I wrote this the semester after I originally studied abroad in Mongolia. Enjoy.
There is a stunning absence of America in the Mongolian Steppes. There are no trees. No flags. No skyscrapers. No anxiety.
Two weeks prior, there I was in New Jersey, hyperventilating above my suitcases which overflowed with the basic necessities: four pairs of shoes, three backpacks, two phone chargers, and the like. It was 2:30 in the morning, eight hours before my flight departure, and all I could think about was how ridiculously materialistic I would look with my oversized-sleeping bag and two gigantic suitcases for a 3-month journey. During the car ride to the airport, I felt as if I were having a literal heart attack. The anticipation and fear of living in a country that I hardly knew had existed a year ago had felt as if it were suffocating me. I did not expect to make it onto the airplane. But today, here I am in Mongolia, clutching onto the roof handles of a Russian UAZ[1], the only thing keeping me from flying out of this seatbelt-less car being the intensive foam padding on every inch of the interior. But with every bump in the road that nearly makes all of our lives flash before our eyes, my heart skips a beat with a thrilling sense of adventure.
[1] A Russian UAZ is an off-road Russian van. This particular model was a seafoam green, and had a strong World-War-II aesthetic to it.
The seven-hour van ride from the only city in the country to our host-cym[2] is filled with oscillating patterns of mountains and open plains, sparsely sprinkled with white gers[3]. An occasional herd of cows greets our van as we drive by. Every half-hour of the van ride looks the same: twenty-minutes of flat land with dull, green-brown grass extending to the tip of the earth, followed by ten-minutes of similarly-colored mountains mirroring the texture of ocean waves. Approximately once an hour, we drive through a small town consisting of no more than thirty gers and two mini-markets. The other students and I relish in the little time we have left to speak English with one another. Our conversations bounce between home life, geopolitics, music taste, and Milky Nutty candy[4]. All five of us feel as if we are all lifelong friends. It is one of the few times in my life I feel comfortable with a conversation.
[2] A cym is akin to a county. It is a province within an aimag.
[3] A ger is a tent-like mobile building that Mongolian nomads live in. It is also known as a “yurt” in America.
[4] Milky Nutty candy is the god of all candies. It has a light and crunchy exterior, and a sweet, creamy interior. Although most of us have not tried it at this point in our study abroad experience, this candy will soon overtake our lives.
We arrive at our “base camp”, a line of four neon-white gers where our program coordinators will stay during this two-week excursion. Surrounding the camp is purely monotoned grassland, capped with a sky so vividly blue it seems synthetic. We all gather inside the third ger for some long-awaited food. Sizzling in the center of the ger lies a heaping assortment of animal guts. As pungent as it smells, my stomach flutters with anticipation. Here it is: the epitome of adventure. I, Brittany Bondi, am about to eat sheep’s stomach, liver, kidney, blood sausage, and other miscellaneous organs. I am about to become the definition of the word “cultured”.
My entire mouth shrivels the moment the blood sausage hits my tongue. My stomach churns at every bite. My teeth scream at me for allowing such a texture to enter my mouth. My eyes dart from person to person, hoping that my facial expressions don’t reveal the disgust overtaking every single one of my taste buds. They do. Now, whenever someone in this ger thinks of the word “uncultured”, I will be the image they see. I suffer through half of my plate until my pathetic stomach can handle no more. I suddenly begin to dread the idea of living alone with a family with whom I do not share the same language. If I cannot go one meal without being culturally insensitive, how will I survive two weeks’ worth of food?
I meet my host family the next day. My host mother has a rugged face but a warm smile. Her name is Bayarmaa, meaning happiness. The interior of our ger has green, floral walls and orange kitchen-style flooring[5]. I sit on the red bed designated to me, my giant dufflebag taking up more than one-fourth of the ger’s space around the perimeter. My host mother hands me a cup of milk tea, plugs in the television, and continues her housework. My chest tightens. What do I say? What can I say? I could never really hold a conversation with someone in my native language, let alone Mongolian. Deep breath. I open the language book my program provided. Damn book has a dictionary with words like “gallbladder” and “zippy”, but nothing that could help me start a comprehensible conversation. As usual, my heart rate rises alongside my frustration.
[5] The “walls” are made of cloth that cover the poles and sheep-skin that make up the ger. The floors are a thin plastic faux-tile. The colors clash yet feel so homey.
