Summary of January 2015

February 9, 2015

January went by so quickly. Mid January, my site mate Rebecca and I went to UB for a nice break. We had been going through a lot in our community, harassment wise, so Peace Corps thought it would be good for us to come into the city for a break and speak with various staff about the issue. It was so great to just relax for 5 days and walk around a place where we were not constantly yelled at and grabbed. This past year, my province has been really focused on growing their population by getting more people into the capital center, where we all live. The Mongolian government gave my province a lot of money to build new apartments and are giving incentives for people to move from the countryside into the province centers. My province actually received the most money from the government in all of Mongolia to build up the community. New schools, stores and apartments have been built. Not only are they hoping to bring people from the countryside to the central part of the province, but also to have people who are living in Ulaanbaator, the capital, to move out to the smaller cities because of the over crowding in the capital. This has led to a boom in new people living in my town, most of whom do not know me and have never met a foreigner before. Because of this, men from the countryside have been causing a lot of problems with the female volunteers in my town. In the past 7 months we reported almost 20 incidents of physical harassment to Peace Corps, incidents like being spit on, grabbed inappropriately, yelled at, kissed followed in cars and most recently a group of men through a rope around my neck, like a lasso, and tried pulling me to their truck. Luckily, I was able to get the rope off and ran into the closest store.

After that happened, Peace Corps set up a meeting with the local police. All of the volunteers and their counterparts had to attend the meeting, where we brainstormed safety plans, voiced our concerns and a billion pictures were taken of us (the first ten minutes was like a photo op for the police..it was ridiculous but eventually they stopped and got to the actual point). Since the meeting happened, harassment has decreased dramatically. Police are now patrolling the main street and market area where all the incidents happened, and it seems to be making a huge difference. The funny part about all the harassment is, we just assumed that this was part of being an American in Mongolia. We did not report most of the incidents until I was Lasso’d because we just thought hey we signed up to live in hardship and this is part of that. After we reported all the incidents Peace Corps told us that we should never have been putting up with that kind of behavior and that they were so sorry we felt that we had to just accept it and go on about our days. For the past 2 years, I have been stared at, yelled at and grabbed by people on the streets, and that I could ignore, but once someone through a rope around my neck and tried dragging me, I knew had gone too far and something must be done. Peace Corps handled it so well and reacted so quickly and competently. While in UB we spoke to all the head staff and even a staff member from DC about it and they all were so helpful!

Another Peace Corps volunteer recently wrote about her experience in her town, even though it is much larger than mine, I can relate to many of her points. Here are a couple lines from her blog that really sum up the experience of volunteers in Mongolia and probably most other peace corps countries.

“Гадаад хүн (gadaad whoon)….The kindest translation is foreigner, but the literal one is outsider. These two words follow me from place to place whenever I leave my house. Sometimes it is just barely audible to me, whispered among a group of people as I walk by. Sometimes is it shouted from cars that drive by, just a little too fast and a little too close for comfort. Sometimes it means new, novel, exciting… like when I hear it shouted with delight by a small child as me and a group of volunteers walk by. Sometimes it doesn’t… like when a man follows me through the grocery store and stares intimidatingly while I check out.”

“There are rules. We all make them. I’ll say hi back once to each group of children. I’ll reply if they’re boys under 13 or so, girls can be older. I won’t stare back. I won’t make eye contact if they’re a man. I’ll smile if they’re elderly and greet them in Mongolian. I’ll pretend I don’t hear them if they’re drunk. I won’t walk to the black market after dark. These rules allow us to navigate the world outside our doors. They help us avoid the snickering laugher of teenage boys, or the slurring Russian of drunk men who don’t believe that I don’t understand them. Most of the time these rules are enough. Enough to keep me sane.”

“I know there are people who put up with this constant outsider feeling their whole lives. That people spend every day being stared at and having to decide if someone is just curious or has more malevolent intentions.”

“But for now, I move in the world constantly aware that I don’t belong. I’m not from here. I don’t act, look, or sound like I should. For now, for the rest of my time in the country, I will be the гадаад хүн.”

Sticking out is not always negative, sometimes the, yelling, waving and smiling of my community members, turns a bad day into a good one. Knowing that there are people so excited and happy to see me, is a wonderful feeling. But some days the yelling and waving is not so kind, and is accompanied by sexual slurs and intense hatred. The worst feeling in the world is walking down the street and being called an outsider and being told to go back to whatever country I came from. Twice this has happened to me, and both times I was spit on as I walked away from them. I want to shout back, I am here helping your country, for free. But I never engage these people, I continue walking straight ahead and try to zone out their voices. 

But for ever hostile person, there are hundreds of kind souls in my town. On January 24, my town held its annual Ice Festival. I wore my new winter deel that my Mongolian friend’s grandmother made me. It is a beautiful lavender color. (her grandmother also made me a little red baby sized deel for my future child, the cutest piece of clothing ever) For the Ice Festival everyone wears there winter deels and goes to the frozen river for sports competitions. I met my health department coworkers early that morning to drive over together in the Health Department van. They all loved my deel and kept telling me how beautiful I was. I love the people I work with. At the river, each participating organization had made ice sculptures from ice they dug out of the river. Some of the ice sculptures are so elaborate and beautiful. Many were designed to be Mongolian gers, inside each ice ger were seats, tables and sculptures unique to that organization. I ran around at the end of the day with two of my HD doctors’ kids, taking pictures in all of them.

At the festival they had a rope pull competition, target shooting, a sled relay race and curling. Each organization had teams to compete in each competition. In between competitions, we all piled into cars to keep warm and snack on milk tea and bread. I loved skating on the frozen river and enjoying the fresh air. It is so hard to want to be outside in the winter here, but I had such a great time that day and finally mastered the art of layering for the frigid temperatures. For the 5 hours we were outside, I was “comfortable” in my clothing choices: 3 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, 3 socks, winter boots, hat, scarf, gloves and a Mongolian Deel.