Western Aimags: The Rest of the Trip

Yesterday I gave a little presentation to a few colleagues about using a narrative structure to relay information - and now through laziness I am not going to take my own advice and instead share various random cool parts of the rest of my 14 day stint in the west of Mongolia, not in any particular order.

Ice Cream Advertising

Strangely convenient, the shops in this little soum seemed to put up the packaging of the ice-creams they had in stock - this place had the most, the others usually had 2-3 wrappers! Considering it's -40 outside, you wouldn't think ice-creams would be especially popular!

Shoe Dusters
Instead of inconveniently removing your shoes when entering a house, in this soum at the entry to any building was a kind of brush with big clothe bristles that you used to smack the dust of your boots!

Chinese Road

The kind, generous Chinese (cough, cough) funded and built an amazing paved highway stretching about 300km through the south-west tip of Mongolia...basically a no-man's land. Except there is alot of coal here. The road stretches from the Chinese border to the coal mine, and not a centimetre further! It takes a route that is almost totally useless to local people as it doesn't go near any of the towns - which it could have done without too much trouble. The road passes through some amazing mountain passes, twisting and turning through very narrow valleys and along frozen rivers. Chinese work crews clean the ice off and keep it in top condition. An amazing trip compared to the mongolian "roads" - barely dirt tracks. The irony was that to get to the main city in the province we traveled 3 hours on the 300km of this road which abruptly ended at the coal mine, and then 3.5 hours for the ~150km on what is considered the worst road in Mongolia - which is saying something! - across the bumpiest, rockiest...everything-est excuse for a road in Mongolia.

Enkhy's Family

The itinerary of the trip was first province for 3 days, 14 hour drive to next province, flight the next day to the very south of the aimag, 4 days there, 10 hour drive back to the main city of the province, few days there, 6 hour drive to the next province, work a day there, 6 hour return trip to a town in the east of that province, work another day then fly home.

What I didn't know beforehand is the town in the south of the second aimag - town name Bulgan, province of Hovd, was the home town of the colleague I was traveling with. I also didn't know what an awesome, kind and friendly person she was. This town is home to a certain ethnic group of Mongolians - most of the 20 or so towns in Hovd province are home to a certain, different, ethnic group - making it the most diverse ethnic region of Mongolia. It is also the biggest town in Mongolia - called a soum - with a population of 10,000. Each province has a provincial centre, or city, in the east the populations of these are only a few thousand. The next level down are the regional towns, usually a population of a few hundred to a couple of thousand, except these awesomely massive soum where I found myself - it had the conveniences of a provincial city (ie. a hotel, "hot" water, "heating", shops), an airport! - but it had the friendly, curious (sometimes overwhelmingly awkward) locals of a small town. Throw into this mix that my colleague, Enkhy, has 8 siblings, a gazillion friends and classmates and you start to get a picture of the amount of visiting we did, and the kind of super-friendly reception we received.

Arriving at the airport everyone knew everyone, and we had three cars waiting to take us into town and offering to drive us around while we were there - one was Enkhy's little brother, one her brother-in-law and a third was a Mercy Corps client who wanted to help out. The men collected our baggage and made sure we were comfy in their cars. We were taken to Enkhy's brother's hotel, I was fixed up with the nicest room (relatively speaking) and we were whisked off to Enkhy's sisters house for some food.

On the way a sweet old lady came running to our car - turns out it was Enkhy's mum. She was super excited to see her little girl - Enkhy hadn't been back for a few years. She jumped in the car and came to lunch with us.

Enkhy's sister turned out to be a super sweet woman - the kind you find yourself having amazing conversations with even though you have no common spoken language! I ended up spending a bit of time there over the next few days - she made me breakfast everyday (rice and eggs!), we had a few meals and met a few family members, when Enkhy was working on things that I coudln't help with I hung out with the two sweet teenage girls from the family too.

One afternoon we went to the town's mountain alongside the town's river:

The first evening in town we had dinner with Enkhy's grandparents at her sister's house. Turns out that day was National Teacher's Day, and Enkhy's dad was awarded the highest honour in Mongolia. I then found out that Enkhy's mum had skipped the award ceremony to see her little girl at lunch time!

