Shebana Coelho
©May 2006
Spring in Khentii
Back from a month in the hoodoo, the countryside. A month in the province of Khentii with a family of nomadic herders living in gers amid steppes and mountains. A household of brothers and their families who come together at this particular place every spring to attend to about 1000 sheep, goats, cows and horses during calving season.
Spring is all about births: horocks (lambs), ishigs (kids), togals (calves), and winds: fierce winds, soft winds, dry blustery winds, moist winds, winds that bring smoke from distant forest fires, and winds that hit the ger with full force so that bits of plastic on the roof make a flapping din and people inside the ger raise their hands and yell, "Holdoré" so the wind hears and knows to move far away.
I worked outside in all kinds of weather, milked cows, herded sheep, goats, watched lambs being born, sheep being killed, ran long distances after strays, brushed cashmere from sheep, visited the birthplace of the big C. Khaan and made the acquaintance of some wonderful people. I listened to the sounds of things and people and recorded them. Spoke a lot of Mongolian and understood some. Oh and I sang – badly – while everyone around me sang beautifully. Amazing how many Mongolians have swell voices, how many songs they know, and how many moments became magical when people around me took to singing.
A collection of some moments:
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Nothing like driving anywhere you damn please, sometimes following rutted track marks and sometimes not, over fields, hills, meadows, swamps, half-frozen rivers, flowing rivers, dried-out rivers with songs trilling on the radio and not skipping a beat and everyone singing along as we are flung this way and that, our heads almost hitting the padded roof of this amazing battered Russian-made jeep called, for good reason, a SUPER Jarin Yuus.
Nothing like first morning in a ger, walking out to endless steppe, to orange sunrise over mountains.
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We are in Khentii, in the northeast of Mongolia, not too far from the Russian border, about an hour away from a "soum" or village called Bayan-Adraga.
Three gers (round white houses) in this space:
-The work ger, where lots of equipment is stored.
-The right or baruun ger -- mostly full of brothers who live in other parts of Mongolia but come here during the spring to help + one couple and one brother who live year around in the countryside. It's this brother, Bayraa who drives us down from UB. And there is also Tsolmon, Bayraa's nephew, who is 21, has spent about half his life in Mongolia, half in the States + his friend from UB, Ulaana. Tsolmon helps with translating, especially with interviews.
-The left or zhoun ger is where I lived with a lovely couple: Jagee, 31 (the youngest of the brothers), his wife Monjago, 30 and their two kids: 6 year old, Bombole and four-year old Saraa (another son, Odko who is 12, goes to school in the village). They've been living for about 7 years in the countryside. They work hard and -- as I see when they go into Bayan Adraga for a visit -- party hard as well. Monjago and I have no English between us but we get each other really well in Mongolian – she's very intuitive and quick to understand. I basically shadow her the whole day, from milking cows in the morning to running after calves at night.
So - everyone's here together in the spring as there's tons of work. Then in summer, the various families separate, cattle is divided, they move away – some back to cities, some to other parts of the steppe.
We moved while I was there, away from the mountains, close to a river.
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Mornings I wake to the sounds of – what else – the wind and the snap crackle pop of Monjago whittling bits of kindling wood and starting a fire inside the stove. Children rustling in the bed across from me, voices of Jagee and Monjago as she makes tea, he moves around, getting dressed, getting stuff he needs. From outside, persistent bleating of sheep, goats being herded out. Horses neighing as they are saddled, ridden, following sheep. A bit later, after breakfast, lots of shoveling dung out of the pens. Smell, I am told, is everything and the pens need to be clean so the sheep can smell out and recognize their offspring. Thus, every morning, symphony of metallic twangs and dull thuds as shovels scrape up thick patties of cow dung, and smaller goat & sheep pellets. Intermittent sneezing and coughing as the wind blows dust and bits of god-knows-what into our faces. Often, in the background someone kneeling besides a sheep and its lamb and singing THOEGO THOEGO THOEG, a see-saw kind of melody to coax out maternal instincts from ewes that refuse to let their lambs nurse. Bicycles wheeling by as the two boys, Bombole and Haltha Hai, ride this way and that.
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I was born in India, I say
Jimmy, Jimmy, they grin, Aa ja Aa ja.
A Hindi song?
Yes, Monjago says, from an Indian movie we've all seen. "Tansui Disco," do you know it?
Everyone – from folks in the family to folks I meet in the soum –knows this film.
Jaagee hums it again.
A boy, he says, who loves to dance.
And some girl, Monjago says, whom he loves.
Oh God, this is classic Indian rip-off of Saturday Night Fever called "I am a disco dancer." It came out in 1982, I think. They saw it in 1991 maybe, they say.
