Ruthy in Mongolia
 An average day in the life... I was thinking about my blog and the type of content for my blog. I was thinking things of interest might be the culture, my work, contrasts to the UK and that kind of thing. Then today I thought it might just be interesting to know what I do on an average day, what do I eat, where do I go, who do I see and that kind of thing!! Well, today seems as average as any other so I`m going to detail my Thursday 23rd April (St. Georges day and Shakespeare`s birthday). So I woke up at 7.30am, I felt awful and congested and snotty so I went back to sleep until 8.15am! I got up and checked to see what the weather was doing: it is still highly likely we`ll get hit by nasty blizzards or lovely tropical sunshine so it is essential to check the weather! Today, as it turns out, is cloudy and about -1 degrees Celsius. I stumble around trying to get washed, dressed and looking marginally respectable. I take my multivitamins and my extra vitamin C in an attempt to fool myself into the idea that I am at least putting two good things into my body to counter pollution, diarrhoea and a poor diet! This morning I went to have my quick breakfast of Russian sugary cereal but I`d finished it so I quickly cut some bread to make toast. Toast isn`t really known or eaten in Mongolia so most homes won`t have a toaster so to toast bread I put a little margarine on and whack it in a frying pan, healthy I know! Luckily mum had sent me some Marmite so it wasn`t a major crisis when I burnt my toast! I brush my teeth, gather my laptop and work stuff and head off to work at about 9.15am. My walk to work takes about 10-15 minutes, I live in a part of Ulaanbaatar (UB) called the 11th District which is fairly central and even piloting a police camera safety zone thing! Which either means as a consequence we`re in a safer District or we are in a dodgy one and that is why it got the cameras! I walk past a junior school called imaginatively `school number 2`. In Mongolia there is no fear or concern over children`s protection like in the UK so most people (including myself) take a short cut through the school playground and this is completely acceptable. My home is also near the national University so there are always lots of students walking about. I go past two busy little tin shacks that sell cigarettes (individually or by the packet) and sweets and then past about a hundred boys playing basketball (no matter what the weather is doing). Then I pass a group of old traditional circular buildings that used to house the Mongolian circus but now resembles a monastery and blasts out traditional Mongolian music. I`m not sure what goes on in there, it gives off a Buddhist monastery vibe, there`s always tons of people going in and out. My colleagues said the buildings are all rented out to private businesses so maybe it is like a retail park but Mongolian styley. Anyway, the buildings are beautiful and it is my favourite part of my walk. Then I enter the dodgy part of my walk which is a short cut I discovered about a month ago. You walk down this teeny alley till you get to a metal container and a tiny pub (sporadic opening hours) that has nazi and swastika graffiti all over it. Lots of men seem to like to come to this bit of the alley to wee so it`s quite smelly and not always a pretty site if your timing is off! Just on the other side of the pub is where all the nearby apartments dump all their garbage for collection. Often there are some very poor people sifting through the garbage for anything they can reuse or gather and sell for some small money to the companies that recycle. This is fairly common for some very poor people in Mongolia: they walk all around the city gathering as much plastic bottles, cans or glass as possible to sell it on for a meagre amount of money. I carry on with my shortcut and pop out on a main street where there are two big bus stops. This road is always busy and you have to negotiate your way across missing big buses, mini buses and tons of cars. It is always at this point of the morning that I think I have got far too confident in crossing Mongolia`s roads and that I should be more careful! I cross over and enter a big load of new apartment blocks and their car parks. All these buildings look like they were constructed in the last five years or so. When I lived with a Mongolian family I lived in an apartment in these buildings. The apartments are really nice, I`d be pretty impressed with myself if I lived in an apartment like that in the UK. But then I shared that two bed apartment with my friend, her cousin, her brother (his on and off girlfriend and 2 year old child) and occasionally her mum, dad, uncle and grandmother. Gorgeous apartment just a bit overcrowded at times! We rent our office (one room) from another children`s organisation called the Adolescent Development Centre (ADC) which is in the basement of one of these new apartment blocks. Other organisations rent rooms in this basement including one called G-Craft which works with vulnerable girls to teach them how to make handicrafts which they then sell which generates income for themselves and their families which is much more safe than the alternatives. The combination of organisations