Above is a family pic with Enkhy's parents either side front, her dad proud with his medal on his chest, an older brother in the middle, younger brother who owns the hotel on the left, next to him her little sister, her son, her youngest daughter, Enkhy, sisters eldest daughter and Enkhy's brother in law.

The second day we had lunch with one of Enkhy's older brothers. He had two gorgeous little boys. Which was a little unusual as people generally have their kids around 20 years old so by the time I am visiting the family the kids are grown up and not so cute! So meeting an almost 40 year-old couple with two little kids was a treat, and you could see the extra tenderness the dad had towards his boys. The youngest boy was one of the most interesting characters I have ever met. He was sooo angry when we came to visit, and not interested in seeing us - here he is hiding under the bed:

When we tried to look at the family photo album he grabbed it and said it was his, we couldn't see it.

About half an hour later his attitude did a 180 and suddenly he was scolding his mother for not caring for her guests, he said it was cold and that we were hungry. He got out his own packet of small lollies and went around the table ceremonially giving each guest a lolly!

Dad was having some trouble opening the wine and left the bottle while he looked for an instrument to help remove the cork...the boys decided they wanted to help -

The cheeky young guy was out of the scene very quickly - leaving his older brother looking guilty!

Later when his Dad was serving each guest a cup of wine the little boy scolded his mother for drinking alcohol - a very un-Mongolian attitude!

Towards the end of the visit the boys started the traditional reciting poetry and singing songs. Then the older boy asked if he could sing a hip-hop song...and then the concert really started! The boys competed with each, taking turn by turn.



Here is the older brother, very happy to sit with his daddy or watch hip-hop on tv, he wasn't too fussed about us or getting attention:

Leaving Town
In this town we were traveling with Batsukh - the very rotund, very jovial manager of Mercy Corps in the province, and the popular Enkhy meant we were not short of social occasions involving much vodka and the who's who of town - the governer, the head of this and that dept etc etc. Trying to leave town we were stopped at the last possible building - the airport - to randomly drink and eat in a room there to say goodbye!

Everyone was having a good laugh...they apologised for not being able to speak english with me, but assured me that should I choose to stay in their town, I could pick any man I wanted for a husband and it would only take him a few days to learn english. Over the past few days a few of the men took an interest in learning english and came away with "hello" and "i no speak english".

Here's Enkhy, Batsukh and Enkhy's little brother having a laugh.

Shaman Lady and Chinggis Country

While in Chinggis' birthplace - Khentii province - over New Years we paid a visit to the local Shaman. One of my friends put together these videos of the Shaman Lady describing how she came to be a Shaman and some of the power of the spirits that she communicates with.

Mongolian Shaman from Lauren Knapp on Vimeo.

Very interesting stuff.

Mongolian Shaman Playing Jaw Harp from Lauren Knapp on Vimeo.

I wasn't having anything to do with playing with the spirits, but each of my friends took a turn asking something about themselves or a family member. The lady got into some interesting things. She picked up that one friend had lost someone close recently. And when one friend asked about her brother, the shaman lady suggested he had been through a trauma at a certain age which had changed his character, which had happened. Generally though she was very inspecific...drawing scepticism from my friends.

Accompanying us were our translator and driver. The driver spent a couple of hours talking to the shaman, performing some rituals involving throwing a glass of vodka or milk to the sky and that kind of thing. The interesting thing is that a few weeks later some other friends did the same trip, with the same driver and translator. This time these men would not go into the shaman lady's house - they seemed freaked out and went ice fishing instead, leaving my friends at the house for a few hours.

Among my Mongolian friends it seems fairly common to consult a Shaman when a family member is sick or when they are looking for guidance on life decisions. The shaman will usually give seemingly strange instructions - maybe some clothing needs to be burnt, or some vodka or milk offered to the gods at certain times of the day, or maybe the family needs to visit a temple and pray with a lama on certain days or a certain period of time - or a combination of these kinds of things; in order to free the spirits that are bringing bad things to the situation.

It's all a lot more complex than Jesus intended, in my opinion.

Here are some photos from the rest of the trip:

This region is close to the Russian border and inhabited by Buriats - a Mongolian ethnic group mostly found in the bordering region of Russia. We rode horses and ice-fished, celebrated the new year with sparklers and buuz (dumplings) made by the old lady living next door.

Mercy Corps Videos

These videos were made in Arkhangai province at the end of last year.

