After the long and harsh winter, Mongolian families collect their belongings, gather their sheep, horses and yaks, and head to the summer pasture. Everything which a family requires for its four month stay - shelter, stove, cooking utensils, and clothes, as well as bags of flour, salt and tea - is strapped onto the backs of camels for the journey which can exceed 100 kilometers. After a morning's work, the yurt, constructed entirely without metal except for the door hinges, is already standing and all that remains to be done is to cover the roof and outside wall with swathes of felt or animal hide. By evening, the stove is installed in the center of the yurt, the kitchen cabinet neatly placed on the right hand side, and the toothbrushes hung to the left of the entrance.
For the next four months or until the snows arrive, the family is totally self-sufficient. The summer diet is monotonous but not unhealthy - milk products, bread, tea, and, as long as it lasts, dried meat from the previous winter. Although fruits and vegetables, as well as sweets, are nowhere to be found, a variety of dairy products including yogurt, kefir, dried curds, butter and cream is made from the milk of sheep and yaks. Sheep wool is worked into felt, and yak hair is used to make the rope which holds the yurt together. The daily schedule revolves around the animals. Twice a day the men and children gather the sheep from the nearby hills and herd them towards the yurt where they are milked by the women. The women then work the milk into the various food products, in addition to cleaning the yurt and keeping hot tea ready for unexpected guests. As in any pastoral society, guests are warmly welcomed, not only as harbingers of news from the outside world but simply as new faces to see and with which to communicate.
Contrast this with our "advanced" Western culture. We are boundlessly mobile, enjoy an endless variety of food, and change careers every few years. Yet we no longer build anything by hand, have neglected or even lost our innate relationship with Nature and are increasingly lonely and unfulfilled. Compare the natural openness and physical robustness of a Mongolian child with the fearful timidness and overweight laziness of many Western children. Finally, look at the average incomes and life expectancies of these two worlds apart and take a moment or two to ponder whether wealth and longevity are truly the keys to happiness.
|
