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My article about last week's Presidential Inauguration is up here at The Huffington Post. Enjoy!

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Below is the short piece I wrote for the Mongol Messenger about The Arts Council of Mongolia's awesome pioneer Fellowship program.

If you wonder at the fact that Leo Tolstoy's grandson was here in Ulaanbaatar, you can thank the Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM).

Over the last year, ACM has pioneered a fellowship program to empower arts administration in Mongolia. The nine fellowship recipients hailed from creative and management positions at such well-known venues as the Opera and Ballet Academy Theatre; the Modern Art Gallery; Mongol Costumes; the Arts and Culture Department of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; and the Tumen Ekh National Song and Dance Ensemble. Ganbold Dorlig, one of the fellows, is a poet who participated in the World Poetry Congress held in Mongolia in 2006 and who heads up the Feather Foundation. Lkhagvadorj Dorjsuren, who has participated in ice-scultpure festivals all over the world and currently directs the Scultped Arts Center, is another. You get the idea.

Most of the fellows described their goals as related to the desire to network and build management skills within the field of arts administration, so the series of seminars started off with ACM board member Walter Jenkins and the topic of leadership out in the fresh air of Terelj. The ministry of education, culture, and science then helped fund a visit from Ms Kathy Tweeddale, Executive Director of the Seattle Opera, last September. Mrs. Tweeddale led three days of workshops related to arts marketing not just for the fellows but for Mongolian art students and administrators from all the aimags in Mongolia.

Dwight Gee, Executive Vice president of Arts Fund Seattle and President of the U.S. Branch of the Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM-US), led yet another 3-day workshop that extended out into Mongolian society by leading seminars not only for the Fellows but for the Institute of Finance and Economics as well. Thanks to Mr. Gee, several more Mongolian administrators know what an "elevator speech" is. Anyone who has ever attended a Mongolian lecture or event that has gone on longer than some might have liked might opine that this is no small amount of outreach!

Mongolia also hosted experts from Russia in its Fellowship seminar series. Vladimir Tolstoy, grandson of the famed Russian writer, gave a lecture on cultural tourism and the ways it could revitalize outlying areas. In this way and in many others, this program was so attentive to the needs of Mongolia and so inclusive that I, for one, think it's safe to call the pilot year a success. The ministry of Education, Culture and Science was so pleased with Mr. Gee's visit, for example, that it committed to conduct a 2009 National Arts Fundraising training in collaboration with him. They must have liked the elevator speech...

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Writing to come, but in the meantime, enjoy these photos from yesterday: Mongolia's Presidential Inauguration on Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar.

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The incomparable photographer, biologist, and world fixer David Gilbert just alerted me to this photo essay documenting two of Ulaanbaatar's street teenagers. Worth a look.

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There have been some requests for this article on Bolivia's Rio Beni Health Project, since it saw print in an issue of the Santa Ynez Valley Journal that wasn't archived online. Not about Mongolia, but if you're interested in this blog, it's likely you're interested in hopeful development efforts in third-world countries, so take a look. It's one of those things that gives me hope in the possibilities for our planet.


Where Thoreau and Livingstone Meet:
Lou Netzer and the Rio Beni Health Project

After spending decades as the last doctor in California's Santa Ynez Valley willing to make house calls, after starting a home for Alzheimer patients, an elementary school, and a café on the side, Louis Netzer retired and set off not on an ocean cruiser, not on a tour of the world's greatest golf courses, but on a journey to the far corners of world.  He didn't get any farther than the village of Rurrenebaque on the banks of the Rio Beni, a remote tributary to the Bolivian Amazon.  On his annual two-month visits to the Valley in the following years Lou spoke often of his first moments on that smooth river, of the surrounding jungle, of the faces of the warm-hearted local people whose ailments he knew how to cure, of the moments he realized he would be staying until he did cure them.  In subsequent years, at talks he gave all over Santa Barbara County raising money for the Rio Beni Health Project, Lou said that he didn't have hope, because hope implies expectation.  He just had faith.  Lou's faith was the power behind his conception of the Project, which began in 1997 with "basically a boat and a motor."  Lou's faith is what drove him to reach tens of thousands of the poorest people in South America's poorest country, often their first experience receiving regular medical care, before succumbing to cancer himself in October of 2002.