There's a bakery that hired new employees with support from a Mercy Corps SSN grant.


A carpenter who received a Mongol Rally funded grant:



A sewing business that started with a Mongol Rally grant after the group members met at the life skills training from the SSN project:



A feltmaker who expanded his business from just making the ger felt coverings to making new kinds of small items like socks:



And a massage group that provides treatment for people with disabilities, while employing people with a disability as therapists too:

Epically Epic Adventure: Day 1

I tend to overuse the word epic. So when something that is genuinely epic comes along, it is tough to beat the descriptions I've used for something that was pretty cool - but not epic(after all)!

Today is the first day of 14 days straight traveling in three of the 4 western provinces of Mongolia. My traveling colleague drew the short straw: traveling for two weeks, in the coldest part of winter, to the coldest provinces!

I, on the other hand, feel like I've won the lottery being able to come along. The trip is with the animal health officer, of a technical agricultural project I haven't had much to do with. The project struggles to communicate the amazing things they're doing due to being fairly technical, and the staff being fairly technical too.

So today I was up at 4.30am to catch a 7am flight. I was expecting one of our drivers to take me to the airport, but instead had a call from a taxi driver clearly not expecting a non-mongolian speaker. I rushed downstairs only to have him drive off as I got outside the door. I chased after him and got his attention...the next challenge was telling him where to go. I should know the word for airport..but expecting a work driver who had been briefed on the details, my brain wasn't in Mongolian speaking mode...so I named a few of the Mongolian airlines, and we were heading the right direction.

About 3km out from the airport, in a kind of no-man's land, in low negative thirties and pitch black and smoky from pollution, the car just stops. He wasn't out of petrol, but it was that kind of feeling where the car just comes to a gradual stop. The driver did what he could for about 15 minutes, with no luck. Then there was 15 minutes of unsuccessful hailing down a passing car before we eventually got a ride to the airport. Good thing I left ridiculously early!

After that everything has been great! At the airport the check-in lady was the neice of my traveling colleague, they hadn't seen each other for at least 10 years! Then, behind us was my colleague's old english teachers - who she hadn't seen for at least 8 years! Now they are living in our first-stop province - Gobi Altai. When we arrived their Australian friend was there to meet them - so another nice friend was made!

Arriving at the Mercy Corps office i discovered the local program officer has fantastic english...something she had never revealed before. And she is a cool person. We interviewed a few beneficiaries and put in place plans to see some more tomorrow. And some other work stuff went on, but now I'm too exhausted to get into the details! More on that tomorrow!

Social Safety Nets Concert Highlights

At the end of December the big Social Safety Nets project came to a close. Closing Forums were organised in each of the target provinces, ending in concerts with performances by the project participants.

This is a video of highlights from these concerts by Mercy Corps' Social Safety Nets participants - people who were living in poverty, isolation and desperation at the start of last year: now eager to perform in public!

The little boy is my favourite!

Chingii

Mongolians are very proud of their ancient leader, Chinggis Khan. In the rest of the world this bloke is known as Ghenghis Khan, a ruthless barbarian. In Mongolia Chinggis is revered - the truth of his great feats lies somewhere in the middle - he was very intelligent, a smart leader but also killed alot of people and conquered alot of land.

I'm not going to go into the details of history - wikipedia can help you out with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan

Instead I am going to document some of the present incarnations of the man - or 'the many Chingii of Mongolia'

1. Chinggis Khan International Airport.

2. Chinggis Hotel. One of the swankiest in town.

3. Chinggis Vodka.

There are lots and lots of products with the name Chinggis, ranging from about $2 to $100 a bottle.

4. The Chinggis statue

5. Chinggis carpets. These adorn at least 80% of gers.

Countless, literally hundreds, of restaurants and bars across Ulaanbaatar and in the countryside are named in his honour. Every provinces has a local museum, every one of these featuring the local connection to Chinggis: Chinggis' birthplace, Chinggis' mother's birthplace, where Chinggis grew up, where Chinggis once drank some water...and so on.

Weekend Getaway: The Desert

Last weekend I set off for the gobi by train with 4 friends. We spent all day Saturday on the train, then had 24 hours around Sainshand, then Sunday night on the train to get back in time for work. The scenerey was stunning. The desert was amazing: especially in winter. Snow covered sand dunes...just breathtaking!

