Gradually, the bells start to fall silent and the drumbeats die away. The Shaman student becomes quieter and awakes from his trance. His companions help him out of the robes. I also go up to my friend. Surrounded by his friends and relatives, he sits on a chair in the garden, exhausted. Does he know how much he has eaten and drunk? He says no. Dashaa has no recollection of what has just happened.
More sessions are needed to be able to function as a Shaman. This however was one of the most important of all the sessions as here the spirits drew close to Dashaa and showed their trust and confidence in him.
Making preparations.
The spirit has taken possession of him.
Dashaa during the Shaman ceremony.
German Lessons in Ulaanbaatar
A strange feeling creeps over me. Somewhat nervously, I stand in front of the group of unknown language students, made up of young people between 18 and 24 who are taking a course at a Mongolian college or who are working and want to learn German from me at an evening class. The main reason why they take on this extra workload is their strong desire to study in a German-speaking country in Europe. I had already made some preparations for this challenge before I left Germany and had copied a few worksheets. Apart from a plastic sheet screwed to the wall instead of a chalk board, the room doesn’t offer me any other teaching aids.
Several thousand kilometres from home, I will be teaching here as a “native speaker”. Bathed in the glaring light of the fluorescent tubes, I start the lesson for the twenty students. My concept and approach is first to ask a few questions where we will discuss the answers in German before reading a German text together. As I write the question “What is typically German for you?” on the plastic board, I get a unanimous response: “diligence and punctuality”. These “German characteristics” are already established in the consciousness of the Mongolian students or perhaps they have already experienced them?
I am so surprised by the thirst for knowledge shown by the young people and the excellent level of knowledge they already have about Germany, I am scarcely able to express my admiration adequately. I learn that most of their parents studied in the former East Germany and that today some of them have well-paid jobs in Ulaanbaatar. I am grateful to this fact for the large interest in my seminar. The curiosity shown in the German teacher and his teaching methods is enormous. During the first sessions, the small room threatens to burst at the seams. As the head of the private school confirms to me, there has never been so many students attending German lessons!
The desire for punctuality is particularly relevant. The only problem is that it is very difficult to achieve this here. The indescribable traffic chaos in the capital usually makes it impossible to keep to agreed appointments. The Mongolian metropolis doesn’t have any functioning public transportation network in the shape of underground trains or trams. Instead of this, the streets are gridlocked by vast numbers of cars because the bus routes are just as overloaded as the privately operated microbuses.
I live near the Dragon terminus in the west of the city. Overland and post buses set off on their journeys to the far-flung, remote parts of the country from this station. If there is not much traffic, I can get to Sukhbaatar Square where the school is located in ten to twelve minutes on one of the municipal buses. However, on a late winter afternoon, I need sixty to ninety minutes. The traffic problem is a logistical challenge facing the city. Population levels are rising and the amount of traffic is increasing correspondingly. A large bridge-building project will take years to complete. An underground train system is technically very difficult to achieve as the city is criss-crossed by a network of subterranean district heating pipes.
So I also have a problem with punctuality. But the fact that we are all faced with the same issues provides a common bond for me and the students and we start to get to know each other.
The owner of the school invites me for a meal at a top-flight restaurant. We sit at a table for two in the almost empty dining area. She tells me that only half the expected number of students has enrolled for the Chinese course this semester. Even English is not particularly attractive as a foreign language for the young people attending this school. I try to explain the interest in the course I am offering by saying that in the light of the global economic situation, German is a language with a future, even though I know that in practical terms, this is not really the case. The Mongolians have a strong resentment against the Chinese, particularly because of the difficult relationship that has existed between the two countries in the past. Currently it is the cheap, low-quality “Made in China” products that are flooding the markets in Ulaanbaatar, which are causing the Mongolians to adopt a rather sceptical approach to their southern neighbours.
One semester at the private school with two lessons a day, five days a week, costs 600 US$. This is a lot of money that not even the parents with better paid jobs can easily scrape together. For that reason, the students’ expectations of receiving a successful education are very high and they do everything in their power to achieve their dreams. After graduating in Germany, Austria or Switzerland they will return to Mongolia in order to drive the economic progress of their country forwards. “Homeland is homeland”, is the answer to my question as to where they would want to live later on. I hear this time and again during my many conversations with a very wide range of people across Mongolia.
How responsibly they approach the utilisation of the immense natural resources that Mongolia has, will have a significant, global impact. The build-up of commerce and industry, the protection of the natural environment and the improvement of living standards are also core topics that are already being critically assessed and discussed in schools and colleges. In my opinion, these young Mongolians are the highly motivated generation that the country will need in the future, as it emerges into the globalised world.
The traffic in Ulaanbaatar is getting heavier every year.
Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia and almost half of the country’s population of 3 million lives there. At 1,570,000 km2, Mongolia is over four times the size of Germany. In winter, temperatures in the “coldest capital city in the world” get down to below -40°C.
There are obvious signs of change in the country, particularly in respect of the economic situation. Up until current times, sheep, goats, cattle, horses and camels, once Mongolia’s five principal resources, have provided the cornerstone of the population’s existence. For millennia, they have been able to live well from the products of these animals; products such as wool, meat and milk. More recently, the mining of natural resources has been intensified. Coal, copper, gold and rare earth elements represent an enormous potential for the future of the country, which is facing both a cultural and an ideological metamorphosis.
The cityscape of Ulaanbaatar is dominated increasingly by large off-road vehicles. In earlier days, the mode of transport of choice was a fast Nomad horse. Today it is more usually American gas-guzzlers and other western status symbols.