Sylvia's Journal

On Wednesday we started the final of our three events here, the one I am leading. Some 35 representatives from various organizations involved (or to be involved) in wheelchair services had been invited. About 25 or so showed up.

We have a few Americans in the room and so translation remains a challenge because we have to translate both ways and not just for the facilitator. One of our translators volunteered to come simply because she was curious about the unusual methodology – we ended up using her quite a bit and hopefully we can pay her.

The highlight of the day was the creation of a shared vision. Getting people to visualize a desired future was a challenge with reluctance to close eyes, many people not returning after lunch and constant cellphone interruptions which, though silent were still interruptions. People cannot seem to turn cellphones off or ignore calls.

But once the visualization was done and participants were urged to use all materials in the room (this included modeling clay), everyone started playing, with an abandon I haven’t seen before. Faces lit up and the usually serious and unsmiling faces relaxed. We stood around each table as they pointed out their dreams for wheelchair access in Mongolia.

After the break we started to tease out the common elements and it was as if I had put people back in their traditional school benches. The energy dipped, the energy slipped and at 4 PM, one hour ahead of time, I called it a day as there seem to be no point in continuing with the small group. I felt as I was wading through molasses. When I announced the end of the day people started smiling again and energy returned – energy applied to packing up.

It was our last evening with our Filipino friend and master trainer and we had her select the restaurant for our farewell supper. We went to a Mongolian hot pot place and ordered spicy hot pots, dumplings, thin mutton slices and a basket full of vegetables, accompanied by a large Ghenggis beer and then we parted. We are now in the phase were everyday someone is leaving. Me tomorrow for my trip to Kinshasa and Maggie will close the ranks on Friday night, returning to DC.

About three quarters through the managers’ workshop our translator shared with us that many (most?) of the 45 or so people in the room did not understand why they were there, why they were selected for the training and what the point was of these nice foreigners telling them how to run a wheelchair service. They had no wheelchairs to give away and if they did they were not at all of the quality that we told them was acceptable. Furthermore, they didn’t expect any of such wheelchairs anytime soon. We were teaching about budgets but budgets are handed down from above.

I cringed. This was everything that critics of development aid throw in our face and usually I counter by saying we don’t work like that. But here we were. We called an emergency meeting with our main counterpart, who we had expected to be with us, follow all the trainings and explain how this training fit into a larger plan. He speaks very little English and had us believe, some time ago, that he followed what we were talking about. Not so.

Any of the context setting and opening speeches had been vague about the purpose and thus the frustration of the participants was entirely justified. We rectified all this with more speeches and pointed out that the managers were ‘laying out the path in walking,’ to use a well-worn quote. In the final reflection people seemed to understand their situation better. One person mentioned an HIV training she had received years before HIV became a problem in Mongolia and then she realized the value of her training. Maybe people were just nice and polite to us.

Monday morning we received some 45 of the 64 expected managers to help them understand the implications of setting up a wheelchair service in their centers. We had divided our roles between the three of us and are each responsible for 3 to 4 sessions.

The social workers came in uniforms. They look like police officers but without a whistle and a cap. This was a good thing we decided, as they look rather intimidating. The other participants come from health centers run by the government and from the national rehab center. Only one person is in a wheelchair, the PR manager of a wheelchair users group who Maggie and I invited at the last minute. The make up of this group stands in sharp contrast with the Philippines where wheelchair users occupy some of the highest positions in agencies that look after people with disabilities.

It is very tricky to teach with a translator. Participants get easily bored when the translator talks to us in English and we miss of course a great deal. But from time to time we can see people perk up as they talk about the universal organizational phenomenon: managers who don’t understand them and do bad things to them. I reminded them that they too are managers and therefore can break the chain.

When not in front I sit by the side chatting with the translator who is not on duty. We argue about American’s role in the world (her: you are bombing people into democracy). I try to explain that, while I am not in favor of bombing anyone and anything, the situation is a bit more complex, especially when it comes to Islamist fundamentalists.

She is an interesting mix of Europe and Asia – a Portuguese father and a Mongolian mother, both attracted as young idealists to Moscow to be part of the communist movement in the 50s or 60s. She points out to me that under the communist regime, Mongolian women earned the same as men, everyone had access to health services, education and housing, though standards may not have been as high as in the west. After the start of Mongolian democracy in 1990, these numbers have been slipping and ordinary people are worse off, especially the women. In the west these advantages of communism were usually ignored or downplayed. But I do remember these facts well as I studied Russian history, political economy and social life as part of my graduation electives. It seems that here the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

We got into this conversation because I had noticed that most of the participants were women. However, I was told, these were midlevel managers. The ones at the top were most likely men who are highly political party bosses. Our translator has little love lost for the way her country is governed these days, with corruption and bribes creating economic hardship for many.