Close to the city where the train stopped is one of the three major buddhist sites for Mongolians. Called the "energy centre", the site was home to a special monk a few hundred years ago. It is believed he could transport himself from Mongolia to Tibet in the blink of an eye. More tangible signs of his skills are left in his poems and dramatic works. He predicted his death three years early and it came to pass as he had said - he told his followers they could access his spirit forever from the site of the energy centre.

The platform in Choir, the main stop halfway (5 hours) between UB and Sainshand.

Our spread: 1kg of Doritos, Mongolian Sushi, Meatballs and tomato and vegie sauce, Yak Cheese (Yummmm, but super strong smelling), boiled eggs...

Breast rocks. Brings fertility for women...

The 5th biggest stupa in the world. Finished in September last year: brand new, super fancy. Huge inside. Dedicated to the dramatic monk.

THE energy centre - sitting on the ground, exposing your hands to the sun to absorb the energy. The effect on us foreigners was unanimously to feel extremely cold.

A giant-bell in the middle of the desert. There was a circle of stupas (the white statues) about 50-100m apart dotted from the monastery to the bell to the energy centre, to some caves.

Ring the bell three times for good fortune. My advice: take in the amazing view of nothing that is the desert and get your fill of inspiration.

Our slightly short driver (super friendly guy) with one of the giant-like german journeymen!

A novelty for the weekend was our accidental travel companions. Four german-speaking "journeyman": carpenters spending three years and one day traveling the world following the completion of the apprenticeships to learn skills and share skills, upholding an 800 year tradition. Super cool! They have to wear their traditional uniform, including hat - they carry two sets, one to work in and one to travel in. This rule extends even to super cold climates, like Mongolia: no adding a big coat or beanie or boots...so they were freaking cold. Wikipedia info here

Climbing this mountain in the middle of the flat desert. Men can go to the top, women only half way.

Me as high as women can go. The view from here was stunning enough.

Camels in the desert! With snow! Just amazing.

I do work, sometimes, honest.

Despite the appearance the tales on my blog might give (and they're only half the story I get around to writing up) I do, at times, do a lot of work.

The piece below is an example of one such occasion. This was a Friday night, Saturday morning effort, in the few hours before we took off for a week out west. I was given the task around 3pm on Friday afternoon, and leaving for the trip Saturday at 10am-ish.

The task was an entry into MC's innovation contest - calling for examples of innovations from MC offices around the world. The final version looked very different to this one after all kinds of miscommunications and what-nots, but I was obliviously enjoying being bogged on the way to Tavan Bogd in Bayan Ulgii at that point.

At any rate, it is a nice write up, slightly formal, of a really cool project MC Mongolia implemented in 2011. The project has inspired a few new proposals and is promoting a similar approach among other NGOs in the Mong.

Teaching Herders to Fish

Describe the problem that you were trying to solve The combined effects of the 2009-2010 dzud weather event, coinciding with the full brunt of the global financial crisis reaching rural Mongolia, resulted in large numbers of formerly nomadic herding families being forced to relocate to rural urban centers. Due to these rapid changes in their lives, signs of distress were common, with alarmingly high incidents of depression, alcohol dependence, domestic violence and suicide hastening the necessity of addressing this crisis. These psychological and social implications were compounded by a lack of employable skills together with a lack of employment opportunities due to the global financial crisis.

By May 2010, 20% of all livestock across Mongolia, or 8.2 million animals, had become victims of the severe weather event locals call dzud. The dzud is result of an extremely dry summer, followed by an extremely cold winter with unusually high snowfall. For many families across rural Mongolia these losses amounted to their entire herds. No longer able to continue the lifestyle they knew, larger numbers of formerly nomadic families relocated their gers (portable nomadic dwelling) to rural urban centers. Families used to endless steppe encircling all sides of their round dwelling were suddenly surrounded by a fence, then beyond that they were enclosed by thousands of other people, buildings, roads and cars with barely a goat, sheep or horse in sight.

With no employable skills, and few jobs available anyway former herders had no way to support their families. Living in the poorest edges of town, these families struggled to form productive communities, instead being held together by their lack of skills, their lack of employment and mostly, their lack of hope.

