Excellent Pictures

Saw a pick up truck with this bumper sticker this afternoon and had no idea what it meant...still think it is excellent though.

Health Insurance 2

Ten years ago I would have been one of the nuts at town hall meetings saying stupid things about not having a bureaucrat between me and my doctor and the government not doing anything right. Then, I lived in countries that had forms of national health insurance.

I went to the doctor for a minor condition here, saw a doctor without an appointment, and was finished in about 15 minutes. My insurance (which costs me about $55 a month) covered it. My cost including prescription: $4. No months of confusing statements from doctors, testing companies, hospitals, or insurance companies. No worries about pre-existing conditions. No worries about the expense. No hassles.

Others with more serious conditions have the same experience. In Japan it was the same.

In the US we have National Health Care for Seniors and if anyone suggested it be eliminated they would get thrown out of office because it is so popular. If it is good enough for the biggest consumers (seniors), why isn't it good enough for everyone else? Why do we need to spend 16% of GNP compared to 8% or less in most other countries? How will the US compete if it costs a lot more money to hire people there? Don't people see that Americans are no healthier than anyone else?

Ridiculously expensive, a lot more hassels, no better outcomes.

I don't get it.

The Flu

A kid at the school Sandy teaches at on Monday's got swine flu and all the school was shut down for a week. Given that the school has 24 students(yes only 24} it is not a big deal. I am guessing that this will start happening quite often this fall/winter.

UPDATE

A local high school was also shut for a week due to swine flu.

A Great Birthday

My birthday is August 20th and I got the best birthday gift, Naoko. No, she is not a mail order bride (although she is looking...)

She was a student who became a good friend to both Sandy and I. She came for a short visit (Japanese style vacation) and we laughed and reminisced. Of course, she does not drink much, so the first order of business was to get a little wine in her.

Happy Birthday to me!

Giving Gifts

While in Mongolia we bought gifts for friends, acquaintance, and neighbors. As I mentioned before, the neighbors are really cute and the kids are always so happy to see us. They have given us a few small gifts...fruit, tea etc. so we bought the kids a couple of small gifts to try to even things up. Of course an hour later the kids dropped by with more fruit and tea. A never ending gift-giving contest.

We also bought a little purse for this little girl at a shop we frequent.

Mongolia

We really did not know what to expect when we went to Mongolia. We thought the landscapes would be beautiful (they were nice), but we did not know about the star attraction: the people and culture. It is hard to sum up anything in few stupid blog entries, but I will write a few ideas.

Mongolia is one of the least populated countries on earth dominated by the nomadic people and lifestyle. In a modern era, it is hard to imagine packing up all of your belongings and moving every three months, but people do it here in less than a couple of hours. They live in gers, round huts with stoves in the middle, that do a remarkable job of keeping people warm in the brutal winters here.

The landscape is so vast and open it is hard to describe. Everywhere you look there are great plains filled with thousands of animals and a few people. The people are so welcoming and hardy they seem like they are from a long past world.

Even though the people are so different, they are so similar. They laugh a lot, they love their children, and they work and work and work.

Being a cheap guy, we went for a cheap tour. This meant we traveled with a really nice French family and stayed in gers that nomads had set up to host tourist. They were not fancy resorts or even resort gers. They were very basic but they had the one thing that the other options lacked: an option to spend time with families and get to know about the real life of these wonderful people.

Overall a very interesting trip.

Russians and China

It seems that the people really like and respect the Russians because they helped them build schools and built hospitals to help conquer a STD epidemic in the 1960's. I asked our guide about the purges, which killed about 5% of the population, and she said that people here are very forgiving. It seems strange that the statues of Stalin (update: make that Lenin) have been pulled down in most places, but they still stand proudly here.


The Chinese on the other hand are not well liked at all. I asked our guide and she said something about being cheated on roadways.

Genghis Khan/Chingis Khan

We visited the capital of Mongolia that Genghis Khan (pronounced and spelled here Chingis Khan). I have always known him as a brutal warlord with no redeeming qualities.

Here he is seen as a national hero who created a united Mongolia, reduced corruption, and encouraged religious tolerance. Our guide said that playing polo with the heads of those he conquered may have been a bit harsh, but she still respects him.

The monasetary in the town was nearly totally destroyed by the Soviets, but you could still see the remains of temples of various religions which seems to support the religious tolerance thing.

Another Children's Home

Yesterday we visited the Lotus Child Center to learn about the problems that children face here in Mongolia. There was a variety of reasons that children were left here of course. They range from simple abandonment to parental alcoholism or incarceration.

The children sometimes return to the family even if the circumstances are not good because the home can not take official custody of the child. If the parents want a child back to beg on the street, the center has no choice but to release them.