On Sunday it rained and was cold, like early April in Massachusetts. We set out with two colleagues from the Rehab Center who kindly sacrificed their day off to show us a small piece of their enormous country.

The roads are rough, with holes everywhere – I will complain less back home. The winters do a terrible job on the asphalt and repairs are probably postponed. Mongolian drivers are among the worst drivers I have seen – on the daily route to the Rehab Center we see at least three or four cars stopped because they ran into each other. Cars go left and right to avoid pot holes and drivers are rather selfish (this is actually not so unique). Trying to get into a line or cross a busy street is nearly impossible, so I suppose one learns to be selfish and aggressive.

We stopped by the side of the road where two mangy (or were they simply shedding) Bactrian camels (two-humped) were tied to a stake by the road. Our Mongolian hosts indicated we should get out and ride the camel about 20 feet one way and then 20 feet back. We also were offered a large leather mitt on which an enormous bird was placed, weighing more than Faro – an eagle I suppose – with huge talons and beak but eyes that showed no more life in them than one would observe in a plastic replica. The spirit had gone out of this bird and one could easily understand why – sitting by the side of the road in a bleak landscape, being carted to and from work in the boot of a car and tied to a pole. He (she?) and a mate, even larger with a wingspan of about 2 meters, were like the dancing bear or performing monkey. Our Mongolian hosts paid the 25 cents for each of us, contributing to this terrible practice because of politeness and a little curiosity.We returned to the car, wet from the drizzle, our hands smelling sour from the inside of the mitt and the camel’s coat.

We continued our journey (54 km east of Ulaanbataar) to the Ghenggis Khan Statue Complex. I had expected a series of slightly larger than life status with Mr. Khan in various poses. Instead we saw the largest equestrian statue in the world. Sitting proud and tall and made from 250 tons of stainless steel, 40 meters high, Mr. Khan, the national hero, dominates the landscape. He looks east towards his birthplace. His statue sits on top of a circular pedestal with 36 columns representing the 36 khans (Ghenggis being number one) to Ligdan Khan (presumably number 36).

Inside the base is a museum, a movie theatre, a restaurant, post office, and two gift shops plus a 7 meter high replica of his riding boot. For a couple of dollars you can ‘rent’ some traditional clothes: fine embroidered gowns and fancy hats for women and rough leathers and wolf furs with chainmail, helmets and other war faring paraphernalia for men. You can then roam around the complex in your gowns and make pictures to your heart’s content. Of course we did so and enlisted some local men in their scary outfits to join us for various group photos.

We walked up a very narrow staircase inside the back of the horse to emerge between the horse’s ears with a close look at Ghenggis’s face and the surrounding landscape. A few of the lodging yurts are already in place but the landscaping has barely started. Here too there are no trees – a few scraggly ones planted as part of a more grandiose plan to match the grandiosity of the center piece. We drove back in more drizzle, zigzagging across potholes and avoiding other cars doing the same.

We made it back in one piece and without a scratch, had a late Japanese lunch and settled into the local Starbucks look-alike for a macchiato to divide roles and responsibilities for the managers’ workshop that starts tomorrow.

Saturday was a day of play and rest for Maggie and me while our trainers completed their last day. Our guide and interpreter took us to the Gandan Monastery which is located on the edge of the city. It was established at its current location in 1838 and grew over the next century into a complex that included 9 dastans or institutes, a library and housing for some 5000 monks. It attracted people from all over who practiced the Tibetan form of Buddhism. I recognized the similarity with the monasteries Axel and I visited in Sikkim some years ago.

In 1938 the communists destroyed most (some 900) monasteries in the country. Five of the Gandan monastery temples were destroyed and what was left served as barracks for Russian soldiers or barns for their horses. The monastery did continue to function, although under strict supervision and on a very small scale during the rest of the communist era until the Democratic Revolution of 1990.

Now the place is thriving again and expanding. There are 10 temples and some 900 monks. Our guide keeps calling them monkeys, not out of disrespect but because she confuses the words. After all, if one is monk, two might well be monkees. It is a logical mistake.

An enormous golden statue (my guess: some 3 stories high) of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Janraisig (Chenresig in Tibetan) stands in the center of the biggest temple which has become a symbol of independence for Mongolians. The original was carted off to the USSR and can be seen in the Hermitage we were told. How they got it out of the building (and how the Mongolians got a copy back in) is a miracle, the latter attesting to the craftsmanship of the Mongolians.