What is the innovation? Actions/Activities Our response to this unprecedented combination of events was underpinned by the proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Past programs by government and civil society organizations, ourselves included, focused on meeting the critical need in the situation – unemployed people need jobs. The problem with this approach in practice was that, for various reasons, even when we did all we could to place an unemployed person in a job there was almost no sustainability – after a few weeks many simply didn’t turn up to work, and those who did lacked motivation to obtain new skills and contribute to their workplaces. With this past experience in mind, we were determined to address the root cause of the issue, and in doing so found ourselves ‘teaching herders to fish’.

Our solutions was to deliver a pioneering approach in Mongolia that would meet not just marginal household's critical economic needs through employment, but would primarily address the root cause of their psychological and social issues and empower individuals to take responsibility for bettering their life situation through the delivery of Psycho-Social Support (PSS) training, accompanied by enabling services including kindergartens, vocational skills training and labor market days. This new technique has delivered greater impact and deeper insight into the best practices for meeting the needs of communities.

Describe the actions and activities that were undertaken Given the lack of ocean and relatively few bodies of water we did not, in fact, find ourselves literally teaching herders to fish. We did however find ourselves teaching herders to sing, dance, draw, act out skits, play team sports and take part in public speaking. We also taught them important life-skills and coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and emotions, the importance of personal goal setting and the value of social bonds and communities. These were key parts of the PSS curriculum we delivered, in partnership with the “Mongol Household” psychotherapy association, via eight trainers in each of 10 provinces, especially trained to deliver the course for two, two-hour session each week to eight groups of 20 participants in each province – making a total of 1,600 participants.

Alongside the PSS training, specific employment support activities were implemented as part of the program. These included vocational skills training for over 4000 individuals. By improving their marketable skills, our objective was to ensure these participants would be more likely to find long term, sustainable and fulfilling employment. Labor market days were organized to bring together job seekers and employers, while an Employer Support Mechanism provided incentives to local employers to sustainably expand their business and hire extra employees.

An additional key activity was to establish kindergartens in the neighborhoods of our target group. These neighborhoods are on the fringes of rural urban centers, where poverty is rife and most children have no access to pre-school education. Establishing these kindergartens created the opportunity for children in these families to learn social skills, gain knowledge about hygiene and healthy eating – and most importantly, it kept them occupied in a safe environment while their parents participated in the PSS training or related employment support activities.

How do you know that it worked (or didn’t work)? The PSS training has proved a phenomenally effective. By targeting the underlying psychological and social issues common among unemployed, individuals were empowered to seek out employment opportunities for themselves, while becoming active members of their communities, engaged in local decision-making.

When we visit project participants we are blown away by the seemingly endless stream of outgoing, confident participants eager to share how the PSS training has changed their lives. Many tell of the close friendships they have now formed with others in their class. Many now have full-time jobs, making use of their newly obtained vocational skills. Meanwhile others have taken matters into their own hands and formed their own small businesses. Before participating in the Psycho-Social Support training, these individuals lacked the self-confidence to so much as apply for a job - let alone the energy and commitment to actively start their own business.

And the statistics backup our participant's stories. One in two PSS training participants are now employed. Following a survey of PSS participants after the training, 97% responded that they have experienced a positive change in themselves. The project aimed to create 700 new jobs. To date 1401 individuals have found permanent employment - a success rate of 200%! The capacity of attendees for the PSS training sessions was 1600. At its peak 1642 people participated in the training sessions, a result of participants encouraging their partners and friends to come along.

But most importantly of all, our efforts to ensure these activities are sustainable have been a success. A focus on tri-partite partnerships from the beginning of the project has ensured shared ownership of initiatives. Local government in eight of the ten provinces will continue to operate the kindergartens established under the project. One small, but significant, example of the impact of the PSS training in communities can be seen in local job advertisements. Employers are now actively asking for Mercy Corps' PSS training graduates to fill their vacant positions.

What would you recommend to do differently in the future? Analysis of Experience: Outcomes and Learning One improvement we would make in the future is the duration of the training period. Based on scientific research, the Psycho-Social Support training was delivered over a six-month period. In practice we found that maintaining regular attendance over such a long period of time proved very challenging. We also observed that over just three months a significant change was evident in participants. In the future we would recommend condensing the training period to just three months and not holding the training over summer, when there are greatly increased seasonal employment opportunities in rural Mongolia.

