We woke up to rains that had just finished for the day, but the
temperature had dropped yet another 10 degrees and the sun hid much of the time
behind the clouds. It would not have
been so bad except for where we traveled.
First we met with some government people that wanted to show us their
proposed projects in the areas where they have been elected to serve the
people. There are Districts, and these
are divided into Harrows. (They
pronounce the ‘H’ with a guttural sound.)
We had a rented car with a driver today because there is no place to
park where we met with these people.
With us this day was a young man who would be ‘leading this parade’. I call it a parade because we would stop and
pick up two politicians, drive to where they wanted us to put a dump station,
drop them off and then pick up another set of politicians.
You might call our day one of ‘pipe dreams’. They each took us to areas where no one else
would do a water project. After seeing
the sites, I began thinking of the song, ‘The Impossible Dream.’ There were two problems with all of them: (1)
they were too high up on the hill (these were all located in suburbs just out
of the main city) to do a borehole—who knows how long you’d have to drill to
reach any water—probably to China; (2) the dirt roads were too steep and become
impassable in the wintertime by a water truck that would be dumping his load
into the tank. The water truck people
had already been to see these areas and told them that they would not drive
their trucks up there. The politicians
(hopeful little souls) thought that we could simply build them a good road so
that the trucks could get up there. We
don’t do roads, but told them that if they wanted to partner with us, they
could make sure the roads stayed level and bladed so that it might be possible
for a truck to get up there without tipping over as it sloshed along. However, we know what the government
does. After the government bladed it
once and everyone was happy, the following year they would ‘forget’ to do
it. Then the expense of these new water
stations would go to waste. And, some
places were a bit steep and we’re still not sure if any water truck would
venture to go there.
This picture
does not begin to capture the spectacular views from the top of the hill to the
suburbs and down to UB.
As we stood on top of these hills in the icy wind, we were all freezing,
even Mugi who was born here. I brought
out my stocking hat and gloves that I’d packed (Jim smiling at me when I was
packing, telling me I’d never need them) and was the warmest person standing on
those hills. The views were absolutely
spectacular—you could see everything from there. We thought how wonderful it would be to live here
in the summertime…but now? I can’t
imagine what it would be like when it gets 40 below.
There are steam
smokestacks that are used to power the entire city.
Afterwards we ate our usual too late lunch, too early dinner—you’ve heard
of brunch, but have you heard of ‘lunchder’?
We have one every day. Then we
called it a day.
Interesting facts: *don’t put your purse, backpack, briefcase,
or important papers on the floor. It is
culturally not proper—it has something to do with putting a part of yourself on
the floor and disrespecting yourself.
*Trash cleanup is fairly good in Mongolia . Mugi
says that she puts her trash out once a month and the trash truck picks it
up. During our travels yesterday we saw
a landfill area for trash. The first day
we visited a dump station site we noticed these ladies from some environmental
group picking up trash along the road.
We visited a site where our church contracted with a group to remove a
giant pile of trash—they completed one area but not another. *A street sweeper here is a man with a
broom. We noticed them out after the
rains had stopped, sweeping up the grit in the road. It must be dangerous here since pedestrians never seem to have the right
of way. *In a land full of cows, there
must be lots of flies—this has been found to be quite true. *When you are handed a business card, hotel
bill, etc. you often receive it with two hands and a bow. This seems to be more prevalent in Hong Kong , but we also noticed this at times here in Mongolia —they are, after all, next to China . *Mongolia is probably one of the sparsest populated
countries—it is huge, but as stated before, almost everyone lives in UB. Several years ago they had one of those
extended freezes and it killed most of the animals, which left the people living
on remote ranches without food that year.
More and more people are moving closer to the city just to survive; that
is why whenever you drive in the city you feel like you’re on the ‘405 parking
lot’ (that is what we in Southern CA call one of our freeways). *To make wool cloth they first wash the wool and
then beat it till it becomes thick, wool material. Trash pick up is much better here—they just ‘missed a spot.’
Love, From Mongolia on a chilly day.
No comments:
Post a Comment