Lou learned of his illness early enough to ensure that the Rio Beni Health Project would continue without him.  In 1999 he teamed up with his close friend, Christopher Brady, who had just returned from four years working in Africa but had six years of working in South America under his belt. The seven-person team that today keeps the project alive and expanding is a colorful crew of personalities bound together by the legacy of the man they loved and a commitment to the health outreach project that began as his dream.  The Rio Beni Health Project, or El Proyecto de Salud de Rio Beni, exists today as a rapidly growing endeavor managed by a newly established non-profit organization Netzer-Brady International. It is supported in part by Direct Relief International, officially recognized by the Bolivian government, and it reaches rural indigenous communities with unprecedented treatment and long-term education over hundreds of square miles of jungle wilderness.

Rurrenebaque, Beni Region, Bolivia, August.  A hen pecks at the tiny river of cane juice left on the trapiche. Near the small building that serves as Project headquarters and home-clinic, a boy walks to school in the required white shirt and navy trousers carrying a guitar, kicking up white dust from the road.  Another boy passes holding the hand of his little sister, a green bird fluttering in his hair.  A curvy woman with red lipstick rides "side-saddle" on one of the motorbikes serving as a taxi, driven by a young man who'll take her to any point in "Rurre" for one or two Bolivianos.  By 10am the sun is fiercely bright, the air heavy, the heat palpable. 
Outside the Project clinic the deck is full of prospective patients of all ages sitting in the shade and waiting to be called in.  One of the many leafy green plants growing up around the deck throws patterns of shadow on the threshold to the front room of the clinic, which is small and dark and crowded with fans circulating warm air.  Lola Guálica, a cheerful, round-faced nurse who has been working with the Project for seven years, calls clients up one by one and takes down their basic information. 

In the same room at another desk, Modesto Cuevas, a slim and soft-spoken sociologist and community organizer, uses that information and a personal interview to gently screen prospective patients.  "We need to make sure they belong to the town's neediest financial stratum," he explains.  "If a woman is married to a policeman, for instance, I direct her to one of the neighboring clinics.  There are other health clinics around here.  This one is for those who truly can't pay." 

A screening process like the one carried out by Modesto is unnecessary in most of the communities the Project visits.  For half the working week the Project functions as a "floating" health clinic: project team members and big red bags of medical supplies packed into a narrow little boat, zooming up or down the placid river through chilly morning mists and back through brutal afternoon sun, reaching the poorest communities of the region by boat because there is simply no other way to reach them.

Only one of the current team members has been with the Project since its inception.  Antonio Mendía, project pharmacist, auxiliary nurse, boat pilot, and general handyman, is tall, handsome, and popular among the ladies in town.  He met Lou Netzer in 1997 when he was eighteen.  Lou was trying and failing to operate his own new boat on the river.  "He was just this crazy little doctor, and you know doctors, they can't do practical things," Antonio laughs.  Antonio soon became Lou's right-hand man, and not just because he knew how not to crash a motorboat.  Antonio grew up in Rurre and knew all the people and the locations of poorer communities up-and down-river.  He was the logistics behind the dream.  "It was hard," he says, grinning.  "We were only two."

The simple screened-in, thatched-roof, one-room cottages in which the "happy, crazy doctor" stayed and housed his guests have now run down, battered by the heavy rains, heat, and influx of foliage that make the jungle a force to be reckoned with for its residents.  The Project team is talking about ways the huts could be used; one idea is to house Project guests, volunteers and hopefully someday more doctors there.  Another is to accommodate tourists--since the Project's inception Rurre has grown significantly due to the popularity of the spot with Israeli youths traveling through after completing their two-year army requirement.  An Israeli put Rurrenebaque on the map by nearly dying in the jungle nearby and writing a book about it.  Now Rurre sports multiple hostels, restaurants, internet cafes, and even a jungle-themed bar that serves such cosmopolitan drinks as the Flaming Lamborghini.  It's a far cry from the tiny village Lou first discovered nearly a decade ago with one working fax machine in the mayor's house, but neighboring communities and a large portion of Rurre's own population are still staggeringly poor.