Perhaps my internal panic is slightly external, as my host mother seats herself next to me. She calmly skims my book, soon pointing at a sentence. “Миний хоол дуртай ____”. My favorite food is blank.
“Миний хоол дуртай хуушууp,” I say. My favorite food is khuushuur[6]. Her smile melts my stress away. I find the courage to continue the conversation and tell her: “Таны нэр Баярмаа”[7]: Your name is Bayarmaa. I continue: “Миний монгол нэр Баярмаа”[8]: My Mongolian name is Bayarmaa[9]. Her face radiates with child-like joy. We become full of our namesake.
[6] Khuurshuur is like a Mongolian pancake filling with sheep’s meat and deep fried. It is crunchy, yet juicy and the perfect amount of savory. I would pay a Gettysburg College tuition’s worth of money to have it again.
[7] Pronounced: TAHnee Near Bye-ear-ma
[8] Pronounced: MINee Mongolth Near Bye-ear-ma
[9] We were assigned Mongolian names at the beginning of my program, before we traveled to the countryside. The names were based purely on how close they were to our American names. I know this because I cried on the first day, and the second day I was assigned a name meaning “happiness”.
A man with a furrowed face enters our ger. While visitors have come and gone throughout the day, half-laying on the floor with their elbows propping their bodies just upright enough to sip their milk tea, there is a particular aura of authority with this man. He seats himself on the floor, resting his head uncomfortably between two legs of a metal stool. My host mother hands him the dish of aarull[10] as he gently pats a heaping pile of tobacco onto a thin piece of paper. He must be my host father. Yet, the only acknowledgement of my existence from him comes from his cigarette smoke flying partly towards my face. My anxiety manifests itself into my gut as if I swallowed an entire boulder. I feel ashamed to have intruded upon the family’s personal space.
[10] Aaruul is a dried cheese curd
I excuse myself to the restroom, hoping that the fresh, open air will provide some kind of relief from my own awkwardness. Now that is dark, I do not have to worry about the entire Mongolian Steppe seeing my exposed body. I squat, bare-butted and feeling completely graceless as the piss refuses to leave my body. No one is watching, but I feel as if I am on display to the entire world. It is pitch black outside, and I look up to the sky to silently pray to a god (whom I do not quite believe in) to give me the strength to pee. What greets me is a canvas of endless universe. I stare at the bright strip of galaxy that stretches across the middle of the dome that is the sky, still unable to pee, but feeling a peace like no other. One can only imagine the thoughts going through the minds of the hundreds of sheep, no more than 100-meters away, as they stare at a girl so pale that the moonlight on her ass seemed to create a second moon. It takes me ten minutes to free myself from the biological discomfort.
I spend the next day with my host mother and brother. I help milk the cows, collect dried dung for the fire, and peacefully watch as my host mother creates yogurt and cheese curds out of the fresh milk. There is a special comfort in observing someone’s daily routine.
My heart sinks when my host father returns to the ger. I flip through my language book, hoping to look unbothered by my host father’s rejection. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice him pull out a deck of cards. A friend joins him in playing a game with rules foreign to me. Their laughter dances around my host mother, who is hovered over the flaming stove preparing buuz[11]. She occasionally peaks over the guest’s shoulder, gesturing to my host father which cards his friend has. The friend is oblivious to this deceit. After a few games, the stranger leaves and my host-father is left alone with the cards. He looks up at me, and we make eye-contact for perhaps the first time. He has heavily hooded eyes and deep bags that give his face a sullen, yet unexplainably soft look. He motions for me to join him on the floor, though my host mother dashes around the ger to ensure that I have a stool to sit on. I am dealt seven cards, and I stare blankly at my host father, my eyes asking him what do I do with these. My entire host family laughs with me as I hesitantly place down wrong cards after wrong card. I feel my host mother sneak behind me, signaling to her husband which cards I have. My host brother jumps around us, occasionally trying to snatch one of my cards in an effort to help me. This is just the first of many games that soon evolve into a nightly tradition with my host father. With each error, comes a laugh. With each laugh, comes relief.
[11] Buuz are steamed dumplings filled with sheep’s meat. The proper way to eat them is as follows: 1) Bite into the bottom and suck up all the juices. The louder you are, the better. 2) Proceed to stuff the rest into your mouth, ignoring the first-degree burns that the steam is creating in your mouth. 3) Repeat.
