Live From Mongolia

by Patricia Sexton

  At dawn, the guide banged on the flap door of our tent. Thin rays of light as fine as gossamer were peeking inside. Although it was early, we’d overslept, the three of us talking late into the night, taking turns sipping from the bottle of sour, yeasty, cloudy Johnny Worker Red Labial. With a long day of riding ahead of us, there was no time to waste, so we quickly ate a breakfast of dried milk curds, clotted cream, and mugs of steaming salted milk tea. Which, by the way, is not a breakfast to have if you’re in a hurry. Although its high caloric content and heavy fat keep a nomad’s hunger at bay for the better part of a day of hard riding, it’s not the sort of meal that goes down swiftly. Soon, we were back on our horses and on our way.

  Many hours later, we were still on our way. My knees were creaking with every rhythmic bounce of my horse, and my feet had been cramped and twisted in stirrups for four long hours. Four hours, it happens, is precisely one hour too long to spend riding anything short of a Land Cruiser. The iridescent beauty of the steppe had worn off long ago, and I was grumpy. I was so uncomfortable in my wooden saddle that I‘d even begun to find the fields of buttercups infuriating.

  “How much longer?” I groaned to no one in particular.

  “You think you’re in pain?” Jason asked, pointing at his groin.

  “Is it far?” I asked the guide, who was riding patiently alongside us. Jabbing his finger out into the distance, he pointed at a tiny white dot. Resting on the edge of the quivering horizon, the little white dot was the ger we were looking for. With renewed vigor, we kicked our horses into gear and rode hard for the last hour.

  Finally, we arrived at our second night’s accommodation and shakily dismounted our horses. Unpacking again, we pitched our tent in a field of fragrant herbs dotted with equally fragrant dried dung. After a refreshing hike in the still heat over smooth mountain ridges, Evan, Jason, and I met our new hosts and helped them prepare dinner. Our guide with the purple conical hat was leaving us behind to return to his home, and I could hardly imagine riding another five hours. He mounted his horse for the long journey and waved good-bye, his purple conical hat bobbing and bouncing as he rode off into the endless distance.

  Set in the middle of another empty meadow, with only a pen of sheep for neighbors, our hosts’ ger looked just like the others. However, eager to introduce us to her home, the matron of the house invited us inside and instructed us to sit on an orange wooden daybed at the rear wall of the tiny round house. She looked to be in her midtwenties and was married to a herder. They had just one daughter.

  “Baisaltan,” said the woman shyly, introducing us to her little girl. Baisaltan’s mother didn’t offer us her name, only her daughter’s, and she put us to work right away, teaching us the art of milking a sheep.

  “Kho-ni,” Baisaltan said, “sheep,” trailing behind her mother. Baisaltan was about two years old, and she was completely devoted to a lollipop that she’d been alternating between licking and sticking to her cheek. Suddenly, emphatically, she removed the lollipop from her face and, using it as a pointer, she punched the air in front of her. “Kho-ni!” she exclaimed. “Sheep!”

  “Khoni!” I dutifully repeated back to her, and Baisaltan nodded her approval. Her mother was crouched down behind the sheep, demonstrating how to milk it. She pulled and tugged until a steady stream of thin, white cream tinkled into a tin bucket. Offering me the udder, she urged me to try. Relentlessly, I yanked and squeezed on the animal’s long, wet, hairy nipple while she brayed like a donkey. But nothing came out, not a single drop. Surely this sort of thing should come naturally to humans, especially women. Then again, I thought, maybe the sheep had emptied herself of milk. So I handed the nipple back to Baisaltan’s mother, who looked at me quizzically and finished milking the sheep, who had plenty more to offer the tin bucket.

  I retreated to where Baisaltan stood, just outside of the livestock pen. She’d stuck her lollipop back to her cheek and crouched down in the grass. I thought she was playing, so I joined her. But then, making a face of pure consternation, Baisaltan grunted heavily and defecated on the ground beneath her. Smiling satisfactorily, she stood up, removed her lollipop from her cheek, and went to work on finishing it.

