Last thoughts about Mongolia

Greetings from the Seoul / Inchon airport in South Korea! Early start to today with a pickup from the hotel at 6:30 to head to the airport. I think my brain was still asleep though. Managed to leave my coat at the security check-point, and didn’t even notice for 30 to 45 minutes. Luckily, I figured it out before I boarded the flight! By that time, I had already gone through the customs exit process, and had to convince the customs and security authorities to let me back through to get it. That was quite amusing as I speak 2 words of Mongolian (hello and thank you), and they had 10 words of English, which is 5 times better than my Mongolian. It worked out though, and my coat was still there, so all is well. On the way to Mongolia, my travelling companions laughed at me a bit for bringing a gym bag just to put my coat in so that I wouldn’t leave it somewhere. Figured I’d remember a bag, and sure enough I was right! Except my coat wasn’t in it yet this morning….

In the Mongolian airport, no signs or announcements are made in English. That made figuring out the boarding process a bit difficult, as they actually have more than one gate, but none with number or letter markings. Our plane to Seoul, and a plane to Moscow were leaving at the same time. A few of us non-Mongolian speaking folks tried to board at the wrong time, but luckily, they look at our boarding passes very closely, so I am typing this from Seoul, and not from Moscow now.

A few last interesting things about Mongolia.
· The country was occupied by the Soviet Union for 50 or 60 years, and their influence is very obvious in the writing style, style of buildings, and even the sound of the language. Original Mongolian writing looks more like Arabic in it’s flow, except it flows from the top of the page to the bottom in columns (from left to right), instead of in rows from right to left. Now it uses Cyrillic characters, and we’re told that some Mongolians can no longer write or read the old script. The buildings are also very square, and you don’t see many with the more oriental flair, like is everywhere in Korea, Japan, and I imagine China. I thought the language would sound more like Chinese, or one of the other Asian languages, but it sounds very Russian. Children learn Russian in school, along with Mongolian, and English is becoming more common in some areas.
· Another interesting result from being part of the Soviet Union is the number of women in administrative and management positions. I don’t understand all the reasons for this, but we’re told that due to the communist economic system, women and men made the same salaries for the same jobs. Men tended to work in factories and outdoors. Women worked in administrative and management positions in businesses. As a result, focus on education for girls was greater than for boys. Today, more girls go to school than boys in the country, and women hold more jobs. In our office, about 80% of the staff is female. This may be the only country in the world where advocacy for education for boys is required more than for girls!

I’m sure there are dozens more things I could share. We saw so many things, and learned much about the people, culture, and history of the country, in addition to all the work stuff we learned. Mongolia is a very interesting place. The people are incredibly friendly and welcoming. The countryside is beautiful, and probably is even more so in the summer time when everything is green. The history is very interesting as well. Yet it is also a harsh place. People live in incredibly harsh conditions and have limited access to work, health care, and in some places education. The herding families must send their children to live in dormitories in the nearest city or to live with relatives so that they can attend school. Health care is limited in the main city, and even more so in rural locations. The environment itself is harsh. Incredibly cold, dry winters, with temperatures as low as –50F or below. Summers in some rural areas where we’re told that it can get as high as 120F. Blowing drifting snow in winter, and blowing sand and dust in summer. All that said, people here love their country, and want to improve the industrial base, education, health care, etc. And they welcome outsiders and love to show them their way of life.
Now it’s off to Melbourne, Australia for several days of meetings. More in a few days!