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.
No comments:
Post a Comment