Naadam Festival…celebration, wrestling, archery, horse racing and throat singing!!!

Naadam Festival is the biggest holiday here. It is a huge celebration that is a combination of an independence celebration and the largest national sporting event. Ulaanbaatar comes to a halt, except for Naadam for about 4 days. The festival includes much traditional celebration with costumes, dancing, music, wonderful horse routines and displays of Mongolian pride. It also includes the “three manly games” – wrestling, archery and horse racing. Really women participate in everything but wrestling, but it is still called the manly games.

In order to see the most of the events, get tickets and not hassle with transportation I bought a 2-day tour package. It was a great decision. I was able to see the magnificent opening ceremonies, wrestling, archery, anklebone shooting and horse races. Also, we had great guides who shared a lot of history and stories with us. It was wonderful.

The opening ceremonies were fantastic. They included music both by an impressive military band and the national orchestra, which is great. All of the participants were in traditional dress, which is very impressive and beautiful. Then there was dancing, music, acrobatics and a colorful display of traditional entertainment. The skills and costumes are unbeatable.

Next, the horses came in bringing the Mongolian flag. The traditional flag is circular and made out of horsehair. It is majestic and beautiful. The horses are beautiful and the riders are very skilled. It is a sight not to miss. Of course, speeches and pomp and circumstances included as well.

Then the wrestling began. The wrestling went on for the full 2 days. I don’t have the best photos due to the distance, but at least you can see the dress and the sizes of the people. Mongolian wrestling is unique and fun to watch. In Mongolian wrestling there are no weight categories so people of different sizes face off together. It is a display of strength and strategy, with a lot of tradition. If it appears that a wrestler is not trying hard enough, the officials hit them on the butt. The matches can go on for quite some time. If it does not seem likely that it will end then the officials put them in a certain position with one’s head against the others shoulder and usually it comes to an end shortly after that. The match ends when one of the wrestlers is on the ground. After the victory the winner puts his hands up, bent at the elbows and then dances around. He then comes back and moves his body over the losers shoulder. Then the judges put his hat back on and he dances around the flags in the center of the area. It is fun to watch.

Though my photos of this are not the best you can tell that the wrestlers jackets are open in the front. Our guide told us that they used to be closed in front. But in some major event one person kept winning and winning and eventually won the champion match. Only when the jacket was removed did everyone see that the champion was a woman. Good for her!!! Instead of letting women wrestle they changed the tops the wrestlers wear so it would be impossible for a woman to participate in the event. This holds today, but women do participate in other events.

Next was archery. Men and women both participate and all wear traditional dress. They look so beautiful and impressive and they really can shoot. It was really fun to see. I also got to watch another event, anklebone shooting. In this event they use a small sheep anklebone, and a metal tray to shoot them with. Then they flick them across an area to knock down targets that are other bones stacked up. It is a very collegial atmosphere with chanting and encouragement for all.

After all this, I went with another person from my tour to a throat-singing concert at the Choijin Lama Temple Museum. This is a form of singing that has a very, very long history in Mongolia. If you want to hear more about it there are some cuts on YouTube; and there are Naadam bits also. The 2 people singing on this day were amazingly gifted. I do not know how they do it, but the sounds emanate from so deep in their core and the range of tones is huge. Literally, every cell in my body was vibrating and responding. The musicians accompanying the singers play a magical accompaniment to the strength of the throat signing. This was a perfect cap to a magical day.

My day started early the next morning with a 1-½ hour drive out to where the horse races are. The race we saw is considered to be one of the best ones to see. It is out in the country, in an open field, with a bit of a country fair atmosphere without all the junk at our fairs. There is one area of gers that are cooking and selling food, otherwise it is open fields with kites flying, families picnicking and about 500,000 people getting ready to watch the one race. The race is a 24-kilometer, about 14+ miles where the horses run full out the whole way. And in this race it is only 6 year olds racing. WOW!!! They are amazing. Children here start riding pretty much as soon as they can walk, and by 6 they can really ride and race. Though we just saw a part of the race, it was great to see and even better to share this tradition with Mongolians. What a gift to be here.

Truly this was a magical weekend for me with my love for and connection to Mongolia continuing to grow. I will get more pictures up on my face book page from Naadam soon. Saturday I am off to the Gobi desert, then back in a few days and off again to visit a public health doctor in Darkhan, a town near the Russian border. Then one more week here, then off to Beijing then home.

Airmag (fermented horse milk), Camel’s milk, meat, meat, meat and some veggies…food in Mongolia!

