City of Felt

I'll try not to get too sentimental or introspective. And attempting to summarise my year in Ulaanbaatar in a snappy (ha!) blog posting is a foolish undertaking.

Time to go. More than ready, mentally at least. But leaving is so tedious. Who actually likes all the endless goodbyes and the struggle to close overstuffed bags? In the last day or two I spend in this city I'm wearing my self-made "I heart UB" tshirt – ironically for the first time.

Guess I didn't really love UB, but I'm glad I came. Anyway, it wasn't about the city itself. I thought I wasn't gonna get them, but I did get pangs on one of the last days in UB, when I dragged myself out of bed early to film some last shots of the ger district across the road from my home.

It was a classic Mongolian day – a crisp blue sky. I stood at the highest point of the settlement and looked over the city. In spite of it all, the smokestacks and high-tension power cables had become beautiful, supplanted by ramshackle raw pine picket fences, perky stray dogs, packing-crate like houses with colourful tin roofs – and of course the gers; their little chimneys puffing away on a brisk summer morning.

The gers form the constant thread of my year. They're often visually drowned out by the ugly concrete blocks and battered Hyundais that dominate UB. So I was happy to have had this moment to be reminded this city still deserves its name.

Many hugs, parcels and bag packing sessions later, I'm ready to leave this city the way I entered it. There's a reason why filmmakers often use the device of a character waving from a train to epitomise the sentimentality of leaving. I've been on many international trains now. I always assumed they possessed one nationality, and that the one to take me from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing would be Mongolian. But the man at the door of my carriage is Chinese and livery on the outside is too. I step in, and I'm in China. Everything is different. All the fittings are the same, it's the same carriage interior I've seen maybe a dozen times, but it's different (I have to say: newer, cleaner and functioning), and the fact that every doorknob, hook, handle and window frame has been painstakingly powdercoated red, reinforces this.

The train is a melange of Mongolian and Chinese carriages. This is going to be interesting. I find my way to my compartment – that familiar space. I start getting confused about who is Mongolian and who is Chinese – seems like most in my carriage are the former. Again, what language am I supposed to speak? I love that ambiguity about international train rides (why don't I feel this way on planes?). But today it just flummoxes me.

The train's still sitting at the platform – it's Mongolia outside, it's China in the corridor, but then it's Mongolia again in my compartment. There's two young Mongolians, we talk in Mongolian, but wait a minute, they speak Chinese – and I will learn from them over the next 30 hours I share this tiny room with them...(it's another layer of discombobulation to meet not one, but two Mongolians who like China and want to speak Chinese – this is rare!) Oh god. The train gently starts to move and Ulaanbaatar slowly slides away from me. Unexpectedly I start to cry. I wipe my face on my deel coat. I am willing to be proven wrong, but what sets me off is the gut feeling that I will never return.

I've had a lot of time (maybe too much) to think while I've been in Mongolia; to plot, to daydream, to wonder about the lives of the amazingly random bunch of people I have met and about my own life and what I'd like to do. I want to travel, and I really look forward to the extended journey home (wherever that is), but I really want to stay still. In the past four days I've talked so much to people travelling in the same or opposite direction to me. What have I learnt from this and all the rest of it? Not a whole lot, as it wasn't the aim. Have I found myself? No, because I wasn't lost. But I know a bit more about what I do and don't want, I know a bit more about how some things don't change all that much, I know not to expect so much. And I know I'm already thinking about where else to go.

I've finished my work. As finished as I can make it. Loose ends tied, hope they won't come undone. Now I've left just two weeks to see some more far flung corners of Mongolia. I can't even remember how long I've wanted a holiday and to get out of UB (which is nearly a national pastime). I sojourn to the big lake in the north west of the country, the "Switzerland of Mongolia". These kinds of comparative superlatives never work out for me.