  Carrying a bowl of fresh, warm milk out of the pen, Baisaltan’s mother directed us back inside her ger, where we sat at a small wooden table. Over a wood-burning stove in the center of the room, she began to prepare supper. But before we could eat, she seemed to be saying that we’d have to dress properly. From a chest of drawers, nestled between two daybeds lining the rear wall, she produced three deels, or traditional Mongolian robes worn by nomads, and laid them side by side on the dinner table. While the rice and mutton steamed, she made a paste from flour and water and used the paste to gingerly affix decorative patterns to the robes. Once she’d finished, she beamed with pride as each of us dressed in the elaborate homemade costumes. Now, dinner could be served, and not a moment too soon. After a long day of riding, hiking, and milking, mutton and rice had never tasted so splendid.

  That night, we turned in early. Although Evan and I had a chance to talk about all the things we seemed to have left unsaid, we didn’t bother. And we never would. Sometimes things are better left just the way they are. Besides, the next morning, we faced another long journey across the steppe to meet our next host, this time an old herder woman. More than anything, we all needed a good night’s sleep.

  “You, sit,” Baisaltan’s mother said to each of us at dawn, pointing at our transportation.

  Silently, I thanked the heavens and universe above that it was not, in fact, a horse. This time, we’d be traveling in style on a wooden oxcart driven by Baisaltan’s father, who smiled sheepishly at us but did not offer his name. Eagerly climbing aboard to join us for the drive, his wife and Baisaltan clambered into the front seat.

  Jason sat on top of our luggage, and Evan and I sat in the rear of the cart facing backward toward the steppe rolling slowly and methodically behind us, our legs dangling over the edge. Baisaltan sat quietly on her father’s lap, eating a fresh lollipop and occasionally nodding off. The repeated thwack of the whip on the ox’s backside kept time, chiming the moments like an old grandfather clock chimes the hour.

  Suddenly, Baisaltan screamed. She had tumbled from her father’s lap and slipped into the space between the front seat and the cart behind it. Leaping from his seat as if he’d practiced a lifetime for this very moment, her father yanked her from the ground just before the oxcart’s wheel rolled over her. After being whisked to safety, Baisaltan threw a halfhearted tantrum, which amounted to little more than a scared whimper. Then, sticking her lollipop back to her cheek, she rested her head in her father’s lap and descended once again into heavy-lidded afternoon slumber.

  Half a day later, we arrived at our new campsite. Baisaltan and her parents bade us good-bye and set out immediately for home.

  “Sain bain uu!” our final hostess cried, welcoming us to her compound, where we’d spend our last night in the steppe. Her campsite looked just like all the others: one lone ger, some livestock, a horse or two, and vast and empty fields surrounding all of it. The only difference was that she lived near a stream. And she was completely alone.

  “Tsetsge!” she exclaimed, pointing to herself and carefully sounding out her name phonetically. A cherubic, rotund old woman, Tsetsge extended her warmth at arm’s length, as if she were hesitating to do so. There seemed to be a deep sadness about her, the kind that you can’t quite put a finger on, but you’re sure is there just the same.

  “Yogurt!” she then commanded, as if the word itself were a verb, and we began setting up our tent for lunch. First though, I looked wistfully at the stream, wishing for nothing more than a bath.

  With our camp set up halfway between Tsetsge’s ger and a rushing, cold stream, we took turns stripping down to our underwear and jumping in. I went first, and as quickly as I got in, I got out. The stream water was frigid, as cold as melting snow. Negotiating slippery rocks and a fast-moving current, I tip
toed out and lay down on the dirt beach of the riverbank, delighting in the exquisite sensation of feeling clean again, even though none of us had thought to bring any soap. I tingled all over with that vague burning feeling that comes from contact with numbing cold.

  Then, while Evan and Jason bathed, I went for a walk alone in the steppe.

  When you follow a dream, one that is long on substance but short on detail, you suddenly realize one day that you’ve reached your own intersection. Looking left and then right, you know you’re free to meander, but of course you won’t. You’ve given up too much, and a glance behind serves as a reminder of just how much. Ticking items off a list you’ve kept for all the years you’ve dreamed of a different future—possessions, things, experiences you’ll miss out on once you’ve left your comfortable life behind—you finally realize that the one sure thing you’re not missing is regret. With that small but certain comfort come hope and conviction, and you eventually continue to move forward, whatever the price.

