of my clothes on at once, then carefully fold all of my bedding, rolling up the many del piled on top of me at bedtime the night before so I wouldn’t freeze to death, and put it in the designated pile. I tried to always be out of bed and packed back up before my “brother” Chugsom, my father’s relative and assistant herder (also his senior, at 51) had his bed packed up. I don’t know why, it made me feel like a bit less of a slug (not that I’m suggesting that Chugsom was, because he wasn’t. When he emerged from his bedding in his underpants, it was very evident that he lead a very active lifestyle. I couldn’t help but notice that he still had the body of a youth.)

Chugsom would almost always be the last to get out of bed, usually while the rest of the family was drinking tea. Then he, too, would pack up his bedding (he slept on the floor on top of some carpets and under his del), drink tea and roll and smoke several newspaper cigarettes and then meander outside for a long day of herding. First, of course, he would partake in whatever bowl of food (or in his case, two or three with added sudatsai, every time) had been handed to him and we would all eat together: Tuya while sitting on the stool next to the fire, occasionally adding pieces of dung to the stove, the girls and the men on the floor, and myself on my cot. This happened by around 8 AM usually. Afterwards, Chugsom probably wouldn’t be back in the ger until lunchtime, unless the baby goats were taking longer than usual to round up out of the herd, which happened occasionally and meant that the whole family would stay close to the ger for longer, with everyone participating; even little Lxamjargal, and the newcomer to the world of animal husbandry, me.

Rounding up the baby goats was quite an involved process. It began very early in the morning. Tuya began her day by picking up a few baby goat stragglers and bringing them inside for feeding and warming. Extracting the babies from the larger herd could be quite a task. One had to chase the wee thing and corner it. Ariun or Chugsom usually caught it in one of their lassos secured to a large wooden rod. This way they could swiftly grab the baby goat by its neck or belly from a distance away, while all the goats ran in formation away from the herder. Then, Tuya or Lxam or (later) Oronjargal (Oron, 13, was my second little sister who arrived home for school holidays a day or two before I left Galut Soum) or I would grab a baby goat or two or three in each armpit and rush it inside before grabbing more. Then Tuya would push the mama goats over the threshold and into the ger one by one to nurse the babies. If the mama goats were uncooperative they would have their milk taken from them by Tuya who would then warm the milk up slightly on the edge of the stove and put it in a water bottle with a nipple on it with which to manually feed the little goats. Sometimes the little goats would be too eager to drink, and the milk would get spilled on the ground because they had removed the plastic nipple with their anxious little snouts. The goats were forever behaving uncooperatively. Babies were constantly being pushed back beneath their distracted and wandering mothers, and mothers were constantly being leaned upon, shoved, or tied to the side of the ger so that they would stay put and allow their babies to nurse until they were satisfied and no longer baaing into the abyss for sustenance.

Now, it’s probably 9 AM already, and I’ll do my language homework for two-and-a-half hours while my family works outdoors with the herd, singing and shouting commands, milking the goats, making sure that the lambs are getting a good nursing from the sheep (who are somewhat more concerned about having their babies separated from them and baa profusely in protest.) Ariun and Chugsom will have ridden off on horseback to herd the animals to plentiful pastures, and Tuya stays outside for a while longer before coming back inside to sweep the ger after all of the goat trafficking earlier, and to begin to prepare some kind of lunch. I rush to prepare myself for class. If it’s at another family’s ger, putting on my del and tying it the way that men do, at the hips, so that I can stuff my school notebook into the chest pouch and comfortably ride to school. My mother predictably makes the same joke that she makes every time I do this, telling me that I look pregnant. I guess I feel more confident in looking pregnant than I would feel if I were missing my homework. If language class is at Erik’s family’s ger, Ariunbold will take me the longer distance on his motorcycle, or he’ll drop me and my horse off at Bagana’s family’s ger and Bagana will ride with me the rest of the way. If the lesson is at Bagana’s, then I’m sometimes allowed to ride myself, sometimes Chugsom leads my horse, and sometimes we only take one horse and he leads me on it for the first 5 yards and then gets on behind me (which I dislike, I always feel like I’m going to fall off and I may as well walk if we’re going to ride this way.) If the lesson is at my home, however, I’ll start my homework a little bit later on and my host mom will braid my hair before I start. Then she’ll clean the ger extensively on her hands and knees, first sweeping and then painstakingly wiping every available surface with a wet rag to remove the dust and grime. Afterwards, we’ll peel and chop some vegetables together in preparation for the group lunch, and Tuya will mix flour and water and salt together and roll the dough into flat circles, either for steamed bread or to cut into thin, buttery noodles. While I work on my homework, she minces the meat for the stir-fry or soup and then I have language class for a few hours, usually between 12 PM and 2 PM, although sometimes for longer.

