Mongolian Needle Torture

For the past three weeks or so I've had an awful pain in my hip whenever I walk, I have an ankle problem which used to give me knee pain until I got that corrected earlier this year so I figured it had something to do with that.

The pain's been getting worse and worse so based on my organization’s protocols I started by seeing the UN doctor in Ulaanbaatar. Long story short she sent me to this acupuncturist / masseuse. As I got out of the stairwell onto the 3^rd floor of the building I was directed to, the smell of ointments and herbs was so overpowering that I almost turned around, but determined to give this new experience a try I persevered.

I was ushered into a barely curtained off area in the room where the smells where wafting from, I started with a painful massage given by a young woman who would occasionally go out of the room I was in and giggle with a male attendant while I lay there in my underwear. At one point I had my eyes closed trying not to spasm from her boney figures in my stomach when I suddenly heard her say "bano?" – she nonchalantly talked on her cell phone for at least 5 minutes while jabbing my organs.

Forty-five minutes later that was finally over and I was given acupuncture, mostly on my stomach and thigh. Still lying there in my underwear the attendant my masseuse torturer was giggling with continuously poked his head through my curtain while I sat there with 20 needles sticking out of me, it was difficult to access the professional reasoning behind this considering that he was not attending me in any apparent way.

Finally the needles came out and I’m under the impression that I can finally go and relax after this stressful experience when I'm told to flip over. I lay there with another 15 or so needles in my back and on my ass when all of a sudden I feel this plastic thing on my lower back that the acupuncturist starts pumping into some suction action over the needle – the final result was a semi crescent of fist sized hickies shaping my bum cheek for about a day and a half… and the same pain I started with!

I probably could have given it another chance but was happy to settle it with the expensive ex-pat doctor with a diagnosis of tendonitis and a bag of ibuprofen!

The Real Countryside

Hutul is a soum (small town or village) which is considered to be the countryside in many respects, but in the 6 weeks I’ve been living here I’ve had a difficult time coming to terms with that. Yes, everyone knows everyone, almost as many horses as cars and I can walk the length of the area in under 10 minutes, but it doesn’t look like a “typical” countryside.

The town was constructed in the ‘70s by the Russians who built the cement factory here and anyone that came here came to work in the factory, the buildings are all perfectly identical 5 story Soviet style structures in groups of four with a playground in the middle of each. Beyond hills on three sides of the town are the “ger districts” where people live in traditional Mongolian gers or simple wooden houses. Being here had lowered my expectations of Mongolia as a beautiful country. There are beautiful places, but concrete doesn’t conjure up any nostalgia or inspiration.

Last weekend I went to Dulahan a small soum north of Darkhan closer to the Russian boarder. I loved it! The town itself didn’t have any buildings higher than a couple of stories and they were all different shapes and forms all mixed together in one area without any apparent segregation. The hills where higher and rockier than the dusty gray-brown ones surrounding Hutul and two rivers pass through Dulahan, recently unfrozen and flowing again.

We spent only one night there but a friend and I hiked for hours to the tallest hill. It was a strenuous hike but when we reached the top we were surrounded by cherry blossoms and sat on a rock for a long time taking in the beautiful view and the sweet smell. Mongolia is beautiful.

Staying Warm in May

I think that Mongolia is in desperate need for restructuring its heating systems. The country runs on coal and apparently in the winter time the pollution in Ulaanbaatar is horrible turning the Eternal Blue Sky that Chinngis Khan once prayed to into eternal gray smog. When I got to the city in February it was cold but comparable to Montreal winters, what was ridiculous though was how I constantly had the windows open in my guess house because the heating system was set so high.

In Mongolia you either have heat or you don’t, and if you have it then it’s at the exact same temperature from October 1st until May 1st. In February I had the windows open, today a week into May, I’m sleeping in my thermals and under 4 blankets while it's snowing outside!

Thermostats people.

I asked around about this and it seems like using the current system – despite the complete waste of coal, is cheaper than installing a controlled system. I think this situation epitomizes the problem of environmental protection in developing (or transitional) countries.

Mnemonic Memories

Living in Hutul without many English speakers around puts extra pressure on learning Mongolian and learning it quickly. I have a few friends here in town who I spend some time with, the way this plays out is usually them stuffing food down my throat while we teach other a few phrases in our respective languages with the help of a pile of dictionaries and language training books between us. Usually this amusing scene is successful in helping me interact and practicing the few phrases I know but my challenge lately has been in trying to remember the new vocabulary.

I’ve reviewed my notes from these meetings, I’ve tried rewriting words over and over again like some sort of punishment, I’ve even tried Sesame Street style “words of the day” which I would write on my hand and try to use in the day to drill them in my mind but nothing’s been sticking! Finally I decided to go back to what I know.

In my second year of university I enrolled into an elective “The History of Classic Greek Art and Archeology”. As a budding anthropology student I thought it would be interesting to see the physical archeological side of my discipline. I don’t remember why I didn’t drop out of that class but it tore at my soul. We would spend 3 hours looking at slides with 15 centuries worth of pottery, paintings, sculptures and architecture. We had tests every couple of weeks worth just a few percentage points but no matter how hard I would study those pictures the classical Greek names, dates, artists, materials and locations that matched them never connected and I kept bombing one exam after another.

As the semester went on I started freaking out, I’d never done so bad in a class and it only got worse after my final exam schedule came out, I had 5 finals consecutively squashed into 4 days and couldn’t spare the time to figure out the difference between Daedalic and Severe sculpture styles anymore. The night before I had to sit for that impending exam I finally pulled out my text book and stared at one clay pot after another trying to drill all the details into my exhausted mind, I was studying an archeological plan which had a long path going up to a main temple, I began picturing the beautiful goddess Hera walking up that path and imagined that there was water on either side of it, as she walked up that path salmon were jumping out of the water over the path to the other side, 6 on the left jumping over 5 on the right, Hera being a bit freaked out by these weird fishes runs into the temple for sanctuary – and that’s how I remembered that The Sanctuary of Hera dating back to 650BC was excavated in Samos.

I spent the entire night fantasizing ridiculous, often perverted, intricate stories and images. At the end of the three hour exam I looked up and found that I was one of the only people still there – not because I was struggling to remember but because I remembered so many details that I couldn’t stop writing!

Now when I have to remember the word for “question” an image of a menacing cartoon interrogation mark pops into my mind since the word for question асуулт sounds like “assault” and if I can’t remember I can say “мартах” because it rhymes with partaay and if you party too much it’s only natural to forget.