Sunday, February 11, 2007

My school was on break during January, so when most of my sitemates were headed into the city en route to SE Asia, I decided to join them and to visit my friend Luke at his work site in the Gobi Desert. Since the business was for pleasure, there was no free plane ticket on Peace Corps’s dime. It would all have to be local transportation at my expense. These “pleasure” trips are something I now realize I won’t do more than a couple times a year.
Luke’s site is a seven hour bus ride away from UB on relatively smooth roads and paths. Even so, the trip to his place was not a treat. We drew two of the worst seats on the bus. We sat in the middle of the long bench in front that faces the back of the bus. On these trips you find yourself getting mighty cozy with the people you’re sitting next to. I didn’t mind Luke’s arm around my shoulder for most of the drive and when I needed to lean forward, his knee was the perfect place to rest my hand. I didn’t feel the man-love coming from the old guy on my right. He was fat, not like a water balloon, but like a sandbag. He sat there in all his meatiness with his legs spread and his arms piled on top of his spherical paunch. The whole time crushing me against a metal rail on one side and Luke on the other.
Seems that having a person in the car to complain to makes these trips infinitely more tolerable. Saying “this sucks”, and being understood is a relief. Hearing “I’m miserable, too”, brings comfort. When there’s no one to bellyache to, and no one to share your discomfort, things suddenly become far less tolerable. A few days later, I left Luke’s and soon made the trip back out west to my work site. This time I was the only American in the car. Among the many awful things about this trip, the worst was that there was no one to tell how awful I felt, where I hurt, or how crazy I was going.
The first night they let me sit up front for a few hours because when they asked if I was cold I said, “Yes, I’m cold. My feet are freezing.” It’s something I’ve learned to say well in Mongolian. I felt awkward taking the warmest seat in the car, but figured I deserved it for a little while. The driver told me our car would leave the black market in UB at 3 o’clock, so that’s when I went to meet him. At 8 o’clock, when we actually left, my feet were already frozen through my fur-lined Mongolian boots and two pairs of socks.
While I waited restlessly those several hours for the car to move I also watched the driver’s passenger tally rise from the agreed upon ten, to eighteen by the time we left the city. The car we were in was a Russian microbus, the most common form of countryside transportation in Mongolia. It looks a lot like a cargo van, but perches up higher on it’s wheels. In the backseat I sat with four other adults and a child who often laid across us. On the middle seats, which face each other, were four adults apiece and one more kid. In the posh front seat were the driver, his wife (replaced by me for the last few hours of the first night), and his kid.
When the car finally moved and I thought we were beginning the long journey back west, we proceeded to run around one of UB’s ger districts for two hours doing mysterious errands. People were picked up and dropped off, goods were exchanged, goodbyes were said. This is all in the normal course of things, I know. These folks probably get into the city only once or twice a year and there are lots of things to be done, but I couldn’t step outside my American perspective on this one – If you have something to do, do it, but not on my time. I’m cold and tired and if we stop at one more ger I’m gonna shout at someone.– At around 10 we finally got on the road and I slept fitfully until we made our first food stop a few hours later.
We got out of the car circus-clown style, one after another for minutes until the last cramped legs hit the ground. The drivers mostly stop at the same places, so the little restaurants are open all hours of the night. I can handle most Mongolian food pretty well, but road food it is not. You have your choice of meat, lots of it, cooked this or that way, with more or less fat, and rice and pickles on the side. The food’s heavy enough to put me to sleep, but soon I start filling with a malodorous gas, and that is not delightful, not good for anyone.
I woke up the first morning, warm in the front seat. We stopped on the path for a bathroom break. Men just find a spot and take care of business. (As a side note, that goes for anytime. It’s not uncommon for me to look out my window and see a guy peeing on the corner of the next building. Broad daylight, people walking by.) Women use their long coats or dells to cover themselves up. When everyone was through, I took my place in the back again and we jockeyed against each other for position. It’s not a competition. We’re all on the same team. Everyone’s trying to give each other a little space here, a place to lean there. But, no one ends up happy or comfortable. No matter how uncomfortable, it was always a good moment when the car started moving again.
That’s the rest of the trip. Sleep, food, bathroom, stop for a girl to puke, and repeat until your soul is ground to a fine, grey powder. Forty hours after I got into the car at the black market in UB, I got out in front of my apartment. I b-lined up the stairs, put down my bags, undressed, got in my sleeping bag and put on a movie. I didn’t move for hours. I knew the drive was rough on me when I nearly started crying repeatedly while watching Grey’s Anatomy. I couldn’t bear watching people cling to life. And all I wanted was for Dr. Grey and Dr. McDreamy to get together dammit and stop playing with my emotions. Finally, I slept for hours with the feeling that I was moving slowly down a washboarded path crushed against strangers.

