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!
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