A series of tedious and uncomfortable transport connections to get there leave me unwilling to venture out of the village at the foot of the lake. So I just sit in a ger, read a book, and watch the cows wander about. No ten day horse treks for me, unlike the many Europeans I meet who have flown in to Mongolia especially to do that. I lied about being the outdoor type, again.

Back to UB in order to visit Western Mongolia. I want to see a bit of Mongolia that's different. Charming as it is, this country gets a bit samey. But with only five days to visit a place that's a gruelling six day jeep drive one way, it's the perfect opportunity to indulge in a domestic flight.

Four hours later I find myself surrounded by desert plains and low rocky mountains. And it is here in the towns of Khovd and Ulgii, and the 'road' in between that it really is Mongolia – on steroids. I expect it to be 'more' different, Western Mongolia being the exception to this country's cultural homogeneity. Instead of Buddhism and Mongolian language, it's Islam and Kazakh. But alas, still the same ubiquitous motifs: yaks, gers, mountains, grassy steppes and lakes - but more yaks! taller and more richy decorated gers! higher mountains! bluer, bigger lakes! fattier butter!

Despite being in such an out of the way place, there are no shortage of crazy intrepid travellers to run into, sort of rescue (sometimes) and swap tales with; including a couple of German cyclists who had ridden across Asia. They all make me feel a bit unadventurous.

I've now lost count of how many times I've sat in a ger. But sitting in a cavernous, Kazakh ger, decorated by technicoloured embroidery, warmed by burning dung, eating rehydrated salted yak meat (which tastes infinitely better than it sounds) with the moon and stars so close as to touch the roof of the ger, in Western Mongolia, I've had my quintessential Mongolian moment – the blue silk scarf in which to wrap up my stay in Mongolia and be on my way.

I assumed the only extra language skills I would be leaving Mongolia with would be Mongolian. But I didn't expect to become interested in a whole family of other languages: sign language.

Thanks to the interest and skills of some of the other VSO volunteers, I can now hold a reasonable conversation in contact (kinda pidgin) American Sign Language (ASL) and know a handful of words in Mongolian Sign Language (MSL). I wish I had a 100 tugrugs for every time someone said, "Wow, I thought deaf sign language was universal". There's so many spoken languages in the world, why would signed languages be any different?

It's been a necessity, but also dare I say it, addictive fun, to learn ASL to communicate with Nickson, a Kenyan VSO who is deaf (Kenyan Sign Language is another of his fluencies). I have shared an office with him for a while, and we've talked about development and disability; he's here to help local organisations with their advocacy skills and disability policy. He also gave me a lot of advice when it came to getting the ball rolling on some vocational training for deaf people at my textile NGO. My boss mentioned the idea a few months ago, and I eventually made a mini-mission out of it.

After a few interesting and crazy English–Mongolian–MSL meetings and me leaning on a couple groups to talk to each other, the NGO I work for has teamed up with a local cashmere knitting company and a group of young deaf Mongolians, who have signed up for a machine knitting course with promise of a job at the end of it. In the last few days of my work there, I've seen my colleague Altnaa (a knitting technologist) start to learn MSL, and the MSL alphabet diagram appear on the wall above my desk.

Mongolian Sign Language might seem like the obscurest of the obsure, but I amazed by the visibility of deaf culture and the deaf community here, sometimes it's several times in one week that I'll see people in the streets of UB having sign language conversations – and recently, twice in one day. I intend to continue learning sign language when I get home – both British Sign Language and ASL (mutually unintelligible)...multiplying the potential for some hilarious faux pas. Whether it's mixing up the signs for "teenager" and "sex" or accidentally using the MSL sign for "disability" in ASL (female anatomy, ahem), I can now see why many deaf people have such a bawdy sense of humour...

Riot? Political unrest? Who's got time to remember any of that when there's a fine flag-waving occasion, spectator sports and general merriment to be had. At least for the moment.

A "naadam" is simply a "festival", but the capital "N" Naadam happens every year on July 11 and 12. It's just like the olympics – except it's without the international bit and has only three sports: Mongolian wrestling, horse-racing and archery. Wait, there's a fourth: ankle-bone shooting.