Lou knew to live outside of town, away from Rurrenebaque's gossip network.  He was un loco, pero un loco feliz who saw all sorts of animals from the screens of his hut—even a panther once—and sometimes from within that hut: his efforts to convince a visiting snake to leave, since Lou never did get over his fear of snakes, went like a slapstick comedy. "The clouds go low in the mornings," Antonio says, gesturing to the mirror-like Rio Beni.  "Twice Lou crashed into the opposite bank.  He came to the clinic sopping wet from head to toe, but grinning.  Everything was an adventure for him."  During one of his visits to California, Lou was interviewed by a group of middle school students and reported, "20% of all the fresh water in the world goes through the mouth of the Amazon every day. The rains are heavy, and they last so long! As a matter of fact, I just spoke to my friend Antonio this morning, and my clinic is under water right now."

The forest Lou mentioned having to beat back with a machete every day is taking over his old compound, crawling over bamboo structures with limbs of brightest green.  This is where Lou did "the Thoreau thing," as he put it more than once, reading and writing and collapsing into his hammock after a long day treating patients.  The afternoon is warm and quiet, full of fragrance and emerald colors.  Antonio sits quietly in the wall-less structure that used to be Lou's kitchen.  "Lou loved cooking," he says after a pause.  "He loved having people by and talking and cooking.  But he also loved his solitary time."  Solito is the word Antonio uses, which is an affectionate diminutive term.  It does not mean only "by himself."  It means, roughly, "by his little self."  In the end, Antonio's relationship with Lou resembled that of a parent and son more than anything else, and Lou's wish to visit Rurrenebaque one more time after falling ill had its basis in his wish to say goodbye to Antonio as much as in his love for the Project.  Antonio looks around the compound.  "Sometimes I come here by myself, just to think," he says.

Travel days start early for the Project team.  At the weekly staff meeting, the team agrees on a 7:30am meeting time at the clinic.  As this is Bolivian time, at around 8:15 everyone is there, layered with waterproof jackets, baseball caps, and sunglasses.  Here alongside Antonio and Jose is Dr. Frida Rada, Modesto's
wife, the Project doctor who lives permanently in Rurrenebaque. (The Project regularly changes directorial hands in Bolivia; it has hosted a regular stream of long-term health professional work alongside the Bolivian team – usually an American or Cuban doctor will come with kids and spouse in tow for a two-year contract. Through the years over 20 pre-med and medical students and residents from around the world have worked short-term with the team, not to mention visits from anthropologists, photographers and writers.) Christopher Brady took over US-based direction of the Project under the auspices of Direct Relief International, an international aid organization, and another California-based NGO called Concern America, but in March 2008 he and Lou’s daughter Uldine, a physician, established their own non-profit -- Netzer-Brady International --to carry the work forward.

It is Christopher and his brother Jim, another prominent resident and educator, who came up with and lead the Project's most successful yearly fundraiser to date: Ride/Walk For a Reason, a bike and hike trip whose participants, mostly families from Santa Barbara County, spend the preceding year raising money for the Project and then either ride bikes in July from La Paz to Rurre, a grueling 300 miles., or do a 4-day jungle trek with local guides visiting Project communities. Ride families rope in an essential $100,000 for the project annually.  Participants learn about local ecology, strengthen the ties Lou created between Santa Barbara and Rurrenebaque, and observe the Project team at work on a day not unlike this one. 