Monday, February 05, 2007

I need two hands and a foot to count the number of years it’s been since I’ve gone sledding. It was the thing to do in winter, really the only thing to do, growing up in rural Iowa. All the kids from the neighborhood, around ten of us, would gather on the street in our garish, reflective snow suits, boots, facemasks. And when we were all accounted for, ten neon astronauts would plod across town to Cemetery Hill, each one dragging their sled behind them on a string -- there were the generic, red plastic two seaters, dented metal saucers, runners that had been used by parents, the toboggan, and for the daring, ill-conceived snowboards with no feet holders.

Cemetery Hill is the only decent hill in Dows. From the top, I could view most of the small town and miles of snow covered farm land out to the interstate. I can’t imagine how we spent so many hours going up and down that hill. What I recall as a blistering dash down the slope, with the skin of my face pulled tightly back and a cloud of snow rising behind me, could really only have been a five second scrape down the bunniest of bunny hills, and that with a running start.

My friends and I in Mongolia met in exactly the same way the neighborhood kids used to meet. When the sixth swaddled one of us came through my door we headed out on our journey to the sledding hill. It’s a few miles out there. The river, steaming in the cold, was surprisingly not frozen at points. Many people haul their water from the river, so places where they’ve broken through, but left alone for a while, are covered by only a thin bandage of ice. Jess and Kelsey both busted through and got their feet wet the first time we went out. And David, who lived his whole life in L.A. and is experiencing his first winters in Mongolia, shuffled across the river, frozen with each creak and crack of the ice.

After the river, there’s a short scramble up a hillside, then a walk to the spot where the sled guy’s place is. As far as I know, there’s only one kind of sled in Mongolia. It’s welded out of pipes and scrap metal with a piece of wood wired to the top. It’s puzzling to behold, uncomfortable to sit on, but seemingly sturdy. Dragging these junkyard contraptions up the mountain was itself a trial. Despite the cold, by the time we reached the top we were sweating through our first couple layers of clothes.

Sledding in Mongolia approaches the way I recall sledding back home as a kid. The hill in Dows was called Cemetery Hill because it was next to the cemetery, but the name makes more sense for our hill out here, where I feared for my life and the lives of my friends each time a sled was set in motion. It’s as if the realistic dangers of going out on the hill have been scaled up to fit the way I perceived the dangers as a kid. I don’t believe I could have hurt myself sledding in Dows, but then the hill was towering and it seemed probable that I’d go home bleeding or with a broken set of teeth, something to make my mom ban me from ever dragging another sled out of the garage.

On Cemetary Hill Mongolia, there’s no way to clear all the boulders off the mountain and there’s enough snow to hide a significant number of them. There’s no one to yell at the kids to get out of the way. No one to tell you to stop being stupid and to sled from where you are. You can just keep going up, and so it’s immensely fun. Some of the most fun I’ve had in years. Each afternoon we’ve gone up we've only had enough time for 3 or 4 trips up and down. The cold and climbing make it difficult to do more. I haven’t bled, but the first time we went I broke my sunglasses and cell phone, tore my coat, and cracked the sled I was on. Never before have I destroyed so many things and been so happy about it.

At around six o’clock, with the sun tucked behind a mountain, it starts getting cold. The trip home is much less arduous than the trip up. There are Mongolian kids to follow, and unlike us, they know exactly where to cross the branches of the river. No one gets wet and we get home fast. At my apartment, none of our moms are there, but one of them sent us hot chocolate, and there’s no dryer, but my radiators are usually warm enough to heat up coats and socks. With a fire lit in the stove, a pirated movie bought in UB, and glass of cocoa each we settle in front of the laptop the way would have in front of the Nintendo and space heater back in Dows.