Cupcakes and choc chip biscuits

 

 

 

I’ve been a bit crook the last couple of days. The standard, regular post-Canadian illness that means I’m coughing for the next three months. No one’s in our office at the moment anyway so I brought some work home with me and wrote my attempt at a report. Because it’s summer time, different people from work are at Khovsgol, Dornod, Gobi and one’s in hospital. Apparently he’s just not feeling ‘very well’. He’s not very sick, but he’s just not feeling well so he’s gone to hospital…….. Your guess is as good as mine.

I’ve been in a baking mood lately. Cupcakes with sour worms and lollies on top and choc chip biscuits. No choc chips in Mongolia so it’s a make-your-own job. The Golden Gobi chocolate is cheapest so I bought four packets and chopped and chopped to make some little chips. The biscuits are all a bit different because I had to bake about 8 trays worth of them so some burnt, some undercooked, some waited too long to be cooked so were a bit flat. All in all, most are edible and they’ll be a welcome addition to our Hustai visit tomorrow.

The cupcakes are already gone.

Work plan

You want to know what I've been up to the last three months? Nothing.
You want to know what I think I'll be up to the next three months? Following my introduction and all the little dot points I've conjured up that goes with my work plan and what I think I can actually do.
This is my introduction. It's still in the early days but in case you're interested in why I'm actually here, this is, hopefully, how I'm going to help.

Introduction to Mongolia; nomadism, work culture and geography

Introduction

Mongolia is a nation located in largely inhospitable terrain encompassed by somewhat inhospitable neighbours. It is currently sitting in a very unique political climate that leaves many options to create a positive future. Twenty years after peacefully becoming its own entity, the country of Mongolia is still a developing nation that holds on to remnants of historical regimes, namely the Russian Soviet era, Chinese Manchu era and perhaps the greatest influence of all – Chinggis Khan’s empire.

Due to Mongolia’s relative geographic isolation and staunchly independent and patriotic culture, there has been comparatively minimal global influence. Traditional nomadic culture is being rekindled post-Soviet era to maintain the historical lifestyle and is often in conflict with the desire for globalization.

Desire for products of globalization such as television, internet, cars and fertilizer and a need to provide basic human rights such as clean water, basic sanitation and education has pushed Mongolia to overstock land, exploit natural resources and prioritise very important issues over other very important facets of running a country. The political decisions and subsequent changes made thus far have resulted in an accidental divide wedged between the richer and poorer citizens.

As a result of the rich/poor disparity and the poverty caused by developing a nation, the World Bank (with funding from the European Union and Japanese Government) implemented at the instigation of the Mongolian government the “Sustainable Livelihoods Project” (SLP). It is to be executed in three phases over twelve years.

Currently in phase two, the SLP has provided much needed support in many different aspects of Mongolian life. Projects that were initially piloted have since gained momentum and are now spread nationwide with the aim of providing support, information and research/development to improve the livelihoods of Mongolians.

The diversity of the project is immense, ranging from medical care to microfinance loans and water sanitation. The focus of this report will be pastural management as in the PIM (project implementation manual) that guides the subgroup of the SLP.

Pastural Management within the SLP is supported by many contractors such as Mercy Corps, GreenGold, Swiss Development Corporation and the Centre for Policy and Research. The support roles of such contractors are important to the maintenance of the very diverse project. They provide specifically technical expertise in their field and are engaged after much consultation and negotiation. Evaluation of contractors is ongoing to ensure efficiency.

While consultants and contractors play an important role in the SLP project, other avenues are currently being trialed to share global knowledge and best practice. The Australian government has sponsored a young Australian to disseminate knowledge and provide differing perspectives on various aspects of Mongolian pastural management. As a young professional, skills transfer will be specific and research based. Directed by a work plan devised by the SLP pastural risk management team, this report will encompass all that is possible within the work plan in the specified one year sponsored time period.

Another day, another dime

Oh wait. I'm not getting paid. Hah. The irony.

Nothing has been happening - it's business as usual. We still have no water in our house. Rumour has it: September is the date. That's a long time with no water.