Even an August day starts out with some mist on the river.  Antonio sits in the Project vehicle, a big jeep that takes the team and all the heavy red equipment and medicine bags from the clinic to the waterfront.  A stop is made at a market with walls painted aquamarine, and Lola runs in to order a dish of rice, meat, and fried egg for each member of the group.  The street is already packed with people.  Outside the market stands a family of several barefoot children and a mother whose face is wizened with premature wrinkles and missing a few teeth.  They pass a baby anteater between them, waiting for the furry creature to attract a potential buyer. Frida puts a hand to her mouth and coos at the creature from afar.  "I'd want to buy it, because it won't survive with those children.  They just don't know how to treat it properly.  Where would we put it?" she asks Modesto.  "We already have a monkey!"

Frida is concerned again at the water's edge while Antonio readies the motor of the boat, watching a man is yanking a cow with a rope tied around its neck onto a neighboring barge.  "I just can't stand it when animals are mistreated," she says.  Neither can she stand mistreatment of humans, something she makes clear two hours later after an exhilarating ride through the chilly mists to the community of San Miguel.  Once the equipment is offloaded and schlepped up the slippery riverbank by Project members and eager locals, and the clinic is set up in whichever communal space is available--which in the case of San Miguel is a fairly new open-air space whose construction was made possible by a recent influx of tourism--Frida begins to receive patients.  When a young mother slaps a baby who will not stop crying, Frida says firmly to her, "We do not use violence with children.  We don't hit children." She lifts her hands up at her husband, who looks up quietly from his post across the room.  "It bothers me," she says. It's the same thing she said when the children outside the market picked up the baby anteater by its hind legs.

Modesto and Frida (whose official Project duty is "health education and training coordination" though she's also a doctor) developed and lead the program of project promotores.  A promotor is nominated by each community the Project works with to act as a liason between the Project and their community and provide emergency medical treatment.  The promotor, who is usually between 15 and 30 years old, then makes a promise in front of their whole community to stay in that community for life.  Promotores receive university-level courses in medical training in a four-year program created, managed, and administered primarily by Frida and Modesto. Whenever the Project boat slides up onto the edge of the Rio Beni, the solitary figure waiting at the top of the tall banks is almost invariably the project promotor, who has known the date of the Project's visit for months and alerted the whole community to the fact. 

In August one of the rare meetings takes place in Rurrenebaque to which all promoteres come from their respective corners of the region.  Some take days to get there.  The promotores meet in a large room in a public building and sleep on cots in another.  Frida stands at a blackboard in front of the room, scribbling medical terms and asking questions about symptoms of an allergic reaction.  There must be about fifty young students male and female, with round-faced, Andean features, looking shyly up at her.  They answer each of Frida's questions correctly.  She turns to them.   "I love you guys!" she cries.  They smile.

On a mission to procure cane juice during lunch break in San Miguel, Modesto reflects on the promoter program as he disappears between tall, rustling stalks of sugarcane until only his voice remains.  "This is why the long-term mission of the project is to educate.  This knowledge should be in the hands of the people.  The social aspect of the project is the most important," he says, reemerging after using his pocketknife to harvest a few choice stalks. 

Promotores also stay in the Rurrenebaque and neighboring San Miguel hospitals to observe and talk with doctors, nurses, and patients.  Elian, the promotor for San Miguel, has a tattoo on the skin between his index finger and thumb.  It says "Jessi Te Amo" with stars. In response to the presumption that the name pertains to a romantic interest, Elian shakes his head.  "Jessi left us," he says.  "She was only two.  She was my little niece, most loved by me.  Very intelligent.  Already walking and talking.  She got sick, and it was so rapid, only three days, and then she was gone.  There was no time."

