The Mongolian Goodbye

After four days of living in a high school dorm I was looking forward to the trip home on Friday. It seemed like a simple matter of packing a few bags and gathering the various teachers together to convince them to get into the van. I imagined that this might take an hour, maybe two. I did't imagine that getting ready for a six hour trip might take nine hours. Or that a twelve hour trip the next day might not start until well into the afternoon. That shortness of imagination comes from not being a Mongolian.

Much of the problem is my inability to understand the Mongolian language. It was only when I asked point blank that anyone would explain, in English, what was going to happen next, or even what was happening at the moment. Even then, there was still plenty of room for error. Why are the police stopping us here? (I still don't know.) Is it really a good idea to give guns to prisoners so they can shoot dogs? (Maybe they are not actually prisoners.) And on this morning, after an hour-long scenic hike to "the school" for a meeting, a phone call where I learned that Puje and Zaya were at a restaurant—and another call to finally learn that I had been to both the wrong school and then to the wrong restaurant. At ten o'clock I got back to "the school," the one I had left from earlier that morning, in time to wait while everyone packed. By eleven we were ready.

Between then and the time we left Uuliastai, in order:
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Return to "the school," the other other one.
With rented cars and drivers, take a trip to see Otgon Tenger, one of Mongolia's holy mountains.
Celebrate seeing the mountain by drinking vodka.
Meet graduate students on the way to the mountain as we were coming down.
Celebrate leaving graduate students by drinking vodka.
Return to town, tour Uuliastai's museum.
Visit the temple and have prayers said for us.
Eat dinner at a former student's house.
Pack the van.
Avoid the police by taking an alternate route out of town. (Driver is not licensed for driving a van.)
Watch the sun set as various Mongolians discuss how to find the correct route back to Govi-Altai.

Not surprisingly, we arrived in Altai late. We had been lost only twice, stopped several times for necessary reasons, and once to see a geological landmark, though at midnight the visibility was limited. The following day they were starting to pack the van at 9 when I returned from a walk to see what I could of Altai. Before heading for home, we:

Look for former student's house for breakfast.
Return to dormitory to wait for people who have disappeared.
Shop for gifts—boxes of gifts, in addition to the three large boxes that were suddenly delivered by taxi.
Repack the van
Drive southwest out to the country for breakfast with the parents of a former student. Breakfast is meat, soup, and later, vodka
Return to town to pick up more passengers, who had not gone for breakfast. Pack more bags.
Stop at airport, near the runway, to meet alumni and the last of the passengers. The total is now sixteen, one more than we came with.
Pack the van.
Celebrate leaving by drinking vodka.

Before arriving home in the wee hours of Sunday morning, we would:

Replace a fan belt, still in daylight. Looking for a 12mm wrench, I noted that the belt was the only spare part in the driver's toolkit.
Return (fifteen minutes each way) to Darvi to retrieve a forgotten cell phone.
Stop to help a stranded driver who had run out of gas.
Lose an audio recorder, which probably fell out of my bag as I shifted it to revive circulation to my legs. My limited imagination pictures it in many pieces, having slid out the door in the dark at a pee stop. Certainly, there are other possibilities.

There are two things that Mongolians have told me, again and again, without any prompting. "We like to eat meat," and "Mongolian people are often late." Although both are true, I will add another that is more difficult to sum up in a tidy phrase. Instead I'll show you this picture from Altai, which, because I can't read Mongolian, I know nothing about. Armed with only my American imagination I can explain that this is a monument to the Mongolian who left on time. He had spent his entire childhood waiting, cramming into vehicles that would have been full with half the passengers, and lying on the floor underneath other people's legs and boxes. After a near-death experience riding a horse, he awoke one morning and realized that he didn't need to travel that way. With only the barest of necessities which he carried in the small bag that he holds in his left hand, he walked through the broken gate of his past, checking the clock in the town square as he walked off alone.
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