In the past week I have been treated to 2 summer delicacies here. The first is Airmag or fermented horse milk. I was invited out to my friend, Gerlee’s summer home this weekend. Two wonderful friends of hers picked me up and off we went. Her home is out of town about 30 minutes up a small mountain valley. I had a great time. On the way, there were sheep to eat for sale by the side of the road, and a woman near her ger selling airmag, and grilled meat. My hosts tested the milk, bought a bottle of it and some really good grilled meat. Later that night they offered me a bowl of the milk. You know it’s milk, or I thought yogurt like. Well, it is very, very sour. I automatically said ooh and made a face. Thank goodness my friends thought it was funny and were not offended. I had a few more drinks and I was satisfied. Apparently, this drink is very good for your health. During this time of year, some people drink only that and don’t eat all day. I can understand how that would work as it is very rich.

Today, I went with Chimge, my boss and another co-worker, Amraa to Chimge’s old office and organization. They were glad to see her and as a special treat offered us camel’s milk. It is served hot and they had added some sugar. For my taste it was much better than horse’s milk; still sour, but more milk like. It was also very rich and good. I felt honored to be a part of this treat.

The Mongolian diet is mainly made up of meat, wheat, and dairy. There are some vegetables, primarily potatoes, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Vegetables are definitely very secondary and served in small amounts. The photo here is how meat is sold in my local markets. You tell them how much you want and they cut off a chunk. I haven’t bought meat to cook here. We go to lunch together each day at a nice café near us that does home cooking. There is only one item on the menu without meat. It is cabbage rolls filled with mashed potatoes and usually with mayonnaise on top. They do have carrot salad, potato salad, and a cucumber and tomato salad. Lunches here are huge by my standards. Usually I have some hardy meat main dish, with rice, and maybe potato salad or carrot salad. The meal comes with these side dishes. This lunch costs me about $2.50. For me this works fine, because it is so much food that I often don’t eat dinner. If I do eat dinner I have a couple spots where I can get a real salad. I cannot eat wheat and that is surprising to most people here. Bread is such a huge part of the diet here, and yet they apparently have not heard of people with wheat allergies or celiac disease. To meet my treat cravings I make gluten free peanut butter cookies at home; really the only time I use my oven.

We did one more training on grant writing, project planning and small business, income generation planning. It was for the Ministry of Social Welfare and Labor here. We met with the head of the social welfare service department before the training. He reviewed our agenda and said it was what they needed. Well, once the training started, the program manager was in the class and began stating they knew all of this and it was not what they needed. They were trying to support poor people and people with disabilities in developing income generation strategies. It turned out they knew very little about starting a business, what questions to ask, etc.

So on Thursday, Chimge and I quickly tailored the training to include relevant examples, topics and information related to beginning a small business and assessing if your idea or product is needed. It went well. On Thursday night, I located some beginning information on how to write a business plan. On Friday, Tunga was working with me. We covered the business plan information and it went very well. Tunga added information and stories from her work in income generation also. By the end of the day, the participants had learned a lot, were using the information we had covered and were very excited. It ended up being a very successful training. The program manager is going to work to develop new, more complete and appropriate proposal application forms and proposal review forms and then possibly hire CSWE for more work to review those.

At the end of the day, the head of the department came down again to thank us, give out certificates and talk to the workers. He told them that now they had to go teach other workers in their district how to do this work. Once again, I saw how hard it is to work here. They had just been presented new material and were just beginning to really grasp it. Then their big boss tells them he expects them to train others. There is such great need here and so little capacity and depth in human services that people are expected to do so much and to function at levels they have not been trained for. I am glad I have been able to help increase their knowledge some and hopefully make their work a bit easier.

My life here reminds me of the movie Slumdog Millionaire. One of the things I really liked about that movie is how it showed earlier events in his life becoming relevant during the game show. I feel like this Mongolian trip has done the same for me. My past work in sexual abuse was critical to meeting a need here. In our first grant training, there was talk about the environmental and safety problems of huge sawdust mountains. I knew about these from my time living in lumber country in Oregon. For our training at the Ministry of Social Welfare all of my early career work starting and operating my own business and my experience writing business plans was very important. It has been fun to use all these different life experiences in my time here. Clearly, I am meant to be here now and share what I know. And I am so glad I know how to think on my feet and speak well in public.

This weekend is the largest holiday of the year here, the Naadam Festival. It is a two-day celebration and athletic event. There are opening and closing ceremonies, wrestling, archery and horse racing. It is a huge thing and hard to get tickets. I bought a tour package that includes tickets to all the main events, food, guide and transportation. I am so excited. Many of the events are done in traditional dress and this is a celebration of Mongolia and their way of life. I will post more about this next week. Have a great Naadam weekend!