Worth its Wait in Gold

The Strongest Day

Work’s hard as the day is long, but one advantage to staying busy at the UB Post is 24 hours never seemed to end faster. It can be disorienting. I’ve lived in Ulaanbaatar seven weeks now, but 14 days ago I was telling everyone who asked that I arrived in town months ago. Occasionally this distorted sense of time passing makes me feel like a city insider, but I’ve gotten reminders that there’s plenty to discover about life in UB.

Most notably, near the end of week one at the Beijing Games, I found out how to celebrate in Mongolia—I had one million teachers. On Thursday morning, August 15, N. Tuvshinbayar, a stocky Mongolian wrestler turned judoka, began an improbable run toward Olympic glory. In his first 100kg judo match, he slammed a Japanese competitor who won gold in Athens. Then he beat everybody else.

At 8:00 pm, I walked into my gym to empty equipment as the ten patrons and two staff members had gathered around the facility’s TV. I joined them; everyone looked exceedingly happy. “It’s a Mongolian in the gold medal match,” two male spectators told me several times. On the screen, Tuvshinbayar grappled with a blue-eyed Kazakh giant. The Mongolian had just upended his opponent for a 100-point lead.

Golden 100 kilograms

Judo can be nerve-racking because no matter how big one’s scoring advantage, suffering a devastating throw can cost you a bout—any judoka pinned by an opponent for thirty seconds or tortured into submission by arm lock also automatically loses. The gym atmosphere remained tense, even as Tuvshinbayar expanded his lead; but, with five seconds remaining, people started celebrating.

Objectively, it appeared they never had much to worry about. The Kazakh had a better chance of throwing a shipping crate than Tuvshinbayar, whose strength, low center of gravity and square frame made him an impossible target.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the small gathering cheered like Americans whose underdog team just won a playoff series. Some people gave me high-fives. “Mongolia’s first gold medal!” It was pretty exciting to see. I thought I knew how they felt (2007 Golden State Warriors … we believe…nobody?).

Tuvshinbayar tied his black belt, pumped his fists as the referee declared him the winner, then burst into tears while hugging his coach. “Za za za,” said the spectators (“So, so, so” in English) and politely turned back to their exercises, reassembling a few minutes later to watch Mongolia’s anthem play and flag rise as the now composed judoka accept his medal. A few more people told me Mongolia it was Mongolia’s first gold.

Stare to be Stupid

Back in my apartment at 10:00 pm, I noticed the city’s perpetual honking sounded unusually consistent and loud. I looked out my window to see the street packed with cars. Every other vehicle had a Mongolian flag and drivers laid on their horns, whooping and hollering along with their passengers, who leaned out windows and sunroofs to high-five passing motorists and pedestrians or heedlessly sat atop their rides.

Fireworks exploded nearby and a loud hum now accompanied the general racket. Later that evening, I turned on the TV and saw politicians making speeches before a buzzing crowd at Sukhbaatar square. This was a bigger deal than I expected. I should go check it out, I thought, but it’s probably over now. Besides, if I want to see grandstanding politicians, I can watch C-SPAN. I went to bed and spent the next week kicking myself for it.

The Unflaunted Country

At work the next day, I learned 10,000 people more-or-less spontaneously filled the square, celebrating Mongoli a’s first Olympic triumph. Most stayed there until 4:00 am; many didn’t leave until late that morning. Throughout the countryside, people watched the final match in gers with generators or electrical hookups, later throwing their own raucous celebrations.

I’ve never seen a country, or an entire city, unite in celebration. Maybe it happens in Europe and South America when a team wins the World Cup, but I can’t imagine anything like it in the U.S. It could be the country is too big and diverse (by contrast, Mongolia has three million people, mostly Mongols), however, it seems like people in the States simply believe everything worth doing has been done. This year, Michael Phelps won 8 Olympic golds, but he was just breaking a record of seven held by Mark Spitz, another American. I didn’t hear about the nation running wildly into the streets. Eventually, we must think, some other U. S. citizen will swim to nine.

Even on a smaller scale, in a great sports city like New York for example, people don’t celebrate like they did in Ulaanbaatar that night. So the Yankees win the Pennant: that’s happened 65 times; there are plenty of New Yorkers who just don’t care much about baseball, and then there are those thousands of ravenous, bitter Mets fans.

Undivided Attention

In Ulaanbaatar, it looked like each of the one million men, women and children in the city celebrated in some way. The country united like young Mongolians had never seen and the nation hadn’t experienced probably since independence from China. Tuvshinbayar became an immediate national hero. His face appeared on billboards all over town Friday morning. However you saw it, Thursdays night’s celebration was incredible: a testament to Mongolian national identity; to the power of sport; etc.

Seeing it from a window wasn’t great, but it still made a decent story. Weeks before an angry mob protested Parliamentary election results in Sukhbaatar square. During an ensuing fray, rioters burned down the ruling People’s Revolutionary Party Headquarters, calling into question the country’s political stability and national cohesion. After maintaining allegations of election fraud Thursday morning, Thursday night, MPRP and opposition Democratic Party leaders drank vodka and sang the national anthem together in that same square before a mass of overjoyed spectators.