One day, I decide to go for a walk by myself. Gazing upon the vast Mongolian landscape, I am taken aback by the captivating bareness of the land. The muted green-gray grass stretches to the corner of the earth until it is met with the eternal blue sky. The mountains in the background are like the first layer of a computer-rendered simulation of earth: nothing but terrain. There is a lack of stimulation here that is never paralleled in America. It is indescribably stunning.
As I return from my walk, I see my mother crouched over a slaughtered sheep. Normally, my host mother’s cooking puts Gordon Ramsey to shame. She adds an unknown spice to her milk tea to make my body crave milk tea and dumpling soup more than I crave water on a dry day. But today, I know this outlook of mine will change, as I come home to my host mother harvesting my greatest culinary enemy for dinner. A few hours later in the ger, my eyes are compelled towards the searing pot of innards. A singular eye ball pops up between writhing entrails. It twists around, following the rhythm of the boiling water, until it finds itself stuck between two unknown organs. The pupil locks itself onto me: a reminder that there is no escape from this inevitable meal. My host family notices the intense staring contest with the detached eyeball, as their laughter echoes throughout the ger. My host mother stirs the pot, and the eyeball crawls deep into the pot. As the bowl of innards is set upon the table, I try to inconspicuously grab the sparse rib meat scattered amongst the organs. Once again, I am caught red-handed in the act of revulsion. My host family hands me pieces of each organ[12], and I reluctantly smile as each piece slithers itself down my throat.
[12] Save the eyeball. I never found out what became of the eyeball. All I know is that whoever ate it was NOT me.
My days here are coming to an end. As the day expires, blankets of terrain are set ablaze by the eternal blue sky and are quickly quieted by a galactic arch. Silence. Silence fills the air and my ears inhale the calm like lungs gasping for oxygen. Outside, under the darkness sparsely irradiated by the stars, I have never felt so free. No one is watching me. No one is judging me, not even myself. I should not feel comfortable here. I am in an unfamiliar place with a family who does not speak the same language as me. There is a certain freedom in anonymity.
It is under this seemingly endless dome of stars that I am reminded of the brevity of my time here. Soon, I shall be greeted once again by artificial stars: the beacons that will guide me back to my own American reality. I must inevitably return to America, where the glimmers in the sky are shrouded by a thick fog of dystopia of my own making and where my own skin feels foreign. I wonder: Why is it that I had to travel 6,000 miles to find a place where my only foreignness is external and my affection can be internal? It has been under this great sky that I have felt emancipated from my own insecurities. I wonder if this self-liberation will continue back in America. My gut tells me it won’t.
It is so easy to think of this country as an escape from the real world. Yet, Mongolia exists outside of me; it is a very real place. Whenever I must leave, it will not disappear, When I return to the city, my host mother will continue to collect dung for the fire, my host father will still raise the horses and cheat during card games, and my host brother will perpetually stare blankly at the T.V. while doing his homework whenever my host mother leaves the ger for a moment. Mongolia will exist beyond my low-quality photos and beyond a poorly-written personal essay about an awkward girl from New Jersey whose bland palette rejects any sort of flavor outside of garlic. The question in mind is whether or not my Mongolian-self will exist beyond these borders.
The day to return to Ulaanbaatar inevitably comes. Watching out ger fade into the flat horizon of the steppes can only be described as bittersweet. As excited as I am to take a shower for the first time in sixteen days, I know I will spend years upon years yearning to return to this place I once called home. I will miss the red cloak that briefly covers the bright blue sky at dusk. I will miss the glistening Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt wishing me a good night during my daily before-bed pee. Perhaps most of all, I will miss the people who have adopted me for the past two-weeks and I will miss the person I have become.
As we all are all packed up from the base camp, I refuse to leave the steppes with any sort of regret. For my final act on the Mongolian countryside, I squat, bare-butted and feeling completely graceful as the piss leaves my body on command. I stare at the infinitely blue sky that envelops the world around me, absorbing all past sources of anxiety. There is a brief hope that this self-adoration will follow me back to America[13]. In this moment, I could not care less about what any sheep, horse, or even person may be thinking if they are staring at this girl so confident that her aura is shining like a second sun.
[13] Happy note: It does!
Bondi 