Indeed when one observes the broad smiles exchanged between Project members and promotores before the big red bags have even made their way up the steep hill, the embraces on the sunny banks of a breathtaking river, it is easy to forget that the lives of whole communities rest in their hands.  Bolivia, a country whose population of 8.8 million roughly equals that of New York City, supposedly guarantees health care to its citizens, but Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America; its residents are 60% indigenous, and being born indigenous, especially in that part of the world, still essentially guarantees a life lived below the poverty line.  Project doctors spend most of their time diagnosing malaria and various dysentaries.  Some of this is combated by basic education about sanitary methods—washing one's hands after bathroom use, bathing and washing in clean water--and some would be easily cured by inexpensive medicine that had not yet found its way to the communities of the Beni Region by the time Lou arrived on its banks.  This is Bolivia, where infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in Latin America, literacy rates are miniscule, and the phrase "government official" is synonymous with "thief" in the minds of both formally educated and uneducated Bolivian citizens.

All Project teams members are quick to point out that there would be no need for the Rio Beni Health Project if the Bolivian government were doing its job.  As the past years of protests, civil strife, economic frailty, and the 2005 Presidential musical-chairs game makes clear, Bolivia is still sadly distant from a time of stability and prosperity.  In December 2005, socialist and indigenous party leader Evo Morales won the presidency in a fair and democratic election. One of Morales' biggest pledges was to orient economic recovery towards safe and legal use of the country's coca crops, a major source of income for the Bolivian poor.  Coca is the crop from which cocaine is derived, and the eradication of coca fields has been a primary focus of the infamous War on Drugs conducted by the American government.

In lieu of efficient and consistent government guidance, the Project has multiple agreements with the local hospitals, not just to train promotores but to refer patients to facilities for ultrasounds and other surgical or emergency needs.  The municipal government agreed to pay the way of medical supplies otherwise donated for free from La Paz to Rurrenebaque and to donate 600 litres of boat fuel to the Project, but the Bolivian government has long been notoriously corrupt and that boat fuel remains undelivered.

In the meantime, efforts like the Rio Beni Health Project are the most successful methods of bridging the gap between the Bolivian poor and the resources they lack.  In Tamarín, one of the region's poorest communities, a bent old lady with hardly any teeth waits with a grandchild on her lap outside a run-down shack, the only open public building.  Inside, business as usual: Lola takes down patients' names and ailments, visiting doctors treat the patients, and Antonio retrieves the medications they prescribe.  Outside, the sun spins large red leaves of an immense almond tree near a boarded-up church.  Modesto stands with a group of adoring children, talking with them and playing games.  A starving kitten is scooped up by one of the children, then thrown to the grass.  The children, standing in the shade, sport the large bellies and skinny legs betraying the presence of malnutrition and parasites.  Modesto walks the path with them to the one-room schoolhouse, where he'll give a talk on the importance of brushing teeth and then hand out toothpaste samples and chalky chewable pills that eradicate parasites. 

When Lou got sick he wrote an open letter to members of the Santa Barbara community along with a card asking for donations to the Project.  After raising two children in his first marriage, he fell in love anew late in his life with Chantal, the French mother of his son-in-law.  He wrote in the letter of watching her walk along the beach while he sat bundled from the wind.  "I renew my pact with God," he wrote.  At his memorial service Dr. Reuben Weininger said that Lou's medical practice was a practice of applied love.  In and out of consciousness in his final hours, he wrote the words "for love" on a scrap of paper.  In Rurrenebaque, the mountains of jungle look like sleeping boars in the fading daylight as another boat purrs by and the tuckered-out Project members head home to rest.  V's of birds fly quick and low over the surface of the Rio Beni as the sunset spreads purple into the sky.  It is unquestionably for love that Louis Netzer began this health project, and it is unquestionably for love that the motley crew that is the Project team sticks together and moves forward with it--both for love of the good works and public service therein and for love of the sprightly, crazy fellow who knew the secret to making dreams come true.

Christopher Brady writes, "The Rio Beni Project continues to expand geographically and in the services it provides to the indigenous people of the Rio Beni region, including a quickly expanding potable water program. Recently the Bolivian Ministry of Health officially acknowledged the Project, and the team has applied for and been granted its official status as a Bolivian charitable health organization named La Fundación Salud Rio Beni--Louis Netzer (The Rio Beni Health Foundation). For more info, write me at CGBrady@igc.org or visit the new website at netzerbrady.org."