Once class is over, everyone will usually be relaxing at my ger for an hour or two, and I’ll play with my little sisters and read and try and face the language homework. My host mother will usually suggest that I take a nap at this time. Sometimes I take her up on it. When I wake up, around 5 or 6 PM, Tuya will tell me to put on my del and Ariunbold will take me with him on my own horse to help herd the yaks home from the pasture across the river bed. This is probably my favorite time of day. The sun is setting, and the yaks meander slowly with some prompting to where Ariunbold herds them. He rides on one side of the herd, I on the other, sometimes stopping to encourage a young yak to the resting place near the ger, instead of in the middle of the open, unprotected pasture-- sometimes to prod a particularly stubborn beast forward who wants to walk back. When we get back home I have to force all of my body weight on the baby yaks to separate them from the rest of the settling herd, and tie them up for the evening. Once inside, I help Tuya prepare dinner; we eat, drink tea, and Ariunbold, Chugsom and I smoke. Then we usually listen to the radio for fifteen or twenty minutes, and go to sleep around 10:30 PM. It’s been a good, full day, and I always look forward to the warmth that travels at lightning speed through my body when my host mom or dad comes over to my cot and tenderly tucks me into bed, usually adding several layers to my set-up, and carefully attending to my feet.

*****

Even though this is undoubtedly never a daily ritual that I would have the opportunity to participate in the U.S., it’s very comforting to find that all of the good, familiar qualities of human mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers are able to transcend the sometimes-daunting menace of culture. Never in my life have I met people so willing to include me in their lives with so little incentive and no point of reference for my behavior; never have I been confronted with such an exorbitant amount of patience, tolerance, nor warmth from any family who didn’t know me.

In the U.S. I’ve found that many families are so protective of their own, often nearly to the point of being xenophobic of the members of other families—they don’t want their children interacting with children who have been brought up by parents using different parenting styles, have children at their homes who are in a different socio-economic class (read race), are of the wrong gender, or live in a home that isn’t as clean as theirs. These attitudes and behaviors are not only alienating; they are disturbing and don’t allow for a community to develop, and instead promote the growth of dysfunctional isolationist micro-cultures. This is not a problem that I have noted in the country of Mongolia, which is not only refreshing in its warmth towards strangers. It’s also liberating. It relieves a great deal of pressure to know that not only am I, a stranger from a strange land in a country of a fairly homogenous ethnicity and shared history that makes it particularly easy to pick me out in a crowd as such, but I am therefore a bearer of news and a valued guest. But so is anyone who is passing through the community. Everyone will be offered a cup or five of sudatsai before continuing on their way, and I think this cultural norm is extremely representative of how greatly community is valued here, despite or perhaps because of a fiercely individual lifestyle, developed and preserved for several thousands of years nearly perfectly. As a US citizen, and therefore as a member of a very new nation-state with a relatively short collective memory and an as-of-yet still newly emerging cultural norms (mostly hybrids in our melting pot), I can’t help but marvel at the depth and breadth of tradition in this country, and the meaning that it holds for the people here.