Mongolia Mission Week 12 - The camel festival

 Mongolia Mission Week 12

Our hope with this blog is to share highlights with our family and friends about our exciting opportunities and awesome responsibilities as missionaries. It's an impossible task, though, because it's hard to condense everything into a few words and pictures. So ask us individually if you'd like to know more about anything! You can contact us by email (jrose219@gmail.com or krose213@gmail.com), Facebook messenger, or you can text Kathy's phone (515-537-3273).

Yes, that's us on the camels

Molly, the friend who told us about the dances and the dance class that we are attending, also told us about a camel festival that includes camel races and camel polo at a nearby village, Saikhandulaan.  Nearby is relative. It's 59 miles away but about 2 hours by car!

We had a hard time figuring how to get there, as there didn't seem to be a bus or train option. The mission president decided to take a P-day (recreational day) to go see the festival and offered us a ride, but we didn't want to take up his precious time with his family. Molly decided to go and ended up arranging a ride for the three of us with a friend of one of her friends, if we helped with the petrol. We got picked up about 9 am and headed to Saikhandulaan. About two miles down the road from Sainshand, the driver turned off onto a dirt road. Well, tracks in the desert. And bumped along in his Hyundai for two hours. Now we understand why there is no taxi, train, or bus.

The road was mostly just tracks to follow,
 but some of it was "divided highway."
(There's another track to the left.)

And there were a couple of interchanges

You need to know that this looked much different on Google Maps:

Looks like a decent road, right?
Can you image what the light gray lines
would be like?

Roadside attractions

Another attraction - an 'ovoo'. Travelers are supposed 

to stop to ask the spirits for a good trip. You add a rock 

to the pile, make your request, and circle the cairn 

clockwise three times. Some people leave birdseed, 

because leaving food for animals brings good luck.

Road hazards.

And finally we see that we are 
approaching the village of Saikhandulaan.

Once we got there, we went into a warming ger (know as a yurt in other countries). Nice, warm, and friendly. These have wood frames with a small wood or coal stove in the center. The huge bowl was made of pieces of a hard bread, we think. It was filled with white curd (dried yoghurt curd) and a few sugar cubes. To the left is a bowl of assorted candies. And the bottles have a hot water/camel milk mixture which is served in the disposable cups. The governor's wife graciously served us. This drink was not fermented according to tradition because the governor is a member of our church. He travels back to Sainshend for the weekends. The people he works with really admire him and the fact that he does not smoke or drink.

Back row: David, Danny, and Sister Namgur (mission president's 
family); Kathy; Zaya (village governor's wife); and Molly, our friend/guide.
Front row: President Namgur, Amgaa (village governor), and John.

You can see the door, clear vinyl roof center, stove pipe,
and all the roof staves.

Beautiful carvings on the staves.

Carvings on the center support posts.

Small cookstove and heater combo.

Meanwhile, outside the ger, restless natives.

So you know what a traditional outhouse has to offer.

We watched a camel race. This is 6 km long, so we watched it start, drove alongside the race with a bunch of other cars, then hurried to the finish line to watch them cross. It was much warmer that way and such fun!

Of course, an ambulance escorts the race.

We took several videos at the festival. Click on the link if you'd like to see snippets of camel racing and camel polo:

Camel festival videos

The governor and his wife hosted a lunch for us and the mission president's family in his office. It was a delicious spread of potatoes, carrots, bread, meat, pickles, etc., served on a platter in the middle of the table for everyone to eat from. What a feast!!

We watched the festival opening ceremonies and met some of the locals and other visitors.

One of the pictures on the wall in the ger was a picture of some petroglyphs. A local man (a minor government official who incidentally was related to Molly, and neither of them had ever met each other before!) said they were nearby. We jumped in two cars so he could lead us out to see them. It was a surreal, amazing, and frigid experience. We didn't even get stuck in the snowdrifts in the Hyundai. 

Then it was time for camel polo. We were told this sport was invented right in here Saikhandulaan. The first trial match was played on February 18, 2002. It's impressive to see them hit the ball while riding a camel. We didn't last long. We were pretty much icicles by then.

We were offered a quick ride on a camel, which was great. And then it was time to depart for home.

Here's another link to our videos from the festival, including the camel race, camel polo, and our camel riding experience.

Camel festival videos

The night before we left to go to the festival, the mission president and his wife conducted an impromptu fireside for our Seminary students during their Seminary time. There are 5 teens in our group; 4 are recent converts. Seminary happens 2 nights a week for teens to participate in regular scripture study. These kids were excited to see the president, who knows and interacts with all of them. Several received their official temple recommends from him that night. It hurts our hearts that they are being so faithful and so willing and don't know if they will have a chance to even go to a temple any time in the near future. In the US, we took for granted the opportunities to take our youth to participate in sacred, peaceful, testimony-building temple experiences. We eagerly await the day when ground will be broken (hopefully this spring) for the announced Mongolian temple. In the meantime, we are all preparing the way.

We still feel so very blessed to be called to serve in this mysterious (to Americans), wonderful, place filled with amazing people and traditions.