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The renaissancively brilliant (read: in his first two months of his Fulbright year in Mongolia produced, wrote and starred in hands down the best piece of theater--and aware, quality expat art--about Mongolia I've ever seen) Michael Littig woke me up to the existence of these photos of Mongolians in urban winter on the BBC network. Harsh, difficult, true. Please take a look, if you'd like a face to go with the tales of harshness you hear. Unfortunately, they are true, but fortunately, there are photographers (and playwrights!) to ignite discussion and action around the circumstances that lead to images like these.

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As the department head of Mongolia's Ministry of Justice, upon her visit to Choibalsan's border police compound Altangerel was treated to a full day of military formation demonstrations and, of course, lots of good food and a concert filled with soldiers performing Mongolia's favorite songs on Mongolia's favorite instruments. Here is one of the more surreal moments of that day--children in uniform running into the theater, where, as you'll see, a young man does a beautiful job on the Morin Khuur, or horsehead fiddle.


Back in her office in Ulaanbaatar, Altai said my name on the phone and I didn't know why and then her coworker came in with a tall bottle of water and gummy chews. I clapped with delight and she clapped that I was clapping.

It's routine now for Altai to go upstairs for meetings and me to sit quietly in her spacious office, editing her stories with my laptop on my knees. When Ministry officials poke their heads in and look questioningly at me, I wordlessly point up. The official invariably nods and closes the door. “Tell them in Mongolian that you are the new boss,” she said today, smiling as she left.

The door guards know me by now and when I arrive at the Ministry around 3pm I just say "Altangerel!" and proceed upstairs. Her door was locked today, which hadn't happened before. Two women in the hallway pointed up and said "305" in Mongolian and I went upstairs, wandering the hall for a moment. I asked a woman in the hallway who saw me looking daunted if it was all right to enter 305 even though the door was closed. She made a little fun of me. “I think it's ok,” she whispered.

When I finally got the courage to open the door to the conference room, where she sat with several suited men, she handed me the keys wordlessly and I scuttled out. A guard appeared (perhaps he had through some security camera seen me taking footage of the 3rd floor hallway, with all the certificates on the wall) with an antagonistic expression, sure I was in the wrong place. I held up the keys in defense.

Sometimes I hum, which Altai likes. At the end of a long day sometimes we listen to a little Mariah Carey on her computer. (Tumen Ulzii also quite likes Mariah.)
"Your family seems to fit the liberal portrait we get in Monoglia of America through all the movies," she says when I talk about the singing that goes on in my household.

Today she has a tummyache.
"I ate something in the night I think."
She grates an apple after first cutting pieces for me.
"I like eating like this. It tastes, I think, differently. My main recipe for stomach."
She eats the little pieces of apple like cole slaw. She looks adorable.
"Baby Altai!" I say.
"My husband says when I eat I resemble a small bear," she says.

The night we all went dancing in Choibalsan (and not only is Altai a 31-yr-old who studied law in England and Germany, heads a firm outside of her job as Department Head of the Ministry of Justice--a firm that takes on the biggest international cases from Russia to Germany--and has written four books of fiction and poetry as well as acclaimed political essays in Europe, the woman can also DANCE, man) I told her she was my mother hen because with all the big soldiers around I tended to stick close by her and flap after her wherever she went. "My baby chicken" is one of the things she calls me now.

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(removed at the request of those I listen to)

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This is Why I love Mongolians.

After a week working together near the borders of Russia and China in Choibalsan, these administrators, Ministry of Justice officials, border patrol officers, and policemen toasted and thanked one another for a week of good work by the river Kherlen with toasts, songs, hugs, handshakes, more songs, mutton with onion from a cardboard box on the hood of one of the cars, more songs, and some tears.

It was a trip somewhere between 11 and 13 hours from Choibalsan to UB. The night before, when the week's work was done with, Altangerel and the entire posse of border patrol and police chiefs/officers and me all danced in a circle of 18 people boogying out, all between the ages of 24 and 66. (Also why I love Mongolians: everybody dances, not just the hip youngsters, and they dance in friendly circles with lots of space to really groove, which my friends know is my style anyway.)

