Buttons

We posted a new video on You Tube showing how the Mongolian deel buttons are made.
Check it out. A link is on the Video bar on the side bar here on our blog.
Just click on the picture of a hand.

7- Eleven Conjecture

It is Monday morning and little Bat (boy) just swallowed the last cup of milk. Altai (little girl) is screaming that she is hungry. Uck. Now what? Of course, you are running late and then you hear it.
"SUE AVARAY SUE AVARAY SUE AVARAY"
A teen age girl is hollering at the top of her lungs.
You run down the 5 flights to the front of your apt building with your baggie in hand.
Out of the trunk of the car (or outside the city, horse cart), a couple lugs a blue 10 gallon barrel.
With a long handled ladle, she scoops out your fresh-from-the-cow (or horse, or camel, or sheep & goat or a mixture) MILK.
Yum, yum. Breakfast is saved.
We hear the milk sellers almost every morning, tho they are not the same people each day. They come in from the countryside or edge of town to sell the freshly milked liquid. At first the calling sounded like a yodle but now I can hear the sentence: "Please buy milk." or more like "Milk! Come and get it!"

Button Button Who Made the Button

This has been a long week, I couldn't wait to sleep in on Saturday. But I traded the chance to sleep in for a unique opportunity to see a button production, starting at 8am ;(. Traditional Mongolian attire includes a shin length robe like coat/shirt/dress kind of thing. Closures for these dells are a small ball type button that fits through sewed-on loop. At Streams, we have bought 100s of these buttons and created earrings. Today, we got to see how they are made. I must admit, I suspected they were imported from China in some form or another. But they are truly hand made starting with a flat piece of metal. It was fun to watch the process. And we feel great about selling a product that is Mongolian crafted. P.S. It was totally worth getting up early!

Reflecting

I was here 4 weeks ago having just learned of Jim’s mom’s death, here in the Incheon Airport. Shouldn’t I be at Mom’s bedside, moistening her lips, listening to her last breaths?

I just learned via e-mail that Mom died a couple of hours ago. It’s too late.  I’m stunned, saddened, and quietly crying. This experience is not how I pictured it.  How can 70 years just suddenly stop like that? It is an answer to prayer, her suffering has ended and yet we are taken off guard. Perhaps the reality and finality of death is always a bit of a surprise?  A woman using the computer next to me keeps asking for help, jerking me back into this world between flights.

            Sadness is weighty, like an elephant sitting on my chest.  The mourning comes in waves as memories pass thru my mind and escape with the tears leaving salty trails along my cheeks. I’m grateful for eternal life but the loss feels so abrupt and final. I take a walk up and down the airport halls leading to gates and planes ready to carry people into foreign worlds. Color, flowers, a gigantic butterfly mobile, murals, mother of pearl display – things that mom would have liked, catch my attention and cause more tears.

            Arrived at LAX, maneuvered customs, but was so sleepy that I bumped into the metal detector. Fortunately, the TSA worker could barely keep her eyes open either and suggested I just back up and try again. Everything seems a blur. I’m sad and sorry, glad and relieved all at once.

           Obituary, mortuary, eulogy. This gig is too familiar.

            I’m moving mom’s clothes into black trash bags and thinking this is a good job for me. I can handle it emotionally. I can easily separate the emotions from the task.  Suddenly, as I slip pink, white & flowered blouses from their hangers into the plastic; tears begin to pour like rain. A life, these clothes embodied a life, not just any life but the life that gave me life.  Gone, ended, finished. Sad again.

            Jimmy & I are both mom-less now. God’s timing is puzzling but we trust and focus on the next thing. We are grateful for our moms and for those helping to carry us through.  I have a choice: to dwell on the past in sadness (a certain measure of this is healthy), or to be thankful and make a vow to invest in relationships more, to live in the present and to be thankful. Life is a gift. Life passes so quickly.