Mithun Chakravorty as Jimmy, poor boy with dancing dreams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Dancer
The Taj Mahal? Jagee asks, (actually I think he calls it something old and white) It's Mongolian, no?
I tell him what little I know: Lots of Mughal kings in India for many years; Mughal is the Persian word for Mongol; Shah Jahan who build the Taj, I read, may be descended from one of Chingiss Khaan's sons. So yes, I say, there are Mongolian connections to the Taj Mahal.
So it's Mongolian, he says emphatically.
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Listen, he asks me another day, who was next after Rajiv Gandhi?
What?
Who came after Rajiv Gandhi?
Uhh, I don't know
It's okay, he says, maybe I'll remember later.
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They are castrating a horse. Also branding it. A brown horse. It lies on its side, legs tied, rope around its mouth, trying to toss its head, Three men are holding it down while a fourth uses a vise and does the deed.
Then the balls are put in hot coals and cooked.
It's a delicacy, I am told, you have to try it.
Hmm, okay -- give me a tiny tiny tiny piece.
Here, you'll have to use your hands.
Sorry?
Your hands, you can't use a knife on this. It's a Mongolian custom, a yos.
But you've just used a vise and hot iron on…
You have to use your hands.
Fine.
It tastes mostly of charcoal and rubber.
Meanwhile the horse is -- I don't know how -- but yes, it is standing and moving away, towards the mountains where it will join other horses who run, more or less free, until they are rounded up again and caught as needed. Tsolmon is looking at the horse too. Not a stallion anymore, he says.
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I watch movies dubbed in Mongolian on the TV which is powered by a car battery and gets reception (5 channels!) from a Korean-made satellite dish outside the ger. Evenings feature Jagee outside turning the satellite dish this way and that, and Monjago inside calling out numbers on screen that indicate good reception. 5, she says. Now back to 0, now 10, now 20, 21 22, oh it's 25 percent. Stop Stop. (27 was highest I saw it go.) Sometimes you can't get around bad reception and lines crisscross the screen and make an odd sucking sound. Movies I've seen: Nacho Libre, the Queen, The Marines, the Departed, some fantasy type film with the girl from Buffy, and hilarious Jackie Chain screwball comedy in Chinese.
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Sitting on my bed, untangling microphone cords, writing down mini disc logs when Jagee comes over and picks up the microphone. He begins to talk into it, kidding around. Then he begins to sing. Then he says, here, come record the "morin khuur," the horse-hair fiddle. I begin recording; he begins playing. He asks Monjago the words to a song he can't remember; she comes over, begins to sing with him. The kids sit on the floor and join in, Saraa looking up at her mother for guidance with the words. After the song, I begin to ask about Mongolian customs but it's too complex for me to carry on in Mongolian and just then, Tsolmon and Ulaana walk in and voila, here is translator and here is interview that starts out being about Mongolian customs and ends up with story of Monjago and Jagee's courting days. Like this, they happened, many of the interviews.
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Homecomings. From one direction comes rams + ewes who have not yet given birth, from another cows, from another sheep and goats, from another sheep and lambs. One by one, the different flocks are led into different pens. Usually the sun is setting, deep pink sky, silhouetted mountains. Later, at twilight, the evening's adrenalin rush activity begins – separating cows from calves and getting calves into the pens. First one person, maybe two, go out on horses, and round up both cows and calves. Hog, Hog, Hoj Hoj -- that's what you say to get cows to move. Goorgii, Goorgii -- that's what you say to calves so they know its time to separate. Of course the calves don't listen. Which is why as they get closer, a bunch of folks are waiting to drive them into the pens. A whole lot of hooting and hollering in the dark. Calves running every which way, cows mooing like mad, people yelling like mad. There. Here. That one. This one. Hog. Goorgii. Damn. Run. Hog I said, Hoj.
Dark shapes rushing past, more yelling.
Finally done, calves in pen, cows outside settling down for night.
Walking back to ger under impossibly bright starry skies. Venus is usually out. And sometimes much much later, Mars which glows faintly red. And the moon – even when it's a new moon, you can still see the whole grey orb in shadow with that bright silver arc. And shooting stars that I always forget to wish on because I'm always surprised to see them shoot.
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Afternoon - sitting outside the ger on a plastic stool. Four-year old Saraa beside me, looking over my shoulder. Ahead, vast expanse of pale grass, yellow hill, brown mountains, lots of sheep, two men on horses and wide wide sky. So -- Saraa watching me write, men on horses shouting at sheep and boys on bicycles behind men on horses and faraway, a brown silhouetted figure. Remarkable how, even from a distance, it's unmistakable: the stance of a man peeing.
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Look, someone said today, and pointed. There it was, a faint sheen of green across the wide yellowness of the steppe. Summer is coming.
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