The events are replicated in all provinces, but I opted to brave the biggest version, in UB. I watched the obligatory opening ceremony in the national stadium, complete with disturbing little female contortionists in fluorescent catsuits emerging from gigantic flowers, soldiers on the sidelines in various states of undress getting into their wrestling gear, people standing around with bows and arrows, and lots of very dressed up people parading on horses.

And for something I was not accustomed to, Ulaanbaatar was absolutely awash with foreigners, where had all these tourists come from? It was almost 50/50 Mongolians and outsiders. Fought my way through shashlik stalls and crowds and went for a spot of sunburn at the resplendent new white-painted archery stadium next door, where there were, well, people shooting arrows across a lawn at piles of wooden blocks (not targets) at the other end. Besides the white and blue in the searing sun, the place was a riot of traditional Mongolian brocade coats and sashes and martial-looking hats, men and women in their best traditional dress.

The second day is reserved for all the horsey shenanigans. We tripped out to the race meet a 45 minute drive out of UB. And there, nowhere in particular in the middle of a vast green steppe, were thousands of people flying kites, eating khushuur (mutton pancakes), sitting on their horses or hanging out in tents. A Mongolian horse race is just a like a Western style one, except it's much bigger (several hundred horses!) and it doesn't go round in a circle: all the riders and horses arrive from some distant point on the horizon, how they got there is beyond me. Oh, and the jockeys are little boys (and sometimes little girls)! I've been in a few pushy crowds in my time, jostling to see the action (in this case, the finish line), but the crowd of spectators usually doesn't usually include people on horses trying to shove their way to the front! So Mongolian.

So that was Naadam, a bit of sitting in bleachers, an icecream here, a khushuur there, a few seconds of actually paying attention to the sport, lying around and breathing in the green-scented perfume of the steppe. I found it all satisfyingly low key. I'm glad I'm not one of the mugs who flew from the other side of the world to see it, and only too happy for it to be something to go and check out if you live 'ere.

So the City of Felt is inflammable sometimes.

It seems like much more than a week ago that Ulaanbaatar erupted into violence over the parliamentary election results. It was a sudden flicker that died down quickly. The next day, apart from a bit of snap, crackle, pop on Facebook – with some disappointingly sarcastic comments from a few expats, life carried on as normal, and the four day 'State of Emergency' felt pretty ordinary. Some wondered about the necessity of banning alcohol for four days, but I think those who did lack perspective – for crying out loud, 5 people died.

Advised to stay at home the day after the riots, I witnessed the events from my lounge room, watching unrest in Mongolia steadily rise up the international news agenda on TV, then fall again like a tide. It was surreal to watch footage of the city I live in, so obscure and isolated in terms of the West, splashed all over English, French, Australian and German news.

So now what? I haven't been down to the square to gawp at the burnt out buildings, I'm not sure they'll tell me much. My Mongolian colleagues have little to say about it all, at least to me. There's an air of stunned apathy, after all, nothing like this has really happened before. Although there is technically no government right now, this doesn't really affect daily life - shops are open, buses run, work continues. Apart from the riots themselves, the discontent about the election results is apparently nothing new. What really is there to say?

Now I'm just left with firing off shirty emails to BBC World to demand they call the capital of Mongolia Ulaanbaatar not Ulan Bator (they actually responded the next day, bless 'em), and a few quiet moments to ponder what was destroyed or what is left of the Mongolian Museum of Contemporary Art (next to the MPRP building, the main target of the protestors' wrath). And I think about how I had planned to visit it again, and now I guess I can't.

I also can't shake the feeling that it's not just about the art...maybe a little something else was destroyed in the fire, and it may take me and Mongolians some time to realise what that is.

What to do when the going gets busy.

It should feel like a downhill stretch here now – it's about 8 weeks until I leave Mongolia, but in reality things are just getting busier.