Square Dance

Well, I thought, that’ll never happen again. What a remarkable moment to sideline myself in an apartment. 10 days later I was proven wrong. Mongolia’s boxing prodigy E. Badar-Uugan won his gold medal match and the city erupted for another party. After waiting its entire Olympic History for one gold medal, Mongolia saw no problem holding a second celebration for a second Olympic Championship.

The match ended at 2:30 pm and the horns, high-fives and shouts didn’t end until early the next morning. I had learned my lesson. When something important happens, go to Sukhbaatar square. That evening, a raucous crowd surrounded the courtyard’s statue of Sukhbaatar, Mongolia’s great revolutionary hero.

People climbed on top of one another, danced, and sang as they waved Mongolian flags and embraced. An old, intoxicatingly happy man approached me. “This is a great day for Mongolia,” he said. “I am very happy.”

There weren't 10,000 people, but I saw a Mongolian Olympic celebration, and that took some sting out of my earlier abstention. More importantly, it gave me a first great look at a city I’m starting to know.

Gainful Employment

I do it for the…

How does working feel when it’s not for the money? As a reporter, sometimes, pretty good. A few Fridays ago after printing a respectable issue of the UB Post, I sat with my colleagues drinking a cold Chinngis ale at a beer garden. Journalism can’t get too much better.

We passed around photos, talked about travel and I heard the story of the UB Post employee who went on vacation and never came back. “He’s probably fixing roofs somewhere,” Sumiya (my editor) said.

However, as a journalist when things go badly, you find a calculator and add up how much you make. Assuming I work 50 hour weeks, I make $1.26 an hour. My Dad made $2.25 an hour at his first job, but he told me, back then a quarter bought a gallon of gas. He reminded me that my mother and he make much less than that working at our family café.

Mislead

Plenty can go wrong at an English-language weekly newspaper in Mongolia. I nearly sent my first rewritten UB Post story to the edited file with a newly added introduction: ‘Malaysia’s deputy Prime Minister (whose name again appeared in connection to a Mongolian model murder drama) is on the lam.’ I thought the author buried the lead, but I had actually invented it.

Malaysia’s number two politician probably sat in his office or spoke at a press conference while I wrote—the private detective who accused him of ties to the murder, then quickly recanted, was the missing man in the story. Somehow I confused the two. Thanks to this article’s international implications, some time on google revealed my mistake. For stories pertaining exclusively to Mongolia, however, English sources are rare and facts often difficult to check.

From Worse to Worser

Articles with less globally significant content can present other problems. Three weeks ago I reviewed a Mediterranean restaurant in Ulaanbaatar where the all-female kitchen staff tried their best, the owner took pride in her work, and the food just was not very good. I wrote a luke warm review. The meal cost $40 and now there’s a city block I avoid.

Then occasionally you get a stretch like two weeks ago when nothing seemed to go right. I missed a concert after failing to get an early ride back from a sporting event I covered; the internet went down; the office network went down; the printer didn’t print. I finished two of my four stories and we turned the paper in three hours late with less than half of it copy edited.

I looked at it the next day and realized that the front page’s weather, currency exchanges and teasers for stories inside the edition were identical to the week before. I felt grateful that journalism is a dying profession.

I Amar(k)huu I am

But, with a little distance, I forgot about what went wrong. Did I get to ask interesting people questions last week? Did I watch Mongolia’s fourth national triathlon championships? Did I to listen to and not understand a press conference with Russian Idol winner Amarkhuu? Yes I did. You can read about it in the UB Post.

Maybe things never go smoothly at a weekly and at least that always keeps life moving. If it ran at an even pace, I’ probably complain about boredom.

The Best things in life are 3 (uneditored)

This week Sumiya took his annual holiday, which left three of us (Mongolian journalist Bulgamaa, Aussie English Editor Kirril, and American reporter and layout person me) to put together a newspaper. Once Sumiya tastes freedom he may never come back. Luckily the newspaper owns his apartment.

I’m finishing this post at 10:30 pm after sending the paper to the presses. It wasn’t a disaster. We had mishaps, some heated exchanges, and 13^th hour layout help from the photo department. We sent the issue off 3 and-a-half hours late, but I’ll deliver papers tomorrow at noon just like last week.

Working over 40 hours the last three days, time never passed faster. Admittedly I was beat every night at home, but thinking about it now, I felt really good to accomplish something—maybe all the more when that something landed me a dollar and a quarter per hour.

A flat search and fees

Baby Steppes

I graduated from college and then realized other people had done a lot for me. With toddlers, parents love to applaud ‘first words,’ ‘first steps,’ ‘first teeth.’ If they’re the type that doesn’t like to see their children leave the nest, they continue this behavior through college. But, I thought, that’s when it ends. After you graduate, you’re on your own and you rely on numero uno for support through a second nascent progression, from first job, to first bills, to first plumbing mishap.