It's starting to chill off a bit. It's annoying because I haven't even got to make any of the pretty dresses that I bought patterns for. We had a chilly day not too long ago and we thought it was just a chilly day. But it's been chilly ever since. Bugger. The sun is setting at about 8:30pm and it's getting earlier. Night times almost require a coat and day times are pretty dress, boots and a wool cardigan weather.


My yellow nails are looking a bit worse for wear. They look pretty scabby actually. I'll get a different colour put on tomorrow I think. Nail polish doesn't last very long! Even the good stuff, which is apparently what this is.


My workmate, Urnaa, went to Australia for a mining conference. She stayed with my housemates in Brisbane and had a wonderful time. You should have seen the smile on her face yesterday when she returned.
"Everyone is SO nice in Australia. Everyone is SO friendly. People walk past and smile at you. And if you get lost, you just ask and someone helps you and says follow me, I'll show you"
And she LOVED my housemates. Of course she did, they're amazing. But I think she believes me more now.

I've been wearing my 'new' clothes that I picked up from a volunteer that is leaving tomorrow. I have a green skirt and a blue skirt and two new shirts that are white and the other is zebra print.

I talked earlier this week to our 'in country manager' (ICM) who is in charge of ensuring our safety and sanity and auditing our work to make sure it's working. Or not. Mine is clearly not. I'm willing to take some blame for it. I honestly haven't done much to make it work. It certainly hasn't been handed to me on a platter though. And since it's become a bit more clear what my role should be, I'm even less interested. There's one thing I want to do - the seed database thing. But that's only because I've got some great contacts to help me with it.

So anyway. Our ICM was unimpressed with me/my work and how much my role has changed without her knowing. It's not my fault - my job is a trial for future projects in this area and it's not working that well. My skillset is quite obviously not what they need. And the fact they employed me on my 'policy development' skills makes it trickier because I don't have any experience. They thought my 'Policy Research Officer' position at Australian Pork Limited meant I developed policy. But I didn't. I researched cool pig diseases and developed lists of people to call when some bad pig diseases threaten Australia.

The moral to that story is that our ICM said that if half of my work plan can't be done because things have been cancelled, then maybe we need to look at shortening my assignment.

I don't know whether I'm a quitter or not but all I know was that when I lived in Canada I had a terrible time and quit early because I wanted to come home. And that's what I want to do now! Quit early to come home. It feels so naughty, and I could encourage the early end to my assignment. I'm going to subtly encourage an early end to my assignment. That way I haven't outright pushed. It would be quitting but - maybe I should just learn that living away from my friends and family and everything that I love about Australia is just silly and that I should just holiday overseas and go home to what I love to call home. It would only be a couple of months earlier than my 12 months anyway. And it's only a possibility. But it's fun to dream!

Bumblebees, wild strawberries and edelweiss

Another Friday at work, another day I left early. I’m not suppose to, but when no one’s actually in the office and you’ve run out of  paper to print things – what’s the point? I’m enjoying this researching seeds thing but the more Mongolian things I do, the more I recognise in myself that I’m not a details person. I can see what my work needs help with, how to go about it and what I can help with. But I don’t want to research the details of the seeds. I want to tell someone else that they need to research the best pastures for particular conditions that I give them. And I want to tell someone to create a survey that fits my criteria and for them to have it filled and give me the detailed results. And then I can collate the stuff and do the fun bits – organising it to make sense at a broader scale.

Of course that doesn’t help me because unfortunately at the ripe old age of 25 I do not have minions to do my dirty work for me. Shame.

So I’ll have to do it. It won’t be hard, I’ve figured out how I’ll do it and at some stage I’ll decide the depth I’ll go in to. Right now I don’t want to choose to study the Gobi because then that’s not fair to the Tsaatan Reindeer Herders, or the far-east herders in Dornod province.

It makes me sick thinking about having to go to work tomorrow. I don’t want to do it. To do what they want me to (at least what I THINK they want), I need to be in a research based university with access to all available journal articles, anthropology reports, professors with detailed knowledge of the subject and access to a lot of different facilities from computers, map printers, GIS software, decent internet to decent soil testing kits and all that jazz.

