8. A special day with a Mongolian family

By Filipe Morato Gomes	Where is Shine Ider?
In the heart of rural Mongolia, an unpredictable change of plans leaded me to the friendlier Mongolian family I met so far. Welcomed like nowhere else by extremely poor people with a big heart, I will never forget that day, where completely different persons shared laughs, smiles and domestic activities without a single word in common.

The unexpected uses to be a tremendous friend of a traveller. How often the most intense experiences come from occasional events, circumstantialities, unforeseen facts? That's what happened that day. For any reason I will never find out, we did not sleep where we were supposed to. We went on driving for an additional couple of hours. We were extremely tired when we got to that other place.

Shine Ider, Mongolia

We stopped at the top of a hill, over a small but very beautiful valley, and we saw three or four sets of gers with belching-smoke chimneys. Our driver asked us to choose one and so we pointed to random Mongolian ger. There we stayed. In the home of a family absolutely not used to any stranger's presence. Genuinely friendly people. It was a sort of coming back in time our short stay in Shine Ider, several hours' drive far from any noteworthy village.

We were welcome with wide open smiles on their faces. They were happy because we'd pay for the night, obviously, but money was not the main point. They were happy to have us as their guests. In other places I've been to, satisfaction would have ended in the money. “Money! Money!”, I heard several times across Mongolia, simple people asking for the pre-payment of accommodation fearing the strangers' lack of honesty. However, with that family, it was far more than that materialistic satisfaction - I felt undoubtedly.

The ger we were offered was the home of one of the couples from the intermediate generation. And also the home of their three children. It was the most genuine ger I had stepped into so far. The smell was intense. It inevitably penetrated up one's nose. And there it remained for ages. Small cubes of a sort of cheese made out of yaks' milk were drying as they hang on the structure of the wooden walls. And so were pieces of meat. And a wooden bowl with curdled and sour milk. The mixture of smells were almost unbearable. As for the tastes, I didn't need to test them anymore. The food in Mongolia is terrible. It doesn't matter. What is the importance of all that when you are welcome with open heart, just like famous visitors who honour with their presence the one who welcome them?

Shine Ider, Mongolia

We tried in a clumsy way to help with the milking of the yaks - which is a female task in the Mongolian family organization. Obviously, we had little success and lots of laughter from the locals. We cut wood for the stove placed in the centre of the ger used both for cooking and for warming up the tent. We saw how they prepare the weapons for hunting, in search for different kinds of meat to try to diversify the monotonous feeding habits. We rode horses. We got to know each other and we had a great time together.

Suddenly, without meaning to, I become the centre of attentions because of a digital camera I had. Young children as well as adults were amazed with the object. And so, for the first time ever, I got really tired of taking photos, after so many opportunities, so many requests, so many pictures taken under the warm colours of a late afternoon in rural Mongolia. I can't remember any other time something similar had happened to me.

A young member of the Mongolian family

It's interesting no notice that everything happened without any words at all. Silently. With meaningful gestures, mimics, and smiles. Nobody knew any foreign language and we didn't know how to speak Mongolian either. While in rural Mongolia, I meet only once an English-speaking Mongolian; he was a guide and a translator guiding a couple of French travellers.

I was surprised by the way he talked about the living conditions in the steppes of his country: “Life here is very easy. Nothing lacks. They have sheep, yaks, horses, water. They have everything they need”, he told me with a grimace in his lips, as if he wanted to emphasize that what his words were obvious. I didn't know what to say. Especially, after having lived for a day with that poor but happy family.

(originally written in Portuguese)

» Read Disturbances in greenish Central Mongolia
» Read Unexpected melody in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia
» See Photos - Gobi Desert, Mongolia
» See Photos - Central Mongolia

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