Karaoke is something I got teased for--not for the singing part (I *believe* Altai and I sang a Beatles song) but for curling up ("like an accordion!" laughed Byambaa) and napping in our booth while the Mongolian songs I didn't know were sung by swaying Mongolians.

"You slept," said Altai.

She's always been so succinct.

That morning, we all woke up early, downed tsuivan and suutetsai, and then drove for exactly five minutes to a mysterious (to me, at least) building where everyone got out and they all had a meeting. I found instant coffee. In the bathroom one of the officers was throwing up.

It was all Naranbat's fault. Naranbat's the Border Patrol Chief, and when Altai and the other ladies were on their James Bond mission near the border, Naranbat decided that I was to be shepherded by people I didn't know to every sight in Choibalsan, which was awesome for five hours, but then I needed to go find an internet cafe and work on Altai's stories. And not have people waiting for me to be done. Please.
No, I was informed, Naranbat said not to leave you alone.
At which point I had a moment of van-lagged exasperation and immaturity. Naranbat minii tukhai shiidej chadakhgui! I said. Naranbat can't decide about me.

Which was translated to Naranbat as simply "Naranbat can't make decisions."

Which Naranbat proceeded to repeat absolutely every time we saw each other to anyone who would listen (and everyone who wouldn't). I don't think Border Patrol Police Chiefs are used to hearing that kind of thing. I made the requisite correction and apology, but he was getting too much glee out of it. He never let it go, but he did call me when we got back to UB.

So anyway, it was Naranbat who, when everyone else had left for karaoke, insisted I stay and follow the several beers I had with half a glass of vodka. No one was there to defend me, and I owed him one.

It was also Naranbat who, when I tried to say it would be awesome to ride a horse in the countryside, had a horse readied for a soldier to trudge around and lead under the hot sun around the military compound just for me on Friday. I felt really bad for the soldier. But the toothless old man who owned the horse taught me some Russian, and that was fun. I looked round from atop the horse at the bright, dusty Gobi, the barbed wire fences, the run-down buildings of the compound. The soldier crunched through the dry grass, smoking a cigarette and texting on his cell phone. The horse was cantankerous and hungry. I had offended once again earlier, by leaving the military compound after the ceremony and concert held in Altai's honor (AWEsome footage coming your way soon of the soldiers in formation, footage I was then informed I wasn't supposed to have taken), when the bigwigs retreated to have a meeting and no one really knew what to do with me. I didn't want to be a burden, so texted Altai where I was going and walked past the Wrestling Palace to the internet cafe. Altai called.

"Why you left? The horse is ready for you!"

Woops.

Anyhow, after the meeting Saturday morning when one of the officers was sicker than me, we drove aNOTHER five minutes in the twelve-hour trek to the side of the Kherlen river, where two hours of toasting and hugging took place. I settled into the peace of just being there, since there was no telling really what the precedent was, while each person toasted with the special silver bowl and thanked the colleagues. The breeze was fresh, the land flat, the river a mirror and the sky patched with clouds. This crew had taken care of me for no good reason over the week. This crew had done work together the nature of which I'll never know. When language flies over, a wide-winged bird, when culture acts the scudding cloud. When the why of things isn't available, one surrenders attachment to causality and logic. I didn't know what was going on, but we all dug into the mutton and onions in the greasy cardboard box on the hood of the SUV: I didn't have to. The last half hour was all songs and hugs, sometimes with twelve people singing in a semi circle, arms around each other. Altai said goodbye and got in the car. They beckoned her back out for another song. When she got back into the car for good, a tear had coursed down her cheek.

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Shameless plug! I just learned I will have a poem ("Origin") coming out in the next issue of Poets&Artists (O&S), and two pieces of fiction ("The Lateral Deep" and "Disturbing the Spirits" coming out in the fall/winter issue of Cerise Press). Both are mighty fine publications so check them out!

