Elections in Mongolia and a Ger Camp

October 24, 2008 at 10:32 am Leave a comment

Note: Am going to post this on October 24—so a lot has taken place in the last couple of weeks—including single digits for the temperature and 6 inches of snow a couple of days ago. I’ll send a blog update on that soon—but meanwhile here’s the one I prepared a while ago and haven’t been able to get on the internet to post….Pictures at the bottom I think…

I got to go out of town on Saturday, October 12^th, for the first time since I’ve been here. A few weeks ago I attended a conference put on by the local Tourist Information Center. They had invited people involved in the local tourist organizations including businesses that would appeal to tourists. Their focus was on how to attract people to Moron and keep them here for a few days instead of just staying overnight on their way to Lake Huvsgul, a very large freshwater lake a couple of hours north of here. There was a translator named Bat at the conference who sat by me and kept a running commentary on what was being discussed. He told me he owned a ger camp that was on the way to Lake Huvsgul and featured fly fishing and hiking. I offered to be of any help I could on English promotional materials. Recently I saw him on the street and he said he was going to the ger camp the next day and wondered if I would like to see it. So the next day another PCV and myself along with Bat’s wife and little 2 year old daughter drove out to the get camp, about 26 kilometers from Moron. Here’s the website: www.besudtour.com

At the bottom of the first page is a picture of Bat, the man we went with. The ger camp is called Harganat and you can see pictures of it on the website—see the top left bar. It was a beautiful day and I was glad to get out into the countryside and see a lot of animals (even yak cows—a cross between yaks and cows), sheep, cattle, and horses. On the way, we stopped to see the deer stones—see info about them on the Besud Tour website. We passed several gers along the way packing up for moves to better protected places for the winter. The gers contents were all outside being loaded up in whatever vehicles they had. We stopped in to see his uncle’s ger next to the camp and had some blood sausage from a sheep. Tasted pretty good! Bat explained that it is important that a sheep be scared when it is killed in order for some “hormones” to be released and affect the taste of the meat. He said that he once ate meat form a sheep that had been killed by lightning and it didn’t taste right.

The ger camp is on a bluff and a meandering river runs along the foot of the bluff where you can go fly fishing in some of the deeper pools. The water here is very clear.. There’s a picture in the dining room of a big fish one of his guests caught. The location is typical Mongolian countryside: a vast open and mostly treeless plain with mountains all around and a very big sky. You can see herds of animals here and there in the distance and perhaps a horse and rider among them. As Bat indicates on the website, a sweet little dining room provides views in nearly every direction. At this time of year (we haven’t had rain for weeks), it is very dry. There are few trees although some of the mountains have some evergreens but they are very are dry and brown right now (is it larches that turn brown in the winter?). Bat says it is very green in the summer. I look forward to going back next summer. The cost per night is $35 and includes three meals. If you want to go fly fishing or hiking, the cost is $60 a night and includes guides and equipment as well.

There were local elections here in Huvsgul the following day on Sunday, October 12. I’ll put a couple of pictures on my blog showing you the polling place and some voters. There are two things about elections here that I wish the U.S. would do. One is to hold elections on the weekend rather than a weekday. Seems to me it makes much more sense. The other is that people here are proud of their right to vote and actually get dressed up to go to the polls. On that Sunday, I was helping the Program Director at World Vision (a big Christian charity that operates worldwide on behalf of the poor) prepare some planning materials. Her office looked out over a school where voting was going on. It was fun to watch people arrive all dressed up in their deels. We took a break around noon and went over to see the actual polling place. People acquire their ballots and then are directed to little tables where they fill in the ballots—not as private as at home. Then they put their ballots in boxes. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Americans get dressed up to go and vote. I like that idea!

My supervisor was running for a position—I think it was a local representative for some sort of local council. As I understood it, she won as a candidate for the Revolutionary Party—which is the old communist party. The other party is called the Democratic Party and apparently it lost ground considerably in this election. I’ll have to find out why.

By the way, I found out that my deel (see photo last blog posting), is to be worn around the house in the winter like a warm bathrobe. It can also be worn outside—I often see women and men in deels on the streets now as the weather gets cooler.