In other temples monks were reciting from the (Tibetan) books of prayer, rocking back and forth. They received gifts, like boxes of Choco Pies which were placed next to religious artifacts, creating some dissonance for me but apparently none for the locals.

We followed our guide and received blessings from several monks by bending over in front of their seat. They placed the prayer book on our forehead. Leaving the temple is a bit tricky with the uneven stones and high thresholds because once cannot turn one’s back on what is inside the temple. It occurred to me that for wheelchair users a visit to this temple is at least for now, out of the question.

An American gentleman started to follow us and listen in to our interpreter’s explanations. We invited him to join us and discovered that he is a visiting OB/management and strategy professor at a Chinese university and was in Mongolian to cross one item of his bucket list, a motorcycle ride across the steppes. He had already done one from the most southern tip of South America to Alaska. He is a circumnavigator, an elite club of people who have gone around the world a few times. It includes many celebrities, among them the former queen of Sikkim, who I knew about from our Sikkim travels.

Outside the temple complex are souvenir shops that sell trinkets, mass-produced art and amulets for protection against the dangers of the world. We decided that our new friend needed to buy some protection against the dangers of traversing Mongolia on a motor bike. Maggie and I bought a charm to protect me against flattery and her against interferences to doing a good job. For a dollar and a quarter each, we also bought 9 hedge hock quills in a shaman’s shop. A dollar and a quarter is not much, we reasoned, to protect us against the dangers of travel. We did not buy the more powerful protection, in the shape of an embroidered roll, for 25000 Mongolian Tughrik (about 14 dollars), considering this a tad too much for superstition.

At the end of Saturday we returned to the Rehab Center to be part of the graduation ceremony. We found the students and trainers sitting in a circle and sharing the impact of the week of hard work. Our trainers were sitting each next to a translator so they could follow the heartfelt words from the participants. It was very moving to hear how people had been affected and obscured all the hassles and frustrations of the week (and believe me, there were a few).

Since Maggie had done the speechifying at the beginning, I got to do this at the end. It is always easier because the group has bonded and I could talk about the difference I had witnessed and do some exhorting which now made sense to everyone. The institute’s general director handed out the certificates, we applauded a lot, made the group photo, exchanged contact information and cleaned up the room to set up for Monday’s managers workshop. This is an important part of the package because these newly trained providers will need a lot of management support to apply what they learned.

We treated ourselves to a dinner at Modern Nomad, a chain of Mongolian restaurants in the region. The UB restaurant featured a daily show of traditional music and dancing which we didn’t want to miss. It was also the last evening here in UB for our Indian trainer who was leaving the next morning.

The first thing that struck me when the players entered was their ‘indian-ness’ (as in Native American Indian): the woman’s headdress with the dangling turquoise and silver beads, the rain tube, the fringed skirts and shirts, the animal symbols, the throaty songs and of course the facial features. The instruments, especially a one by five feet lap harp with many strings, the felt boots, the fur coats and the drum made from a Chinese tea box indicated that we were in a cold place near China.

But now (urban) Mongolians dress in North Face and drink coffee (lattes) which the Russian introduced quite successfully, taken out from Starbuck-look-alikes in paper cups. Their music comes out of their smart phones through ear buds. A large Times-Square-size TV screen on the main drag advertises for shades and blinds that are controlled by an app from one’s iPhone. I was asked whether Mongolia was connected to the world. Urban Mongolia clearly is, but there are 1000s of miles in each direction where nomads still roam and life is probably the way it has been for ever. Although I have a suspicion that they may have iPhones with an app that tells them the weather and where the grass is greener.

The cousins who traveled across the Bering Straits millions of years ago must have dropped some of the habits and clothing traditions as they moved closer and closer to the equator and beyond. I wondered whether the rain tube, which I associate with the Amazon Indians, travelled south or if not, how and when did it get here?

The musical instruments were variations on traditional Western string instruments but more angular, with the strings being made from bunches of silk strands, the bows not that different. The cello had a bull’s head at the top; later I also saw them with horse heads. Like the Native Americans, animals feature prominently in the traditional lives of Mongolians.

We continued our visits to learn more about the organizations that will participate in our stakeholder/coalition building meeting next week. I am working from the initial design we used in The Philippines. That meeting produced the intended effect as now, several months later, the various parties continue to work on things they committed to. We learned this from one of its champions who is here with us as the lead trainer of the basic service provider skills training.