The home is run by the same organization that runs Baan Unrak, the home we volunteer with in Thailand. Owing to their state controlled past, the Mongolian government has much tighter controls here. I guess that can be a good thing, but the controls seem to be used to collect bribes instead of protect the children. Either way, an interesting day.

child predators

There is a real problem with street kids here. They said it is greatly improved in the last couple of years, but they are still here and they seem to terrorize women. Two days ago one of the boys started jabbing at a woman's white shirt with his chocolate ice cream bar. She had some ice cream he wanted. Finally she screamed threw the ice cream into the bushes and ran away. The boy laughed and grabbed the ice cream and gave it to his friend. Last night I saw a similar incident.As I mentioned on the previous post, there are people working on the problem, but there is still plenty of work to be done.

Camel Rides

We spent an hour or so out on sand dunes. Great views and a lot of fun.

A couple of billboards

Two billboards I found funny. One to warn about seat belts and one to encourage small boys to be transvestites (I think).

Places we Pooped

The quality of the toilets was a bit low, but the quality of the smells and worms was quite high.

Ballons with feet...yummy

Marmots are big plague carrying rodent like creatures. Sounds delicious, eh?

We were lucky enough to be staying at ger when a man came by to sell some of the 5 he had caught. They cut those little babies up and put all of the good stuff back in the skin which was left intact. Our driver ate the bladder raw and told us these were good for men, but only once a year. I call it Mongolian sushi.

The next night they prepared the marmot. In case you want to prepare one, the directions are quite simple. Fill up the skinned marmot with the meat and some really hot stones and wire shut the opening.

Next, take a blow torch and burn off all the hair. Be careful when lighting the blowtorch because you could have a small (3 foot gas ball) explosion like we had. As things get heated up, the hair of the marmot is scraped off. Slowly the marmot inflates until it looks like a balloon with little feet (a line I stole).

I had a small try of the live which tasted like you would expect. Pretty cool experience.

Which way do I go

The roads are remarkably bad here. They are more like multi-lane dirt paths that people drive ridiculously fast on until their cars break (which they do often). There are no signs (actually there was one and are guide said it was wrong), so you stop every 30 minutes to ask if you are on the right path. Given how sparesly populated the country is, I guess it should not be a surprise.

There are very few bridges, so you drive through streams and small rivers a lot. Because their heights change, sometimes you must get out and make sure you can make it through.

The surprising thing is we traveled for 6 days and did not get stuck once.

Talk about opposites

There is limited, meaning no, electricity in rural areas. What can you do all night?
The nomad life is about as low tech as you can get except when it comes to this area. Each home has a solar panel and a big satellite dish provided by the government. It is hard to believe, but everyone has at least 4 channels.

I asked the guide what TV shows they really like here and she said, "American Idol is huge! Everyone loves Simon Cowell".

Urine and Mares Milk

Health care is not really available when you live hours from a hospital, so people must take care of their own medical problems.

It seems that urine and mares milk can cure anything. We were staying at a ger where the 18 month old girl had a fever in the middle of the night. When the mother woke, she gave her some urine when she had nothing in her stomach (apparently this is important). A couple of hours later, the girl was better. Mare's milk, which is a staple of their diet, is used to treat a variety of diseases including broken bones (I have my doubts about that one).

On the plus side, if you can get to the hospital, the care is completely free.

Education

How can kids go to school when their homes move 4 times a year, they live 20 miles away from their school and it is always below 0 in winter? All the kids live in dormitories which are provided for free, including food and books, by the government. Not sure what the quality is, but the schools looked ok.


Holtolsuren is a 14 year old girl we had lunch with. She went to school and loved literature. She was certain she would be a teacher of literature in the future. Given her confidence, I believed her.
Another girl was 6 years old and her mother had not decided whether she would go to school. I think that they think that it is possible to be a nomad with no education, especially for a girl since she only needs to cook and clean. That said, no education means no choices.

Water and Bathing

It can be surprisingly easy to get water when you are out on the Steppes (kind of like grassland). Fill out a form and the government will drill a well and give you a manual pump. It may take a bit, but at least you get water. At least in principal. One place we stayed they brought buckets from a nearby lake each day to meet their needs.

Bathing on the other hand sucks. Water is not the big problem, finding a good place to bathe is because, as you see on an earlier post, the bathrooms are not suitable, well, for anything. Either way, you have to forget your modesty and bathe outside. I think in parts, but I am not sure. The second, and bigger problem, is the weather. During the summer it is cool, but bathing is doable. In winter, the mid day temperature in winter hovers around -10 Fahrenheit (-23 Celsius).

Bottom line on bathing, people do it 2 to 3 times a month in summer and once every month or two in winter. I was desperate to find a place to post a picture of this girl who we gave some jam to. I am guessing her bathing time was soon after we left.

Made It

We arrived safetly in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. There are a few interesting stories . We are off on our tour which will include traveling to monasteries, hot springs, a waterfall, a lake, a sand dune, horseback riding and camel riding. I am pretty sure this will be the last update for a few days.