  Following the snaking path of the cold stream I’d just bathed in, I walked as far away from Evan and Jason as I could. Feeling peacefully detached, I pressed deeper into the forest that edged our camp. Tucking into a grassy, tree-covered hamlet, I knelt down. A breeze tickled the leaves, and the weakened sun danced on the path in front of me.

  “What am I doing here?” I said aloud to the air. The first time, I asked the question calmly. But after awhile, I began shouting, “What have I done to my life?” After all, I was alone in the open steppe. At least, I sure hoped so.

  The rhetorical questions I’d posed were answered with empty echoes, and I knelt quietly for a long time underneath the canopy of trees. Finally, I spoke aloud again, this time provoking a response that I wasn’t sure I wanted.

  “God, universe,” I ventured with some trepidation for the plea I was about to utter, “please take from me what you must in order to make my dream come true.” No matter what the destination, whether I became a foreign correspondent or something else entirely, I committed, out loud, right then and there, to the journey. I would keep moving forward. It was time to cross my own intersection.

  With that, I opened my knapsack and took out a sealed plastic bag. Inside the bag was a tiny square cut from a security blanket that I’d kept for a very long time. To me, it symbolized the last vestige of my former life. On my hands and knees, I cleared an area of leaves and began to dig a hole in the soft earth. In the little grave I’d dug, I deposited the square of blanket and buried it, addressing God and the expanse of the universe one more time.

  “God,” I said, this time nearly pleading. “This is my offering to you.” Crying from a combination of fear and relief and hope, I walked back to camp. The sky had grown heavy and was now colored a deep shade of purple.

  “Are your animals fattening up nicely?” Evan was saying to Tsetsge in Mongolian, asking what every Mongolian guidebook says is supposed to be a common question when you meet someone new. Sitting in the shade beneath a flap outside our tent, he and Jason were making lunch. Tsetsge sat beside them; she’d brought bowls of homemade yogurt for each of us. In her fifties and widowed, she was the matriarch of a nomad family that had left her long ago. Her husband was dead, and her adult son lived too far away to visit often. She lived alone in the steppe, without any neighbors for miles and miles around. Without even a television, her only contact with the outside world was a radio. I found Tsetsge’s complete isolation quite sobering.

  “Teem,” Tsetsge said, laughing gently, in answer to Evan’s question, “Yes.” She went on to explain to him just how fat they were, but none of us could understand much of what she was saying. Immediately after meeting someone in the steppe, it is considered obligatory for a guest to ask after the nomad’s family and his herd. Usually, the guest follows his queries about whether the animals are fattening up successfully with a command to hold off the dogs, which are trained to attack to protect the homestead. Guard dogs in the Mongolian steppe are particularly vicious in their pursuit of any intruders, even invited ones.

  Beckoning us to her ger, Tsetsge showed us an old black-and-white photo of her husband. He’d stared point-blank at the camera when the picture was taken, as if he’d been too surprised to smile. The effect was unnerving, seeing a snapshot of a moment in a life that’s already ended. With only the commonality of blunt words like “death” and “gone,” we changed the subject to the hot mutton soup she offered us.

  Suddenly, the ger door slammed shut. Tsetsge pushed it back open, revealing behind her a sky black as midnight and a gale-force wind that appeared to be releasing our tent from its stakes.

  The three of us leaped to our feet and tried to dash out into the storm, but the howling wind was so strong we could barely stand. Despite being laden with three sleeping bags, overnight packs, and food and water, the tent was succumbing. Raindrops were pelting the ground with such vehemence, the puddles looked as if they were boiling. Using our body weight in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the tent, we barked orders at each other to hold up this end or that end, zip this shut or that open. While Jason and I labored and bent over double, pasting ourselves to whichever end of the tent seemed most likely to pitch forward, Evan tried to secure the tent’s stakes.

  But it was too late. One by one, they uprooted themselves from the wet earth and our tent slowly fell on top of us while we scrambled out unzipped windows. End over end, it rolled away. But there wasn’t any time for regret. The roaring storm was growing stronger, and we had to get inside.

