Talent Show !!

The schools often have talent shows for the kids. These are taken REALLY seriously, with points awared and winners declared, even in the nursery schools .... On Friday we were at this kindergarten, and one wee girl was there in her own tribe's costume, and she did this huge long dance from her own tribe away on the west on the border with Kazakhstan .... Great. Another class' entry was a dance routine to the "I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world ..." song, but all the movements and routines were traditional Mongolian.

This photo shows a dance one class performed, re-enacting "The Enormous Turnip" using traditional Mongolian dance steps.

Recently, at a different show, the judges were the Senior Methodologist and the Cook. The Cook, in fact, was a professional musician - she is Buryat, and had toured in Russia and Poland and probably other places too in communist times.

The Russian Cemetery

The Russian Cemetery is about an hour's walk from my house, behind the hill with the ovoo on it. For over 70 years there was a Russian military base a few miles to the west of Choibalsan. The Russians used Mongolia as a buffer between themselves and China, but in 1990 (I think) the order came from Moscow to pull out, and overnight, with literally no warning at all, the whole base, with a population of about 70,000 was evacuated. So sudden was their departure, that even children who were staying with Mongolian friends were left behind.

The town now has a large population of stray dogs who are quite friendly if wary of people. I have seen lots of people throwing scraps to the dogs. Many of them appear to be "almost" an actual breed - we often spot "almost a labrador", or "almost an alsatian". This, I now know, is because very recently in their genetic history they actually were pure breeds -these are offspring of the pets that the Russian people had to leave behind.

The cemetery is very small, for such a large population, but I am guessing that the population was relatively young, with troops stationed here for a few years and then went back home to live. When the ground is not covered in snow, you can see the graves - circles of white stones laid out very carefully in rows and columns. Presumably at one point there were grave markers with names and dates, but these have long since been recycled as firewood or building materials, though the actual graves are perfectly untouched. In fact, there is one grave half dug - presumably they had begun digging it one day, then that night the order for evacuation came ....

Yann and I went for a walk there last weekend, to take photographs of the winter sunset in the snow. It really was spectacular - perfect blue skies, all the pinks and oranges of the sunset reflected in the snow .... until the sun dipped below the horizon and the temperature absolutely plummeted. We were walking home as fast as we could in the short twilight, and I could feel my body getting colder : my head felt as if someone was pressing as hard as they could on either side of my skull. My hands were stinging. I couldn't feel my feet at all, and my legs were banging together as I walked. Just when I was about to start crying (I could really imagine dying of cold about half a mile from my house), a jeep stopped - a Mongolian friend of Yann's. He invited us back to his ger, and we thawed out round his stove, eating dried cheese and pickles and drinking warm milky tea. It was really lovely, really cosy. His three girls were watching cartoons on TV as his wife showed us their photo album - lots of snaps of the girls in dancing competitions at K#12, and a few of her husband in his army uniform. He had served in Iraq (he said it was not a bad place to be!), and also in Africa. I asked him where, and he thought for a moment before remembering "Siralone? Seralone?" ....

Winter is here

Last Sunday I had a great walk with Yann, one of the French volunteers, out to a salt lake to the north west of Choibalsan. It took us about 2 hours to reach it - it is very difficult to judge perspective here. From a distance it looked as if there was water in the lake - a strip of deep deep blue surrounded by blinding white. However, as we got closer, the water ... disappeared. It must have been some trick of the light. The white ground was as hard as cement, though. We were tempted to taste it to see if it really was salty, but there were lots of sheeps & goat poos everywhere, so we didn't.

On the way we passed a group of low, wooden houses, around which were heaped piles of dried horse & cow dung. This is then sold in the market for winter fuel, along with coal scavenged from mines and kindling. Though I've no idea where the kindling might come from - there are no trees for hundreds of miles ....

Life as a Volunteer

Here are some of the lovely people I work with. Sophie and Zuhura are UB volunteers. Sophie is an occupational therapist, working with the Mongolian Association of Parents of Disabled Children. She trains parents and staff in strategies to enable children to have more independent lives. Zuhura works with the Mongolian Education Alliance as a fundraiser. This photo was taken at my 43rd birthday party.

Sophie came to Choibalsan last week to take part in workshops for teachers on inclusion. Andie (the other kindergarten teacher trainer) and I were also involved, doing half-day practical sessions on differentiation. The workshops went really well. After Wednesday's session, I was interviewed on TV. I was out in the evening when the interview was shown, but Sophie said that they dubbed my voice with that of the interpreter, so that when I gave my answers, I was still talking even though my mouth had stopped moving. Wish I'd seen it ....

"Tsagaan hol"

Mongolia has really good dairy products, or "white food". There are milk sellers at different places around town. A litre of milk, straight from the cow, is 800 tugruks - about 30p. You have to boil it before you drink it as it's not pasteurised, but it's still really really tasty. The kiddies at school regularly have rice cooked in milk, and babies get dried curds as rusks. I've bought really good hard cheese in the market in Ulaanbaatar, though I've not seen it in the market here in Choibalsan - maybe because it's all taken to UB for to be sold at a better price, or maybe because the grazing around here is so poor that you can't really make much cheese. The dinner lady at K#12 makes fabulous cheese and yoghurt - it's the highlight of my week.

I read a report last week that talked about poverty and malnutrition among school-age children. Now, with people migrating to UB, many families no longer have access to fresh milk and so there is a growing incidence of calcium-deficiency. Around 30% of the children under 6 go to kindergartens. There is no fee, but the families have to pay for food, paper, pens, clothes for special presentations etc ... so many can't afford it. Also, you have to be registered as a resident in the district, and many nomadic or migrating families are not registered (there used to be a hefty registration fee and it has only recently been lifted).

On top of this, it is the teacher's job to collect "dinner money" from the families of her pupils, and if a family does not pay the monthly food charge, then the teacher's salary is docked. Yet another reason why children from less well-off families come to school.

Inside a kindergarten II

The children attend from about 8.30am until about 4.30pm. When they come in, first they do exercises, and then have "ogloni hol" - breakfast, maybe rice in milk, maybe with dried curds. Then they have a lesson with the teacher which will last about 40 mins, though it can be longer. One day it might be Maths, the next Language, the next Art, the next P.E., the next Nature, and so on. Then, after their lesson, they will be variously occupied - action songs led by the teacher, watching cartoons, playing with some toys, or just waiting ... until around 11.30 when the tables are set out for lunchtime and the children get their hands washed etc.

Lunch is a soup of meat and rice / vegetables / noodles - big platefuls, with seconds for anyone who wants it. Then after lunch, the children sleep for a couple of hours, usually on mats rolled out on the floor, but one kindergarten has wee dormitories adjoining each class. When the children wake up at around 3.30pm, they are all washed, get their teeth brushed and hair done, and then they have a review of the morning's lesson with their teacher, and some more soup, before hometime.

Inside a kindergarten

I work at two kindergartens, K#14 for 3 days and K#12 for 2 days. All the kindergartens I've visited have been scupulously clean, and very very tidy, with a lot of attention given to the beauty of the surrounding - plants, ornaments etc. It makes me wonder what the impact on children is - whether they then too absorb a sense of aesthetic appreciation of their surroundings. Even where there is very little in the way of equipment etc, the building is still very attractive.