But I don’t so I have to learn to deal. That’s also hard. I don’t like to be unprepared!

Anyway, I left work early on Friday because I didn’t want to be there. Story of my life.

Friday night was another farewell party for another Australian volunteer. It’s a bit sad. There’s a lot of people leaving. When someone leaves they usually have a bit of a give away with all their stuff they’ve collected over their time in Mongolia and can’t fit in their bag. I conveniently scored a few things I’d been looking for – two skirts, a couple of jumpers and a shirt that will all be handy. The party was fun and I took a lot of photos of everyone with the leaving girls’ camera so she had some photos.

No matter where I go and what I do, I can’t escape the ballet fingers (see above right). At least they’re graceful, when other things usually aren’t.

This all made Saturday morning quite difficult. I didn’t drink much as my hangovers always suck balls but because we were out relatively late (3:30am – WAY past my bedtime) I didn’t sleep much. We drove out to Terelj in our hired van and arrived at the grossest ger camp in the world at about midday. We wanted to go horse riding but the horses were all out. There was a big work function on and they had a great time, got rip roaring drunk and puked everywhere. All around our gers, all through the toilets…. Our gers were all dirty to start with. The actual grounds was an ex-soviet factory or holiday spot, I couldn’t tell. Half the buildings were demolished. The other half look like an ancient boarding house with lots of ghosts.

The great thing about gers is that there are no ghosts. That I know of, anyway. The gers move around so much that I imagine the ghosts get pissed off and pass over just because they couldn’t be bothered keeping up with the house they’re attached to.

The afternoon was spent wandering around the fairy-filled forest hunting for strawberries, spreading fungus spores (you know the ones you jump on and they go PUFF and all the spores spread everywhere) and climbing mountains. This is two of my friends and I on top of the ridge. We even saw little yellow and black bumblebees! We also saw edelweiss which is apparently very special in other parts of the world.

I packed my little camp cooker thing and little saucepans and we ate pasta and sauce for dinner. It’s so nice not having to rely on Mongolian food. Most people stayed up drinking. In true Sally Piking Style, I piked and went to bed to read. I honestly can’t justify a hangover that’s caused by drinking terrible hot vodka in hot coke with people I’m going to spend the next year with and can get to know in a more civil environment. Plus the book I’m reading is really good and I wanted to find out if Simon the vet stayed with the circus and saved the elephant.

This all meant that despite the standard wake-ups of staying in a ger (note to self: never live in a ger, you’ll never sleep properly), I woke up relatively refreshed, unlike other ger-mates who woke up to puke a lot. We eventually organised horses to go for a 2 hour trek. It turned in to a 3.5 hour trek and I started getting tired, hungry, flustered, uncomfortable and scared. The recipe for the disaster that occurred at Khovsgol was almost fulfilled and I didn’t like it one bit. So when the guide kept whacking my horse to make it run I was crying under my sunglasses and screaming on the inside and much to my dismay, on the outside as well. He eventually got the picture and let me go at my own pace. I didn’t realise how much that horse ordeal affected me until I got back on this one. There was no way I was going to gallop on him. There is no way I was going to put myself in the same situation where I very nearly (despite what dad thinks) was killed by that rogue horse. And today’s horse was way crankier and less responsive than my horse in Khovsgol.

Basically, give me a motorbike any day. F**k horses.

The ride was beautiful but I won’t be riding again, I don’t think. Unless I can be seat belted in to those stupid saddles and someone makes stirrups long enough to be comfortable. And provides me with a motorbike helmet.

 

The drive back to UB was long and annoying although it only took an hour and a bit and the road was completely paved. We made it home, showered and then went and ate a burger/kebab at UB burger where they actually make fresh burgers and kebabs and they taste pretty good. Now I’m tired and grumpy and ready to have a sleep.

I’ve had a breakthrough lately and my photo-taking leprechaun has returned. Not really, I’m not that delusional (yet). But I want to take photos again because for a few weeks there I couldn’t give a shit about it. So I’ve organised a photo group for again this week and hopefully we’ll get some good photos. I also want to get my Russian Lomo started off so I can play with it as well.