Saturday was a day very similar to Friday. We visited more wells (that watered 16000 head of livestock and the entire village), another school and more fodder storage. We ate more mutton soup and drove around a lot. On the way back we visited a dairy farm that insures itself. It’s not a common thing over here – our project is trying to increase insurance availability. Turns out the entire area never has dzud bad enough to kill enough livestock to claim: they insure themselves because they believe they are insuring themselves for the future, when the climate changes and they get worse dzud. The idea behind the concept is great – the practicalities are not. They’re paying money to insure themselves against something that is statistically unlikely to happen. They would gain more from investing that money in diversification of their farm. But what would I know; I’m just an inexperienced geologist.
After a long drive back to the city, it was an even longer drive through the ger district to get home. The main road in to town has been cut off in order to fix it. I doubt it will ever get fixed. It’s not possible to drive on the road at all – it winds in between and over the braided river system of western UB and therefore has a lot of bridges over the river. The bridges are gone and it’s a 5m drop on to the river bed. So we had to drive around it. It took 1.5hours to get about 5km. I was so ready to scream.
On the drive back I chatted to my boss about Brisbane (he used to live there), his children, public holidays…… He makes his 15yo daughter sit and watch ’16 and pregnant’ which is a tv show on cable over here. Even if the soccer is on, he flicks channels to find the tv show and makes his daughter watch it, as a risk mitigation strategy I guess. I laughed so hard when he told me that. I also talked to him about Nadaam: he said under his breath I could take the last two days of the week off (the beginning of the week is a public holiday) – so I’m busy trying to figure out where in the world I can go with one flight from UB. It’s only one week after I go to Khovsgol with dad but it’s important to take holidays when you can get them. And when you’re given an entire week off, and you’re already getting to see the countryside for free with work – the best option is to high tail it out of town in order to get a non-Mong fix. I am especially aiming for somewhere that eats lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Ideally I’d love to go to Russia so I’m heading to the embassy today to see how long it’d take to get a visa. Else we’ll head to Seoul or Beijing or Hong Kong. It’ll be easier to go to Seoul or Hong Kong. The only issue will be clothes. I don’t have any summer clothes.
Dad’s arriving this week some time –at least, I imagine he still is. I haven’t heard anything from mum because I imagine she’s busy organizing Tegan and I to come home in November, packing for dad, working, doing things with Nikki, making sure Ebony’s okay and…. Everything else. I’ve got no problem with it because it would all be organized – but my boss is desperate to know because he wants to invite dad over for dinner. Great – more mutton (okay, that’s a bit harsh. It’d be lovely – I just wish I had advertised I was a vegetarian from the start) (of which I am not, by the way. Far from it. I just don’t like mutton, guts, coagulated blood products, offal or bones).
We’ve been having housemate issues of late: paying of rent (2months late, might I add) and bond. Last night we hopefully figured it out. Unfortunately my other housemate and I are generally non-confrontational, so together we don’t really complement each other in that regard. Anyway. Together we sorted it out and hopefully things will start to look up.
I also got a parcel from Ashleigh Webb! Parcels and letters are so great.
Yesterday was a tricky day. I had so much to do – being away in the field makes it hard to do much. And then coming back to only one day at the weekend to organize things makes it harder. I had a list but it was too long and I couldn’t prioritise things because I didn’t know what to do. So I went to the markets to get some material for some dresses.
One of the volunteers here had a horrible drama yesterday. Mongolia is just such a remote country, and everyone’s nightmare is for something horrible to happen – and it did. Her mum died in Australia and the best she could do was Skype her brother. I just can’t imagine. There’s an amazing support network here and she was looked after to the n’th degree, thank goodness. Our insurance is such that she gets whatever flights home that are available – and she was on a plane by the afternoon. It’s a 30hour flight at best with lengthy stopovers where ever you fly to. What an unthinkable journey. She would almost be home now, thank goodness.
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