?Mongolian food in Kennewick, Washington

While in Kennewick, WA, my hosts took me to a Mongolian BBQ restaurant.  The restaurant featured a buffet of meats and vegetables, many that I have never seen in Mongolia, including bean sprouts, mini-corn, water chestnuts and pea pods.  But there was no Mutton, Mare’s milk or Vodka anywhere!  The restaurant was owned by a Korean couple and the chefs were Hispanic.  The food was very tasty but I’m not sure why they call it a Mongolian BBQ?

Mongolians in Olympia!

Several years ago before we moved to Mongolia, our Pastor in Olympia was in a local restaurant.  His waitress was an Asian woman with an accent, so he asked her where she was from.  She said she was from Mongolia!  Our Pastor told her about us and asked if he could give us her name.

Dawn became our Mongolian language tutor. 

Last month, while in Olympia, we went to the same restaurant and met with her again.  This time, our Mongolian language was much better.

Mother's Day

We got a call today that Liz's mom may die within the week. Jim's mom was buried less than 3 weeks ago. Jim is still in Olympia, with a return tix for May 17. Liz flew back to Ulaan Batar a week ago. Where are we supposed to be? What are we supposed to do next? Many questions. Praying for answers. Praying for peace, wisdom, and comfort for Delores, for Liz & Jim and especially for Dee Anna, the grand daughters, and Delores' caregiver, Jen.

Air Pollution = Serious Problem

The following article was taken from 

www.blogs.worldbank.org

Ulaanbaatar’s air pollution crisis: Summertime complacency won’t solve the wintertime problem

SUBMITTED BY ARSHAD SAYED ON FRI, 2010-04-23 02:18

No mountains are visible beyond this pollution cloud. (Late November 2007)

It certainly feels like the worst of winter is over for another year, well until December anyway. Daytime temperatures now reach above 0 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) regularly, the city’s ice sculptures have melted and the slippery footpaths have thawed, making walking in the city safer and easier. There’s also a visible improvement in Ulaanbaatar’s (UB) air quality.

On most days, from my office window, I can now see the beautiful snow-dappled mountains that surround UB; during the heavily polluted winter months the horizon is completely hidden behind a thick grey-brown smoky haze. 

UB is the coldest capital city in the world and during the coldest months of the year—December, January and February—the air quality is dangerously bad. In fact, UB is fast becoming the world’s most polluted city; a remarkable achievement considering its population only hovers around the 1.2 million mark.

The pollution is visibly worse in the wintertime. This is because coal-fueled ger (traditional felted tents) stoves and boilers used for heating and cooking produce toxic black smoke plumes that hover like a blanket over the often windless city. The chokingly-thick pollution is a result of a combination of factors: the poor combustion of coal in what are essentially wood stoves, the congested road traffic (it’s too cold to walk and many cars are of a substandard quality), the dry ground condition and industry.

UB choking under a blanket of smoke. Unbelievably there’s a city down there.

For about eight months of the year heating is essential for the survival of residents. 60 percent of the city’s residents live in peri-urban ger districts; areas populated in the main by very poor people from Mongolia’s rural areas who are arriving in a steady flow. UB’s population has expanded by 70 percent over the last 20 years and unfortunately the city’sinfrastructure has not been able to keep up with the growth. In these areas, which are mainly located upwind of the city, the only source of heating are poor quality stoves or individual household boilers fueled by coal, wood and in some cases rubbish—varying from black tar dipped bricks to old car tires. UB’s remaining citizens live in apartment buildings heated by three coal-burning heat and power stations. All forms of household heating in UB contribute to the air pollution problem.

The number of cars on the city’s roads seems to be increasing daily. In such a small city, one that’s easily navigable by foot, people sit in grid-locked traffic for hours. Drivers beep their horns impatiently and ineffectually, hoping for movement, while pumping carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the air and the faces of those braving the cold or waiting to cross the street. When cars do move, further dust is released into the air, especially in the ger areas where most of the roads remain unpaved. 