  Running and pushing headlong into the wind, we banged on Tsetsge’s ger door, looking for shelter. Ushering us inside, she showed me to a sagging metal orphanage-issue bed frame topped with a thin mattress, while Evan and Jason were relegated to sleeping on the floor. Across her small one-room home, she sat awake in a chair, watching over us for the rest of the night.

  The next morning, we rose early. The sky was a brilliant sapphire, a shade of blue so resplendent that the storm the night before hardly seemed possible. The only evidence of it was our possessions strewn all across the field surrounding Tsetsge’s ger. We spent hours collecting what we could before we returned by horseback to the village of Terelj and the bus stop where we’d eventually make our way back home to Ulaanbaatar.

  In Terelj, a pair of whiskered old nomads invited us into their home for one last lunch, a fitting finale to a truly epic tour of Genghis Khan’s steppe. Extending their right arms, touching their right elbows with their left hands in the traditional manner communicating hospitality, they politely offered us a bowl of airag to share. They made sure we drained every last drop, and once we did, the elder nomad lifted a knife from its sheath at his hip. Grabbing the hilt, he whisked the knife out with an impressive flourish and held it high above his head. Chunks of meat hung in a circle from hooks on the ceiling’s rafters. From this edible chandelier, the old nomad cut a few slices and offered them to us.

  “Eat!” he commanded in English, grinning playfully. It wasn’t long before we’d had our fill. Once we did, we hoisted our packs onto our backs and boarded the bus bound for our homes in the capital.

  CHAPTER 19

  Price Tag

  The working group will make their proposal to the government in August or September. This will enable the government to begin considering introducing changes to the relevant laws. The entire process should aid in Parliament’s decision-making. This will, of course, depend upon the resolution and political will of those in government responsible for this initiative

  —Interview, Finance Minister N. Bayartsaikhan, MM Today broadcast

  “Guch naim!” declared the taxi driver, “Thirty-eight degrees!”

  “Teem!” I excitedly agreed, before adding, “Ikh khaluun!” “Very hot!”

  The week in the steppe with Evan and Jason felt as if it had happened a lifetime ago. Now in a taxi on my way to an interview at TV5, I had just experienced the simple euphoria of successfully communicating with a Mongolian cab driver. A word here, a phr
ase there—this brand of rapture is a traveler’s drug. It’s a sporadic experience, however—one minute you’re rejoicing over finally understanding a simple how-do-you-do; the next you’re despairing of your incompetence in asking if someone’s sheep are fattening up nicely.

  Exchanging our views on the weather, which was still cooking the capital into torpid submission, the taxi driver told me just how hot it was: thirty-eight degrees Celsius, over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. On my way to meet with Tobie’s new boss at TV5, I was doing my best not to overheat in my excitement at having finally and simply understood a conversation in Mongolian. With tissues tucked underneath my moist armpits, I sat as still as possible, suppressing my instinct to jump into the front seat and to embrace the first person I’d successfully communicated with.

  “Go straight for a long time and then stop just after the second red building,” I went on in Mongolian, directing him with precision that surprised both of us.

  There was a certain cachet about TV5. Young, dynamic, and outfitted with lots of new technology, it was edgy. When reporting in the field, correspondents and producers wore fancy navy-blue nylon jackets with the “TV5 Mongolia” moniker boldly emblazoned on the breast. Everyone, even the secretary, dressed sharply and bore the handsome good looks of real pros.

  But more important than all that, TV5 was a member of Asiavision, a compilation of Asian broadcasters. Each day, member stations from Bhutan to Turkey fed portions of their broadcast to a central hub in Malaysia, which parcels together and spits out foreign news for local audiences.

  In other words, viewers in Bhutan could watch select stories from Turkish news, Mongolian news, or any of the other member stations’ broadcasts. Mongolia’s only member of Asiavision, TV5 was offering Tobie, and maybe me, the chance to air our stories in more than seventeen countries. It was an incredible opportunity. So incredible, in fact, that I never really stopped to think about the consequences of working for two stations at once.