At least I got a branded mug to drink my sanity beverage out of. I had the mugs made for VSO Mongolia (with my marketing hat on) to be used as a nice networking gift to get the NGO's name out there. The traditional Mongolian script was commissioned from the vice president of the Mongolian Calligrapher's Association, who acted like a vice president too. And it says..."Mongolia" funnily enough. We tried other words but they didn't work nearly as well.

So as I sit down with my tea I can sense the early onset of the dreaded "GRs" or "Getting Readies (to leave)". My mind swims with thoughts of job applications, Chinese visa procedures, shipping quotes, re-direction renewals and not to mention work stuff like trying to get a website off the ground, editing VSO's annual report and liaising with the Mongolian deaf community for a vocational training project.

Outside, just thinking about the crazy burst of activity that came with summer makes me tired. Ulaanbaatar is buzzing with people planting trees, painting railings and constructing beer terraces. The streets were also awash with election posters, flags and vehicles topped with loudspeakers for a month or so. I did a double-take when I saw a car emblazoned with a flag bearing a swastika. And it weren't no Buddhist swastika. It was most likely the Mongolian Fascist Party. Thankfully it was an isolated sighting. Election results are being counted as I write this.

Now, back to earth, what was it I was supposed to be doing again?

PS: The title of this blog comes courtesy of a great philosophy book.

I was a volunteer helping to shoot other volunteers last week.

Louise, VSO film producer; Tim, Cameraperson and director and Pete, Youth for Development Applications Adviser spent a busy week in Ulaanbaatar making a promotional documentary film for VSO's youth volunteering programme. I thought it would be great opportunity to practice being a fixer (guess one doesn't get too many opportunities, and despite my Mongolian not being great) and get some more production experience under my belt by assisting.

We interviewed Rob, Ruth and Zuhura, three under-26 volunteers who work here in Ulaanbaatar, invading their homes and workplaces with cameras and big fluffy microphones, and subjecting them to gruelling interviews in the (now) hot UB sun. At least that's how it felt to me, but Rob, Ruth and Zuhura were incredibly good sports about it all and very generous with their time. I guess you don't call 'em 'contributors' for nothing.

It was really interesting and insightful for me to be involved in the inner workings of the pre-production of a film. There was far more groundwork than I expected, especially when it came to briefing interviewees weeks and days before, and getting the right content and messages out of answers, after all, you usually want the characters in the film to tell the story, not a narrator speaking over the top. Constantly thinking about how answers were going to match up with the visuals being filmed was quite mind-warping. And there were a lot of technical details to happily soak up, workings of a Sony Z1 HDV camera, shoving mike cables down people's shirts, tape-logging and other paperwork...all good stuff. Working on a film can also mean a lot of waiting around, so I've been honing my conversation skills, and had some really good chats with the crew and talked to some of the volunteers' (quite brilliant) Mongolian counterparts.

The film will be shown to young people in the UK in places like universities etc. to encourage more interest in skilled volunteering abroad, also in an effort to diversify the types of young people who volunteer.

And if anything it's given me some renewed motivation to finish shooting some of my own stuff and not have so many unfinished films lying around...

 

Yet another example of the random life nature of being a volunteer...I hadn't anticipated doodling and drawing funny faces would be part of the job.

Sarah (another VSO) and I had been toying with the idea of training her Mongolian health volunteers in drawing comics. The inspiration came in the shape of a book "Grassroots Comics: A development communication tool". The aim is to encourage ordinary people to choose issues that they want to highlight in their community, generate a story and characters to carry the message and deliver it all in graphic form.

As most people have quite basic or non-existent drawing skills, the comics are bound to look clumsy – but this is an advantage; viewers can see the comics are from the community and clearly not some slick
government propaganda (hence "grassroots").

We designed the training and ran it over two days, with six participants, of mixed ages and genders, all community health visitors who had shown an interest in doing the comic workshop. Because they give their time to help improve health in their communities, we asked the volunteers to choose health issues they wanted to raise awareness of. It was great to see the completed comics at the end, about the importance of handwashing, appropriate clothing during pregnancy, exercising and keeping the environment clean.