Additionally, according to the Bank’s joint research with the National University of Mongolia and the Norwegian Air Research Institute, one of the worst sources of the pollution is dust. The dust originates from the ger heating appliances, the desert, the dry ground condition and the ash ponds emanating from the power plants. With few trees and hardly any parkland in UB, the regularity and severity of windstorms in the city is increasing, creating dangerous levels of airborne dust. Strong winds, particularly in spring, also allow dust from the Gobi desert and other arid regions of Mongolia to reach the city.

On a bad day, the city’s air pollution is so thick you cough when you walk outside. I’ve also witnessed cars turning on their headlights at 10am for visibility. An Australian woman who volunteers at the Bank refuses to walk outside without wearing a heavy-duty air pollution mask. People often laugh at her ridiculous appearance, she’s even been photographed by children passing her in the street, but she’s seriously worried about the potential long-term damage. What about the Mongolian people? What about the children being born here? A woman in our office is due to give birth within the next two months. After she has her baby in UB, she’s planning to spend at least two months out in the countryside, as it’s a sure strategy to guarantee her newborn child is breathing in clean air. She is concerned for her child’s health here in UB.

Smoke billowing from one of the UB’s power stations. It’s so thick it obscures the sun.

In UB, annual average particulate matter concentrations (PM10, i.e., particles that cause damage in the lungs when inhaled) have been recorded at as high as 279. To put this into perspective, the World Health Organization’s recommended PM10 level is 20. This means that UB’s PM10 levels are 14 times higher than the WHO’s recommendation. UB has left Northern China’s most polluted cities in its wake.
The health implications of the pollution are shocking. Levels of premature death, chronic bronchitis, respiratory hospital admissions and cardiovascular diseases are increasing at an extraordinarily rapid rate. Something must be done.

As the weather warms up, there is a danger that the wintertime levels of pollution will become a distant memory. But rather than forgetting about the problem, now should be the time for action. Some experts claim the solution is to relocate ger area residents into apartment buildings, but who will pay for these apartments and their water, electricity, heating and maintenance bills? Other experts recommend the installation of new, better-quality heating appliances, combined with enforcing the use of environmentally friendly fuel. But again, who will pay for this? Other options include better insulation for gers and houses, increased public education, a strengthening of pollution monitoring and enforcement and improving the city’s heating network.
The truth is there’s no easy answer, there’s no single solution. Only one thing is certain…if we are complacent now, the wintertime air pollution problem will return again and again.

Click here to view the Mongolia: Air Pollution in Ulaanbaatar - Initial Assessment of Current Situation and Effects of Abatement Measures report. This report was published in Mongolia in March 2010 and provides effective and economical air pollution abatement strategies.

Click here to view the Mongolia: Enhancing Policies and Practices for Ger Area Development in Ulaanbaatar report. This report was published in Mongolia in March 2010 and provides urban policy makers with sustainable ger area development strategies.

Thawed

H-o-r-s-e, hopscotch, 
tag, 
soccer, sitting, swinging, climbing, 
popsicles, 
giggles, & glee. 
Mongolian children 
have broken free from the ice.

First Day

Language study was difficult and endlessly challenging. Today, I began full time ministry, leery of decision making and process. Now, I look with longing back to the simple aim of learning to communicate. I had become comfortable with the routine of walking to class, sitting in a pleasant room, chatting with my teacher turned friend. We used our daily lives as discussion topics and little by little, I could express myself clearly. Playing with beads is relaxing. Coming up with designs using local materials and unique Mongolian characteristics is an enjoyable challenge. But figuring out how to make the same design a hundred times over without making them myself is tricky. Marketing, pricing, wages, taxes, packaging is all unfamiliar territory. Thinking I'd like to go back to school where I spent the afternoons sipping tea, gazing out the window trying to recall the newest 15 letter verb. But this Monday went well . . . so, perhaps a new norm will soon become the preferred routine?