that are all working to help vulnerable children in Mongolia makes for a really nice atmosphere to work in: there are always children running about or staff meetings between organisations or network meetings. It`s really dynamic and positive. I get into my office and set up my laptop, get some hot water (I still don`t drink water from the tap) and settle to go through emails. At the beginning of the week I write a list of tasks to be completed that week. Things obviously get added to it and changed as I go along but it serves as a good basis to check how I`m getting on. Currently I am waiting to hear whether we will host the VSO Mongolia summer conference, about a couple of project proposals I submitted earlier in April and for summer camp preparations to really get going so I have stuff to be doing but it is also a little in limbo at the moment. So Thursday was a quiet day for me in terms of work so I finished early at 5pm (normally I stay in the office till 6pm at least). I went home and read for a couple of hours. We have a TV but I interfered with it and now the speakers don`t work and besides all the channels are Mongolian or Russian so we didn`t watch it anyway! My interfering was to set up a DVD player a previous UN volunteer gave me. It is quite modern and has a woofer speaker so doesn`t really fit with the rest of our VSO volunteer furnished apartment! But we have a wonderful set up for the occasional movie night. I have always been looking for someone who likes Clint Eastwood as much as me to watch Clint movies with. Who would have thought I would have to go all the way to Mongolia to find that person?! Well I did so for the last few weeks we`ve been meeting at mine, getting some beers and watching Clint Eastwood. Awesome! I digress.... normally I`d get in an start thinking about dinner. I pretty much live off a few basic things rehashed into different meals throughout the week. My weekly shopping list mainly consists of potatoes, carrots, peppers, onions, bread, lentils, pasta, tomato pasta sauce, a carton of UHT milk and some sugary Russian kids cereal. Sometimes I will treat myself to some olives (imported from Poland), some bacon (only streaky is available and this is imported from Germany) and when I`m feeling really flush I might buy some wine! Needless to say my health seems to be suffering at the moment. Maybe in the summer when I can raid the organic garden of the Mongolian Women Farmers Association (MWFA) my body will feel less wrecked! Anyway, on this night I didn`t have to cook because I was going to a friends who is Filipino and who will occasionally cook for volunteers the most delicious Filipino food. Thursday night was one of these occasions. A really wonderful volunteer that has been here since February 2007 is leaving so this Filipino feast was organised. My friends apartment is in the shopping district of UB which isn`t walking distance from central UB. Therefore my house mate and I caught a taxi. In UB every car is a possible taxi. Anyone driving by at that time could stop and give you a lift. Much like hitch hiking I guess. It is an extra way for people to earn an income. Lots of people work by day and then become a taxi for the evening. They charge you 400 Tugrigs a kilometre. As a tourist in Mongolia getting a taxi is a great way to get ripped off! Still though, the tourists might end up paying an extra 50p but for us volunteers (who get paid a Mongolian salary) that 50p is a lot of money! Even though we speak some Mongolian people see that we are Western and some seem to think we`re really rich and still try to get us paying higher prices. Our taxi driver initially wanted 4,000 Tugrigs (£1) but I told her no and explained in Mongolian that we weren`t tourists and we knew how much it was a kilometre and ended up paying 1,600 Tugrig. She was laughing when she took the right amount and I figured if you don`t ask you don`t get and she probably thought it was worth a go! My friends apartment is a lot more modern than mine. It has been redecorated recently and has wood flooring and the wallpaper is still on the walls! We ate chicken and mince Filipino dishes as well as vegetarian dishes that had broccoli and baby corn on the cob (wow!) and finished off with home cooked chocolate brownies! It was delicious and I raided the DVDs and got Milk, Benjamin Button and Twilight. There was a movie on with that gorgeous man Viggo Mortensen so we all ended the evening glued to the screen! We went home at about 11pm dropping off a couple of volunteers along the way. If I remember correctly our taxi driver tried to double the price again but we didn`t actually have enough money to pay more even if we wanted to for a hassle free life so he took what we had which was about 1,800 Tugrig. Then I got some water and passed out! That`s a day in the life of me as a VSO volunteer in Mongolia! Some days are crazy busy with work and many days I don`t get to eat delicious food and be sociable but that`s a rough account of how it goes. I missed out the masses of coffee I consume though!
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Diary Photos
| 29th Apr 2009 | |
| Kids at the non formal education centre | |
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