First we had meetings at two of the ministries that have a mandate to support people with disabilities. The buildings were clean, bright, and airy. Young well-dressed professionals moved to and fro from offices that were equally bright, clean and attractive, sitting in arrangements of two large desks facing each other rather than the entering visitor. Nowhere did I see stickers from donors on furniture or equipment that indicated that others were responsible for what was there. Mongolia’s GDP is right up (or down) there with the DRC, Indonesia, Cabo Verde and Ukraine. But these government offices don’t have the feel I am used to when working with the public sector.

Afterwards we visited two NGOs that take actions on behalf of vulnerable populations. Mongolian NGOs have their offices in apartment complexes where rent is lower than in office buildings. As a result we got to see the inside of a few of the thousands of Soviet style housing buildings that make up a significant portion of the capital.

There is a feeling one gets when entering these buildings that borders on depression despite the lovely sunny weather. I can’t imagine what the experience would be when temperatures are below 30 (C) and winds from the steppes and deserts come raging through the wind tunnels that these apartment buildings create.

I am reminded of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language. The entrance experience is as wrong as it can get – soul depleting rather than soul enriching. Adding to this feeling are the poorly maintained playgrounds which are ubiquitous but which would not pass safety inspections in my book.

But then, once inside the apartments, the occupants had done a good job to counteract the entrance experience. The spaces, small as they are, were bright and full of color. The association of parents with children with disabilities is doing a great job to educate and relieve parents and appears to have been successful in networking itself with those who can support it through volunteer labor, donations and projects. The other organization has brought together wheelchair users and plays both an advocacy and support role. Both have been successful in pushing for government attention to conditions that are unacceptable. They are good examples of my motto that purpose, passion and playfulness make organizations successful in fulfilling their mission, more so than expertise and technical skills as the latter can be found but the former has to come from the inside.

Yesterday I spent five hours in a virtual coaching workshop with my colleagues in Cote d’Ivoire after the workday was finished here. It makes for long workdays but it is thrilling to be able to support the team there despite being 8 time zones away.

Our new translator is more than a translator – she has become our cultural and tour guide. My excitement about seeing a yurt across the street in the backyard of a high rise gave way to astonishment about the number of yurts encircling the city. Thousands of yurts dot the landscape expanding higher and higher up the surrounding hills. On the city map that the hotel provides they are indicated as tiny little white dots. They appear to be the Mongolian version of slums and are permanent structures even though they can be taken apart and re-assembled at any moment.

The rise up the economic ladder is seen when fixed structures are built next to the yurt. We drove a little ways into the area known as ‘gir’ to see some of the yurts close up. One can buy a yurt (in a box) or construct them from scratch. Our translator estimated that one could ship a yurt in a box to America for about 1000 dollars. Not a bad price for a dwelling – but one wonders about what it is like to live in a yurt in this harsh climate.

We also learned that the name of the city, the only big city in Mongolia, means ‘red hero’ a reminder of Mongolia’s communist past. Despite the brutal Stalin regime that killed several of her family members (Llamas and nobility) uur guide believes that Communism saved Mongolia from being wiped out by China, much like native populations anywhere got wiped out or nearly wiped out by the dominant powers of the day. It would have been a sad ending of what was once an enormous empire that stretched all across Asia and bordered several oceans. References to Mongolia’s grandiose past are everywhere: names of buildings and institutions, statues of Ghengis Khan and conquerors less well known in the West and even the Huns which originated from here and overrun Europe long before Genghis appeared on the scene.

It is summer here now and like in New England people come out of the woodwork dressed in shorts, summer dresses and sandals. Still, the days are starting cool and then the thermometer climbs to 29 Celsius before dipping back down when the sun goes down. Layering of clothes must be an art here as one can go through all four seasons in a day.

The National Rehab Center where this week’s workshop is held had its annual graduation ceremony for its vocational training program participants. It was a moving experience seeing these young kids, deaf, mute, with cerebral palsy, step up, sometimes with considerable effort, to the podium to receive their certificates with joyful family members clapping and holding back tears. I wonder how they will manage after this as they enter the workplace. Will it be as supportive as this school has been?

We were received by the Vice Minister for Population and Social Protection and visited a foundation that supports community based rehabilitation, two ends from the spectrum of stakeholders. We also visited the Church of the Latter Day Saints which has an important presence here and ships in wheelchairs and provides the training to use them well. We are inviting representatives from these and other organizations to our stakeholder meeting next week and making the rounds to understand their concerns and visions.

Because I had gotten up at 3 AM I had a hard time keeping my eyes open towards the end of the day. I scheduled a massage at 8 but don’t remember much about it as I fell asleep halfway through; I had one more call with the head office before tumbling into bed, oily and relaxed.