Other than this improvement, the inclusion of the Psycho-Social Support training has proved highly effective. Our team have seen the reality of Mercy Corps vision for change in action with strong government, private and civil society participation leading to sustainable change in very real ways for individuals, families and communities across rural Mongolia. With relevant cultural adjustments we highly recommend this approach when implementing employment support programs and we can see its potential in a range of other contexts. We hope to include elements of the PSS training in future programs in Mongolia.

Christmas in Mongolia

Phew. The Christmas season in Ulaanbaatar has been surprisingly festive, and very busy.

On the musical side, the most popular song of the season is by far this annoying ditty by Abba. The "Happy New Year" part of the chorus must also be topping the ringtone charts, if my colleague's phones are anything to go by.

Around the start of December "New Year Trees" started popping up in front of the big stores, then in front of the bigger buildings, and then a huge one in the main square! "New Year" decorations, almost exactly the same as our christmas decorations, with the notable exception of anything christian, are everywhere.

Almost everything is exactly the same, but called "new year such and such" rather than "christmas such and such".

The undoubted highlight of the new year season is the work new year party. There is huge pressure on every female to be dressed to their absolute best for this occasion. In the early weeks of December office talk is dominated by what dress you are going to where, how you are going to do your hair and so on. It was made clear that anything other than a dress and some makeup would be totally unacceptable on my part, so I went with it and did my best to get into the festive spirit. The terrible task of shopping for a dress, in a foreign country where women are 90% the size of sticks and shop assistants are the opposite of helpful was put off a few times - until the Sunday before the party, the last possible day to find the dress. An awesome friend with great taste came along to help me out. Miraculously we found two dresses and couldn't pick between the two. Figuring I would not want to go dress shopping again for another 24 years I decided to get both.

Me with my team at the work party. Half these guys finished their contracts two days later :(

The two dress scenario worked out perfectly as the night after my epic work party was a fancy party for the aussie volunteers in town - so I ended up wearing a dress two nights in a row!

Me and some of the aussie volunteer crew.

What's left of my intake. Intake 30 started as 6 + one partner. Now we are two down, another has finished her assignment but staying around and it won't be long until the next one leaves. Farewells are the curse of the AYAD adventure.

These two parties were in the week before Christmas. Three days of this week were spent at work conference - around 100 staff, including all the guys who work in the field offices around the countryside, were bought together for various strategic discussions and updates etc. This was a good chance to evaluate how my assignment can fit in, meet some of the english speaking field staff and suss out some good provinces to try and get myself to in my last 14 weeks!!!!

So three days of conference, two bit parties, then Friday night was a latish night farewelling my colleagues whose contracts finished up...notably the team leader who had been at MCM for about 6 years. Although most of the conversation was in Mongolian it was a really pleasant night.

Which brings us to Christmas eve. My intake and our housemates had a late lunch at one of the fancier cafes in town, newly opened and exchanged secret santa gifts. We then moved to the ballet theatre to watch the aptly scheduled Nutcracker.

This was followed by mulled wine at one of the aussie's homes and then some essential ice-cream + ovaltine + christmas movies in a smaller group - Home Alone 2. Christmas day was going to bed super late after skyping home early in the morning before tales had to leave for work, sleeping in, rushing to church with some other volunteers then back home to get ready for a big lunch at my apartment. The invite said to start at 3pm.

This was taken pretty liberally by some and we didn't start eating until almost 6, but boy what a feast! A former chef prepared the most delicious roast beef and juus - the result of 6 months stock-collecting; there was mac and cheese, vegies, salad, bolognese, bruschetta and more...dessert featured a trifle, cakes and ice cream. Starts had included tasmanian cheese and pizza shapes smuggled in!

It was a beautiful meal with lots of friends - about 50 people over the course of the afternoon crammed into our apartment to share the day together. The night finished off with an essential Love Actually viewing and finally some sleep.

This was after spending two weeks out of three during december in the countryside. So a busy time...perhaps for the best, keeping busy helps you forget to remember what you're missing out on back home!

This week I am on holiday, although so far its been busy with cleaning and errands. Tomorrow I am off to Khentii - to a region close to the russian border (we needed to get border permits) where Chinggis Khan (Gengis) is believed to have been born. Today it is a region with buriat people - an ethnic group close to Mongolians, mostly found in Russia around Chita and Ulan Ude. More on that when I get back :)