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Hayden's Ferry Review is hosting my post for today on their wonderful blog here. I go a little deeper into the trip out here to the far east of Mongolia. Take a look and happy end of the week!

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The dudes in Choibalsan I hang out with

Greetings from Choibalsan, the town in far eastern Mongolia near the Russian and Chinese borders where Altai has some mysterious business. She took me along in the jeep driven by border patrol officers for the 13 hour drive from Ulaanbaatar last Sunday.

Altai returned from her James Bond-style mission to the border last night. She hadn't bathed for three days. "I'm too dusty to talk to you," she smiled, so we trooped at 9pm to a hotel and paid to use their sauna and showers. Six policemen/border patrol officers entertained me during her absence, and I got to walk into clubs with them. They fed me. They sang with me. They taught me words, including Mongolian miliary-ese for "Soldier Ming at your service! For the country of Monoglia!" They gave me beer. They sat silently in their uniforms in the club, filling the booth in the corner. I think it's the only time I'll know how it feels to have bodyguards, an entourage, a posse.

"Translation is impossible, but one of the most worthwhile things to try."

One of the smartest things I did as an undergraduate was take Forrest Gander's Advanced Translation Workshop. The reasons why are numerous, but today, as I work on Altai's stories in an internet cafe and the elementary-school boys who like to play computer games here hover over my shoulder, curious about what I'm doing, my being reminded of that class (and the conversations we had in it) has to do with what a gift it is to translate contemporary literature and have the means to travel: I got to meet Vicky Allyon in Bolivia. I get to spend time with Altai. I get to sit next to naked Altai in the sauna and be naked myself and talk about all sorts of things. Vast are the amounts of literature to be translated, the years over which said literature was produced, and languages into which to translate; rare are the moments when the creator of a piece of literature and the one doing the translation get to hang out in a sauna.

I close my eyes and smell the warmth coming off the skin of the little boys breathing next to my head and looking at the English on my monitor. The off-the-record, offstage moments the ones with which I am endlessly preoccupied. Paula Vogel said what's happening offstage to the characters in her plays is what fascinates her the most.

Moments from last year in UB:
Luke ironing his clothes in the morning in my apartment before going off and being his industrious self (I myself hardly ever used that iron, and when I asked him how to iron correctly, he merely said, "Make it flat");
Todd pointing out that I'd managed yet again to get sprinkles on my cheeks and/or in my hair after my choco-latte arrived at Bestspresso, the place with wireless closest to the UB Circus, and managing to convey utmost affection while doing so;
Sticking my ipod in my armpit (otherwise it'd stop working) for the walk home from the gym in the -40 Neptune-iceworld Ulaanbaatar turns into midwinter, taking care not to step on the black tiles on Sukhbaatar Square, as doing so causes one to slip, banana-peel style, one one's butt.

Moment from the five months spent in NYC:

A boy around 8 years old, disproportionately big backpack on, book two inches in front of his nose, shoelaces untied, sits on the subway. He's clearly in the middle of a Big Grow, all gangly and ankles showing because his pants are too short. When he gets off the subway he doesn't break stride or break eye contact with the page; his growing self is walking but his head is somewhere else. All over the world, man, if you give a kid a book.

Moment from this stint in Mongolia:

Tony Whitten, a Senior Biodiversity Specialist at The World Bank and a wonderful friend whom I met at the British Embassy's friday-night drinking hole Steppe Inn during the coldest month (-40!) in Ulaanbaatar, asking me the other night as we weaved through the throngs emptying out of the Wrestling Palace after Indian food with a German colleague of his and a Spanish economist, when I asked him what to do about MFAs and more student loans etc:

"Ming, do you have something inside you that needs to come out?"

214

The Huffington Post published my article on observing Mongolia's Presidential election with The Asia Foundation's observation mission. It's up on their world page. Yay!

Here is some shaky footage of a Mongolian couple like the ones I talked aboout in the article, coming in their best clothes to vote: