1 September
We left Bayantes and headed for Asgat, a dry windy place with no rivers or forest. After the previous two soums Asgat was a shock. The garden here has not done so well, the cooperative members said that they had a very late frost in June and lost most of their first seedlings. They started again, but it was fairly late (this province is said to be one of the coldest in the country). They grew lots of cucumbers though, and had pickled many of them for sale in the soum centre. This cooperative also showed us the live and squirming results of the project livestock breeding program - young goats and sheep from an introduced variety that have a higher tolerance for cold and a greater yield in meat or wool.
The driver/photographer captured this photo of me with my "work" face - and how I cope with a week of dirty hair
During our meeting with the Asgat cooperative members and the soum governor we found out that the son of the local ADRA staff member had severe abdominal pain. He needed to get to Asgat clinic (18 kilometres away) and we have vehicles, so our meeting was cut short and we rushed to the clinic. Asgat soum is basically only the government building, school/dorm, and the clinic. It is one of the smallest soums I have seen. After 15 minutes at the clinic the boy came out again with instructions to be taken to Tuduvtei, a soum 60 kilometres away with a regional health centre. Asgat's ambulance was out of petrol, so we became the ambulance instead. We put the boy in the front seat of the faster car and four of us sat in the back. He was clearly in a lot of pain, and we had to stop once for him to vomit.
Our driver then changed the CD to Mozart (something he got from ADRA Czech Republic on an earlier donor visit we did together). He said that listening to Mozart might make the boy feel better, because it made the driver go to sleep in 10 minutes. We bounced along to Mozart, at least the driver and I enjoyed it. I could see the boy in the side mirror starting to look very bad. Finally we reached Tuduvtei at 7:30pm. An aged pediatrician was on duty, but the surgeon was drunk. We left the kid in their care, nothing more we could do.
It was 8pm and we had to find our way to the garden of the Tuduvtei cooperative (we were heading here anyway, so it was sort-of lucky for the boy). The garden is by a lake, and the sunset was lovely, turning the hills red and making the grasses sparkle. After following various "roads" with no success we got the binoculars out and saw the coop members in the distance clustered around a Russian van, waving at us. We reached the farm at 8:30pm. They had set up a big ger for us, complete with a fully set banquet table, high backed wooden chairs, all set on thick carpets on the grassy floor. As we ate they crowded around behind us, some taking pictures with their mobile phones. They are growing hay for animal fodder here, and vegetables. We had lovely salads, fried rice patties, and our fourth Mongolian hot pot for the trip. Cornelia (the German student traveling with us) has discovered she likes airag (fermented mare's milk) and was on her fourth cup when her head started to spin and she realised that airag contains alcohol.
When the meal was finished the table was moved aside and we lay our bed rolls down on the carpets. The fire was built up, and we went to sleep in the ger surrounded by tall, waving grasses. Those grasses woke me before dawn with sneezing and itchy eyes, but two allergy tablets later I was back to dreaming of being trapped in my sleeping bag (it gets so cold overnight that I have the hood done up completely, with just space to breathe).
2 September
In the morning we had a meeting with the cooperative members, then drove back into town to meet the governor. It was the first day of school. The boys were wearing little suit jackets, some even full suits with white shirts. The girls either wear a uniform of black dress with a white apron (looks like a French maid outfit, but apparently is a Russian influence), or they wear bright red or pink clothes, or a combination of both. Each girl seems to have a pink or red backpack with a Disney princess theme. They all have their hair up, decorated by immense scrunchies of pink or white tulle. I don't see this in Ulaanbaatar, but I have seen it in many soums. Countryside fashion.
This trip I have had four meetings with four separate soum governors. two of them had clocks in their offices showing the wrong time. All had a painting of Zavkhan's holy mountain. All had a strange arrangement of tables where the governor sat at his desk facing a long table and we sat either side of the long table, having to turn our heads at right angles to see the governor.
When we left Tuduvtei we were escorted to the soum "gate" (a big gate in the middle of nowhere, most soums have them) by cooperative members crammed into a Russian van. When we got to the gate we all got out of our vehicles and sat on little stools they had with them. A bag of sweets was placed in front of us and we were serenaded with farewell songs. The experience was at once silly and poignant. After the singing we all shook hands and said a final goodbye. Only then were we allowed to leave. A few cooperative members wiped away tears as we drove away. I was surprised to find my eyes a bit misty too.
Final update: Our emergency patient finally got his appendix out, 12 hours after we got him to the hospital. He was given pain-killers during the night and when the surgeon sobered up the surgery was done. They told us the kid was doing well.
