In Mongolia: Reflections on Early Days
It is true: I am in Mongolia. I arrived on February 25 after a day-long delay in Beijing. Currently we of the SIT program are in Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, living in a student hostel of the University of the Humanities. When we're lucky, we have hot water. I've taken two warm and one cold shower since arriving. We've been going through various sorts of orientation exercises - like a drop-off at the black market and a meeting with the US Ambassador - and beginning our first unit: Politics, Economics, and Social Change. This thematic unit has basically meant lectures from civil society and government figures; and we've supplemented all of this with language training in Mongolian. (They claim it is the secondest hardest language to learn in the world. So far I'm inclined to agree.)
On Saturday, we embark on a two-day journey to Dadal, in Hentii aimag, or province. There, we'll spend two weeks in a homestay with Buryad families, "Buryad" being a phrase that (possibly) comes from the Old Mongolian for "People of the Forest." They reside in log cabins, though they're still considered nomadic, as they have different camps through which they rotate throughout the year. It is a wooded region, so I've been told. This is the birthing season (cows), so we'll be assisting in tasks related thereto.
Thus, a location-focused schedule:
2/25 - 3/9: Ulaanbaatar
3/10 - 3/23: Buryad homestay
3/24 - 4/6: Ulaanbaatar
4/7 - 4/21: Homestays in Bayankhongor and Kharkhorin
4/22 - 5/7: Ulaanbaatar
5/8 - 6/8: ISP Period, location TBD
Something to keep in mind is that travel here is generally a two day affair. As our Academic Director likes to say, with a big smile, "Our roads are a little different here." So it's not exactly 3/9 in UB and 3/10 in Dalad; it's more like 3/10-3/11 are spent en route to Dalad. Internet will most likely be available only in UB. Academically, we're moving through four thematic units in preparation for our ISP, or Independent Study Project: Politics, Economics, and Social Change; Religion; Environment; and Nomadic Arts and Culture. I'll be helping lead discussion for Religion and Nomadic Arts and Culture. The ISP topic is of our own choosing, so I'm thinking about working through some (as yet undetermined) anthropological criticism of development discourse, exploring the interaction between Mongolia's transition to an open market economy and the parallel resurgence of Buddhism, or examining notions of "the beyond" in Mongolia's current transition period. Of course, this could all change. A Field Study Seminar and language training also take place through and within these discussions.
Otherwise, it's mostly been quite a pleasure to settle into this city, which I dare say is a fascinating place to be right now. Highlights? The black market is a really compelling reflection of the excess of the market transition in Mongolia. It's been great making a few trips there, despite getting the 8-person sandwich treatment for pick-pocketing. (They got nothing, suckers. No bag, and nothing in the pockets! Ha!) The one disco outing we've had so far - with our second to follow tonight - was incredibly fun. Dancing from 11pm till 4 in the morning. Dylan, from our program, got (extremely close to) naked for a competition at a disco we didn't know is known as a popular spot for gay Mongolians. Dylan is large, burly, and from New Hampshire. The next morning, our plan to hike a ridge south of the city at 6 am didn't quite happen. But we made it up there by about 2 pm. There are some really breathtaking mountains that ring the city, and being up within them definitely gives you the impression of being very much outside of the city. The elevation of the city is about 5,000 ft., and the mountains rise another solid 1500-2000 ft. or so. The windblown ridges, the prayer flags strung up everywhere, the wooded slopes and rocky promontories - it was like something out of an adventure magazine story about trekking in Central Asia. Below, the city looked like a lake that had collected in the valley, spread out to fill the contours of every piece of undulating land down there.
In the mornings, in these early days, we either walk or take a city bus down Peace Avenue to the SIT building. Looking down, one notices the sidewalk is fairly discontinuous, shot through with cracks, dirt, and grassy patches. Looking ahead, one sees the dour Soviet architecture cliffing the sides of the street with all of the severity of the glare of a former occupying nation. And when one looks up, one sees the mountains surrounding the city, the same "bones of the earth" - as Angela, from our program, put it - that Chinggis Khan once crossed (and recrossed) in uniting Mongolia's disparate tribes and conquering all of the then-known world. For Mongolia, it seems hard not to see - from the perspective of this newly arrived student, at least - the greatest time as past, the present time as broken, and the future as everything that uncertain can be.
Anubha made the point that my description of UB sounds like Pamuk's image of Istanbul, one in which Turkey's once-great capital is now permeated by a kind of melancholy, rooted most obviously, perhaps, in the fall of the Ottoman. And this seems, to me, a compelling comparison - with the caveat, of course, that the fall of the Mongol Empire took place much longer ago than did the collapse of the Ottoman. In that sense, time has either rooted a deeper melancholic streak in the experience of Mongolians, or time has washed over crumbling dominion with the self-reliant individualism of an insistently pasteural way of life. I, unfortunately, cannot say.
But I turn, as is my wont, to Levi-Strauss:
"If men have always been concerned with only one task - how to create a society fit to live in - the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done, but turned out wrong, can be done again. 'The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is IN US."
