Today was the first day of Mongolia Tsagaan Sar - White Month. It is the first day of the year in Mongolia, so it is important for many families to start the year well. This means getting out new clothes or traditional clothes, having the family gather at the home of their parents or the eldest child, and eating a lot of steamed mutton dumplings (and sweets). This year we had three invitations. We left for the first at 9:30am. Chris decided to go traditional this year, so wore a del (traditional dress/coat thing), carried a snuff bottle and was prepared with new money. The tradition is that when you arrive in the home you must greet the eldest family member in the traditional manner (two sided hug with big sniff to either cheek) - when doing the hug the younger person places their arms underneath the older person. After the hug you present new money to the older person. It is important that it is new, so it has no history or bad luck attached to it. We figure that the Reserve Bank in Mongolia must schedule its annual money reprint for just before Tsagaan Sar to avoid too much inflation from releasing so many new bank notes!
Following the greeting the next tradition is to pass around an ornamental snuff bottle. Perhaps in some houses people actually take a sniff of the tobacco, but in my experience this is a more ceremonial tradition where people admire the bottle and take a small sniff at the lid. Chris earned the ire of ADRA's Anti-Tobacco publicist (she was part of the family group), who commented "snuff is tobacco before!" We only had a snuff bottle because our friend Bek brought his to work for Chris to borrow (he says being Kazakh he doesn't have too many people to visit). Chris spent much of the day worried he would lose or break the bottle, as a del has no pockets! He was happy when the family told him that he was too thin for a del and should fatten up a bit.
The other tradition is to have a kind of tower built of special biscuits, topped with dried curd bits, fruit, or sweets. In our case the tower was topped with sweets. No-one is supposed to eat the tower until after the three days of Tsagaan Sar, though it can be ok to take a small nibble of a piece of dried curd or something. Alesia and Keira nearly died sitting so close to such a mountain of lollies, so snuck a few when I wasn't watching. It is also traditional to have a huge amount of meat in some homes. I mistakenly took the big pile shown in the photo above for a stack of firewood when I first saw it!
We were guests of our friends Tseggi and Mitsu (used to work for ADRA in India). They have three children, Miki, Masake and Mikey. Below Masake and Keira compare their knowledge of Disney characters in Alesia's copy of the Princess and the Frog. Keira is wearing her special glittery blue del that Tseggi gave her for her birthday at the end of November. She also let me put a headband in her hair, so maybe her problem with hair brushing is easing up a little.
We were out in the ger districts (poorer settlements surrounding the city) at Tseggi's eldest sister's house. It is still -25 or so outside, so we were squashed into the kitchen and living room/bedroom. There was no floor space due to all the relatives so the kids all sat on the bed to play. Below Miki and Alesia are checking out a video they took using a camera borrowed from Miki's Japanese teacher. Alesia has a Mongolian vest on, and had her hair in braids all week, so looked all frizzy today.
Hulon, daugher of our staff member, was decked out in radiant red satin, with a gold beaded head-dress. Keira just had to try this on, and it went quite well with the stripy woolens that she was wearing under her del.
The photo of Keira and me below was taken in the car on the way to the second home visit of the day. The traffic in the city centre was quite good, because everyone was choking the roads in the ger districts. Chris had to be agressive several times to get where we wanted to go. We followed Tesggi's car all day, as the ger districts are a maze. Apparently all the older people live in the ger districts so most families with apartments head out of the city on the first day of Tsagaan Sar.
Miki and Masake wanted to travel in our car. With their winter woolies on, and the heaters blasting in the car, they quickly fell asleep. I wish my kids would do that! Actually both kids were a bit quiet today and were running mild temperatures, so I won't be surprised if in a week our girl's are sick.
We ended the day in a special way, with a visit to Nymaa's house in the ger districts. She has never invited us before, so we are glad that she wanted to invite us to her home. Her husband Turuu is a driver for ADRA, and he was shy that we would not be comfortable in their home, as they have no running water and a pit toilet, but he was wrong. Their home is on a big block on the edge of the ger districts, high on a hill. Behind them is the mountain. In front of them is a view of the ger districts distant snow covered mountains, and the city apartment buildings (would be a nice view if not for the air pollution!). Last summer we advanced Nymaa about six months salary so she wouldn't have to take a bank loan to extend her home. They used the money to build a two story extension to their two room house - so now they have a bedroom, living room (pictured below), lovely large kitchen area with a built in shower recess under the stairs, and a big room upstairs for Nymaa's sewing machines or extra visitors. The room upstairs was closed off as it is unheated (heating downstairs is provided by a stove). The shower was very inventive. They purchased a small wall mounted electric water heater and installed a small tank in the room upstairs. They fill this with water, which gets heated by the heater and gives them a hot gravity fed shower. In the tiled shower recess itself all you can see is the tap and shower rose and the drain. Very posh! The drain goes to a container outside and they reuse the water for outside things (washing the car, an obsession with everyone here). On the way home Chris and I were talking about how Nymaa and Turuu's home was something we could live in comfortably. So we are happy that we could help them avoid a bank loan with high interest, and look forward to visiting their place in summer.
At Nymaa's house we ate our third meal of vegetarian dumplings - with Keira and Chris having some meat ones, Alesia decided to be vegetarian today. Nymaa had a pile of Tin Tin and Asterix books left behind by the previous country director. Alesia loved looking through them trying to figure out the story from the pictures. We drank salty milk tea, watched a bit of the winter olympics on tv and headed home just after sunset. Happy New Year.
