Encore, Jacques Pochoy, une fois, merci pour le partage. Dans l'Ouest nous dependons tellement tous nos gadgets, nos telephones intelligents, nos ordinateurs, nos televiseurs ... l'enfer, sources de pouvoir et de l'eau partout. Pensez-vous que vous pourriez facilement et heureusement s'adapter a un style de vie mongole rural?
Wow ! Gary, you are really multi-tasked... :-) The great bear from the North stated that English should be the "Lingua Franca", so I'll stick with it, but your french is excellent (the "Patrice" part I guess :-), or through your year in Indochina ? ).
Could we live as those Mongols in the village ? Well, for one they are just as "hooked" as we are on technology ! They have computers and cell phones even in the Gers in the middle of nowhere ! Satellite access I believe, with solar cells or windmills for electricity !
What was striking in a west viewpoint was all those people with broken limbs, not properly tended that goes around with crooked legs or arms and old style crutches (wooden). Life is dangerous, we were warned not to walk alone to the end of the valley as they were bears (they kill two or three bears a year).
With the usual western students not really paying attention, we were in the anguish of an accident, the nearest doctor was in U.B. and there was at least two days to wait for a train ! So it's the land of the fittest. We could see young men playing pool, outside with just a T-shirt by minus 10° C...
Even there, it's still the old story of humanity, as the students from U.B., Mongols, often having grandparents in such villages, were the ones who didn't want to mix with those "rurals" who smelled of cow ! The hard work those villagers had, was too much for the urban generation who dream of buying Hummers (the top fashionable car in U.B.).
Apart from the medical facilities ( there might have been a shaman somewhere, but he was well hidden) the "simple" way of life, only works if you like mutton (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and Chinese fried chips as they don't have vegetables (it starts in some patches U.B.). We were in a Northern part with rivers that flows all year, but there are terrible droughts that kills most of the flocks in the main part of Mongolia who sees global warming much quicker and harsher then we do !
The old way of living as nomads is giving way to gigantic mines for rare earth that our technology needs. It's Zola revisited, as each family is allowed (free) 5 liters of Vodka per week and the "in between" generation is lost between rurality and urban dwellings.
It's quite sad, as their Buddhist roots and social practice from Russian communism creates an ideal environment for being helpful to each other, but with sheep dying in droughts, the discovery of South Korean and Japanese culture (and financial investments of the latters), the big neighbors searching for cheap mining rights, this young and independent country has a struggle for life to win...
How can we help them when we don't even know how to help ourselves ?