It was a fairly slow and circuitous route to get there, but we did get there. There were unexpected challenges of course; the difficulty the participants had in coming up with stories with logical narratives, valuing drawing 'perfection' over the strength of the message and the gross underestimation of time for some activities. But both the trainers and drawers are keen to do comics again, so that's a good sign.

It's not so crappy, I'm rather fond of it actually.

My priorities for visiting a tourist attraction are to take way some sort of kitsch gem, one that will make me smile every time I look at it, long after the place itself fades from memory, as it never really lives up to expectations.

It hadn't even occurred to me that the Energy Centre was 'Shambhala' (although according to Wikipedia it's supposed to be in the Himalayas. Who knows?) until I saw the badge for sale amongst tacky boxes of incense in the threadbare shop at the entrance to the Centre. The Energy Centre is somewhere in the middle of the Mars-like landscape that is the Gobi Desert. Apparently a volcanic eruption several million years ago and some

weird geological forces or alignment explain why a bunch of resplendent white stupas were dropped onto this otherwise random patch of nowhere.

There were dozens of Mongolian visitors; a cluster of them lying in the 'energy-giving' dust here, or facing north and talking on their phones waving their hands in the air there. I declined the opportunity to write my sins on a piece of paper and set fire to them at a non-descript pile of rocks. Not because I think I don't have any sins or feel unrepentant, but because I have too many.

The fine dust of the Gobi made a nice change from the coarser grit and dirt of UB. We trundled back to the nearest town, Sainshand/Сайншанд, a delightful regional capital complete with a pink Eiffel tower (a bit smaller than the other one!). I tossed and turned on the packed overnight train back to UB, wondering if possession of a plastic replica of the tower might have soothed me on my return to the big smoke.

I'd been dying to get out of UB for weeks, even if it was just for afternoon. A short Sunday trip to a monastery, Manzushir, was just the ticket.

Greg and I were picked up by our Buddhist scholar friend Batsukh and his wife Oyun. I was particularly looking forward to visiting a monastery with someone so knowledgeable and always at the ready with fascinating historical tidbits. Batsukh is in his late 50s, at a guess, and has practically been to every Buddhist country in the world. Although I don't have a great interest in the Buddhist faith per se, I've enjoyed asking him countless questions about his travels; experiencing Vietnam just after the war, attending a youth summit in North Korea in the 80s and getting permission to enter Bhutan from the King.

Manzushir follows the usual scenario in Mongolia of being the site of or remnants of a monastery destroyed by Stalinists in the 30s, with a new replacement monastery built in recent times. In this case, a thick-walled ruin was all that remained of an 18th century monastery, perched on the side of an incredibly stony valley, with the wind whistling through the pine trees. We clambered over boulders to reach the ruins and explore the familiar interior of a wooden temple (the new bit).

Even though I've been living in this Buddhist country for a while now, and seen a few monasteries (which only faintly interested me), I don't feel I've been able to understand very much about this faith (so complicated and I rarely have the patience!), so it was good to chat to Batsukh on the terrace, and for the first time got a very enlightening and interesting overview. Bat briefly explained the two main branches of Buddhism, Mahayana and Theravada, which explains why the kind of Buddhism in Mongolia (the Tibetan variety) to me seems so culturally different to what is practiced largely in South East Asia. We talked maths on the number of Buddhas (I didn't know there were so many), gods for every aspect of life and characters needed for a mask dance. He also told me we were standing in what is probably the world's oldest national park.

We walked and picnicked until the wind really started to bite. Clusters of blue silky fabric  and prayer flags tied to trees and monuments dotted the landscape, fluttering poignantly. Now I could discern remnants of the terracing on the mountainside where all the monks must have lived. For an fairly unspiritual person like me, it was nice to feel a little (just a little) moved for a change...