(Levi-Strauss quotes from Rousseau, here, and the emphasis is his own.)
I'm having trouble with the internet connection, so I will wait to post pictures. Please forgive me! I do have some good ones to post. But for now, I'm checking out, most likely not to be able to check in again until the end of this month.
On Saturday, we embark on a two-day journey to Dadal, in Hentii aimag, or province. There, we'll spend two weeks in a homestay with Buryad families, "Buryad" being a phrase that (possibly) comes from the Old Mongolian for "People of the Forest." They reside in log cabins, though they're still considered nomadic, as they have different camps through which they rotate throughout the year. It is a wooded region, so I've been told. This is the birthing season (cows), so we'll be assisting in tasks related thereto.
Thus, a location-focused schedule:
2/25 - 3/9: Ulaanbaatar
3/10 - 3/23: Buryad homestay
3/24 - 4/6: Ulaanbaatar
4/7 - 4/21: Homestays in Bayankhongor and Kharkhorin
4/22 - 5/7: Ulaanbaatar
5/8 - 6/8: ISP Period, location TBD
Something to keep in mind is that travel here is generally a two day affair. As our Academic Director likes to say, with a big smile, "Our roads are a little different here." So it's not exactly 3/9 in UB and 3/10 in Dalad; it's more like 3/10-3/11 are spent en route to Dalad. Internet will most likely be available only in UB. Academically, we're moving through four thematic units in preparation for our ISP, or Independent Study Project: Politics, Economics, and Social Change; Religion; Environment; and Nomadic Arts and Culture. I'll be helping lead discussion for Religion and Nomadic Arts and Culture. The ISP topic is of our own choosing, so I'm thinking about working through some (as yet undetermined) anthropological criticism of development discourse, exploring the interaction between Mongolia's transition to an open market economy and the parallel resurgence of Buddhism, or examining notions of "the beyond" in Mongolia's current transition period. Of course, this could all change. A Field Study Seminar and language training also take place through and within these discussions.
Otherwise, it's mostly been quite a pleasure to settle into this city, which I dare say is a fascinating place to be right now. Highlights? The black market is a really compelling reflection of the excess of the market transition in Mongolia. It's been great making a few trips there, despite getting the 8-person sandwich treatment for pick-pocketing. (They got nothing, suckers. No bag, and nothing in the pockets! Ha!) The one disco outing we've had so far - with our second to follow tonight - was incredibly fun. Dancing from 11pm till 4 in the morning. Dylan, from our program, got (extremely close to) naked for a competition at a disco we didn't know is known as a popular spot for gay Mongolians. Dylan is large, burly, and from New Hampshire. The next morning, our plan to hike a ridge south of the city at 6 am didn't quite happen. But we made it up there by about 2 pm. There are some really breathtaking mountains that ring the city, and being up within them definitely gives you the impression of being very much outside of the city. The elevation of the city is about 5,000 ft., and the mountains rise another solid 1500-2000 ft. or so. The windblown ridges, the prayer flags strung up everywhere, the wooded slopes and rocky promontories - it was like something out of an adventure magazine story about trekking in Central Asia. Below, the city looked like a lake that had collected in the valley, spread out to fill the contours of every piece of undulating land down there.
In the mornings, in these early days, we either walk or take a city bus down Peace Avenue to the SIT building. Looking down, one notices the sidewalk is fairly discontinuous, shot through with cracks, dirt, and grassy patches. Looking ahead, one sees the dour Soviet architecture cliffing the sides of the street with all of the severity of the glare of a former occupying nation. And when one looks up, one sees the mountains surrounding the city, the same "bones of the earth" - as Angela, from our program, put it - that Chinggis Khan once crossed (and recrossed) in uniting Mongolia's disparate tribes and conquering all of the then-known world. For Mongolia, it seems hard not to see - from the perspective of this newly arrived student, at least - the greatest time as past, the present time as broken, and the future as everything that uncertain can be.
Anubha made the point that my description of UB sounds like Pamuk's image of Istanbul, one in which Turkey's once-great capital is now permeated by a kind of melancholy, rooted most obviously, perhaps, in the fall of the Ottoman. And this seems, to me, a compelling comparison - with the caveat, of course, that the fall of the Mongol Empire took place much longer ago than did the collapse of the Ottoman. In that sense, time has either rooted a deeper melancholic streak in the experience of Mongolians, or time has washed over crumbling dominion with the self-reliant individualism of an insistently pasteural way of life. I, unfortunately, cannot say.
But I turn, as is my wont, to Levi-Strauss:
"If men have always been concerned with only one task - how to create a society fit to live in - the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done, but turned out wrong, can be done again. 'The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is IN US."
(Levi-Strauss quotes from Rousseau, here, and the emphasis is his own.)
I'm having trouble with the internet connection, so I will wait to post pictures. Please forgive me! I do have some good ones to post. But for now, I'm checking out, most likely not to be able to check in again until the end of this month.
Labels: BONES OF THE EARTH, Levi-Strauss, Pamuk
posted by Soe Lin Aung at 3:15 AM
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