I wish this expectation turned out true: that I could say I’ve managed for myself here in Mongolia; that I braved a foreign country and a language barrier alone; that I’ve independently made a comfortable and productive life. Everything is fine, but I haven’t done much on my own.

This fact came into clearest focus when I rented an apartment in Ulaanbaatar.

Thanks… Thanks a light

Apartment hunting consisted of telling my editor, Sumiya, that I wanted to find a place. He took me to buy a classified paper, scanned it for apartments near the office, made the phone calls, and accompanied me to the one we selected.

There, he did the talking.

My Mongolian is not good. I can say hello. I now know the Cyrillic alphabet. I can count to 10. I know how to say thank you too, but I don’t use those words anymore because I botched them the first 15 days I was here. “Bayar laa laa” I said — ‘Thank you candle’ or ‘happiness candle candle’ depending on how people choose to interpret it. Now I just wave.

aPARTment of Darkeness

Heading toward the apartment, Sumiya and I traversed the square in front of the office and then headed north-east, dashed across a wide, shrubby median-divided road and passed a movie theater, a police station, a fire department, and what looks like another police station. Seven minutes later we arrived in the rear of a faded-orange concrete building, run down but appealing in its own way: a flat roof that looks like an extended summit of a Greek column gives it some class.

A perpetually-open metal door guards the entryway, which smells somewhat strongly of urine and leads to a dark stairwell whose walls contain undersized windows and a collection of knee high hooks. On the third floor, we entered another large metal door and I looked inside apartment number 34 or 36 or maybe 32 (Street names and apartment numbers are not always clearly marked in Ulaanbaatar and people generally navigate using landmarks).

A room with a loo

Chipped wooden cabinets, a dangling light bulb, and a small hallway with a smaller bathroom/shower/toilet complex at its end greeted me, along with the little family who owned the place. Before me stood a spectacled gray haired man in a rockets shirt, a spectacled girl about my age, a toddler playing with blocks, and a matron. I looked around. “I can’t live here,” I thought.

I said a Mongolia hello, and then spoke some little English with my age-mate. Peering into all the rooms, Sumiya asked several questions, but I was busy imagining sitting alone, away from a hostel, for $300 plus utilities. That started sounding pretty good.

In the largest room I found a sizeable, gold sheeted bed with matching gold pillow cases, a child’s desk, a dresser, a glass case with a Middle Eastern tea set, and a TV. A half-wall punctured by an arched window and arched doorway separates the kitchen into two rooms. I love this feature. In one half of the room there’s a sink, a pantry and a chair. In the other you there’s a fridge, a Bunsen burner, and a table tucked into a corner near a large window.

I’d get to keep all the furniture. “I’ll take it.” I told Sumiya. For the price and the location he didn’t think it was that bad. “What about a vacuum cleaner?” he asked. Oh yeah. He negotiated a vacuum cleaner and I have an option of getting a phone. “What about the laundry,” he asked. That I do in the shower.

Admittedly the place has a few quirks. There’s a smorgasbord of real and linoleum tile in the kitchen and the bathroom; there’s fake wood on the ceiling and the floor; there’s a giant picture of osh-kosh wearing white children that I need to hide. Water drizzled to the toilet bowl ran continuously until I shut off the valve. I flush the toilet by filling the tank with a tea kettle. It had character and I decided to call it a fixer upper. I agreed to return the next day and sign the papers.

Sumiya and I headed out the door. “Bayar laa laa,” I told family: “Benevolence candle candle”

“Goodbye” said the English speaking daughter.

Bank Run

Sumiya did not come with me when I signed the lease. I had enough money for one month’s rent (about 320,000 togrogs or $300) and I figured I could handle this transaction.

After making the short walk from work to the apartment, I looked blankly at the Mongolian contract before me. Selenge, the girl I spoke with the day before, provided a summary; it sounds like, as long as nothing breaks, I’m fine. I took out my wad of cash, but Selenge explained her family needed the money up front. No problem, I said, I’ll run to an ATM.

It took three days to collect it. $1800 is just over 2,000,000 togrogs and Mongolia’s largest bill is tg 20,000. ATM cards, I discovered, limit the amount you can withdraw from any one machine and the amount you can withdraw on any one day. Some machines only give 10,000 togrog notes and as I ran around the street near my apartment, I stuffed my wallet and pockets and backpack with dozens of bills. I looked like a money scarecrow or a large, walking, money piñata. Someone just had to beat me and gather up the prize and if I had known how much I was carrying, I would have done it. It would have been so easy (I later learned that you can go to a bank teller to make a large transaction).

Supper Man, who can live on the third floor, all by himself

In the end, things worked out robbery free. I installed myself in the apartment, organized my belongings, and bought some dish soap. I make use of the fridge and the burner and manage to feed myself regularly. So far, I’ve kept things simple with Russian spaghetti and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but soon I plan to venture out into the wild kingdom or oils, spices, packaged dumplings, and animal species.

Accomplishing something I should be able to do—albeit in an inefficient and dangerous way—is at least a relief and at most a hidden source of pride. Now it’s time to take a break from baby steps and go to work: that is until I have to figure out how to pay my first bills.