The Potato Of Doom: Dining in Mongolia
by Dan Bennett
Well it's lunchtime and I'm NOT going to do any work over lunchtime,
so I thought I'd write up a little story about an experience I had in
Mongolia in the Summer of 1992. This could be quite long, depending on
how wordy I get 8-) .
I was on a short visit (3 weeks) with a couple of missionary-type
people, one of whom left after our first week. That left me and an
American girl called Wendy (from Florida, Kathy). We were staying in a
flat very kindly vacated for us by some Mongolian friends of mine in
Ulaanbaatar.
We had expressed an interest in visiting somewhere
in the countryside, but flying to remote parts was not a good idea because
flights were erratic due to fuel shortages. So our host arranged for us to
stay for a couple of nights with a semi-permanently based family about 10
or 15 km outside Ulaanbaatar.
So we were driven to this family's ger, which was actually only about
50 metres from the main road that runs East out of U-B. It's in the
Tuul Valley, so it's the main communications channel (the railway runs
along the other side of the valley at that point). The tent was set up
for us right next to the River Tuul (which is neither deep nor wide
there), and we were introduced to our hosts in the country: Byamba and
his wife (can't remember her name) and their 18-year old son. So we
spent quite a lot of time that morning sitting in the ger, which was
rather cold because its skirts were hitched up for ventilation and it
wasn't really warm weather. We had mongolian milky tea (which I
*always* love drinking - we make it at home sometimes), and bread with
clotted cream and sugar (very nice).
Then at about 2pm we retired to our tent. The sun was shining, the
wind had dropped, and it was a gorgeously warm day. We hitched the tent
flaps open so we could look out over the valley, and it was lovely. A
calf had plonked itself in the shade of our tent, so from where I was
lying, the wall of the tent bulged inwards and panted 8-). And so I
dozed off.
Suddenly, a mere 15 minutes later, a furious hailstorm started. We
zipped up the tent pretty quickly, and sat there in some alarm. Being a
Russian tent (read "poorly made"), it was *not* waterproof, and so the
entire internal volume of the tent was filled with a fine drizzle! And
when we looked out of the ventilation flap, we could see a puddle (which
little heaps of ice in it) getting bigger and bigger and starting to
extend under the tent!
So we abandoned it and ran up to the ger (about 30
metres away), where we sat and had more tea and bread/clotted cream/sugar.
We had some quite good conversations in Mongolian, making heavy use
of my English-> Mongolianand Mongolian->English dictionaries. A
question would occur to Byamba, and without saying anything, he would find
a keyword in theM->E dictionary and point to it, from which I would read
the English word(s) and figure out what he was asking. Quite fun,
really.
Meanwhile, Byamba's wife (I've remembered her name: Baasanjav) was
preparing the evening meal (to be ready at about 5pm). Our hearts sank
as we watched her putting things into a large vat of water on the stove.
There were ..erm... *bits* of sheep, such as heads, feet, internal
organs, that kind of thing. I tell you, a lot of alarmed muttering
ensued between Wendy and myself, while keeping up happy smiles! Then
some potatoes went into the vat, and one or two other vegetables, so I
expressed the sincere hope to Wendy that Baasanjav was simply making
soup (Mongol sho"l is usually very nice), and that the *bits* were being
used for stock.
So then we retreated to our tent for an hour's sleep (no hope of
walking or riding over the hills in that downpour (it had turned from
hail to rain). And at about 5pm we returned to Byamba's ger.
So we sat and watched Baasanjav prepare the food. She took a fork
and extracted the *bits*, dripping, one by one from the vat, and placed
them in a steel bowl. Fine, I thought; that's the stock taken out. But
then she lifted a potato out [italics on] and put it in the same bowl as
the *bits*! [italics off]. Heart sank like a stone: the *bits* were
for eating. I regarded that potato as the Potato of Doom for the
message it carried...
And so we set about eating. I couldn't touch the stuff. Byamba took
a sheep's head (with the sheep's chin-skin hanging from the front of its
lower jaw) and carved off peices of cheek, nose, etc and handed them to
us. Wendy was great! She managed to eat everything that was given to
her. But I nibbled at an unidentified internal organ for a moment and
abandoned it. I kept saying "Ochlaarai! Idekh chadakhgui!" ("Sorry, I
can't eat [it]!"). Baasanjav handed me a potato, but I really didn't
have any appetite left...
Now, I thought that I was coping quite well with this cultural
experience, when it occurred to me about 15 minutes later that my
stomach was going to complain. I sat very still until I figured out
which end of my alimentary canal was going to need attention, and
decided (to my relief) that it was the toilet I needed. Although we
were (sort of) in the country, I figured there must be a communal toilet
somewhere as it was a semi-permanent settlement of several gers. So I
asked Byamba "Biie dzasakh gadzar khaan bain weh?" ("Where is the body-
mending place?"). He took me out of the ger and pointed to a small
canvas structure at some distance, but warned me not to walk directly
towards it or I'd get attacked by the dog in the ger that lay on that
path.
So I tottered out of the ger down the slope towards the river, across
several yards of very wet and slippery sheep manure (the rain had
stopped by now) (the herd sleeps around the ger at night), and then
turned along the river. I had to negotiate a path between a patch of
marshy ground and a small rubbish tip. And I was in such a state by
this time that I was seriously doubting that I would make the biie
dzasakh gadzar in time; my legs turned to water and I broke into a
sweat. But somehow, I covered the ground and got to it.
It turned out to be just a square hole with a wooden plank either
side of it, and a low canvas fence around three sides. In fact it was
so low that you only got any protection from it when you were crouched
down, and even then it only came up to your waist. Not forgetting that
it was only 30 metres from the main road, which is as close to a freeway
as you'll get in Mongolia! But I didn't care - it was the most welcome
place in the world for me at that moment 8-) .
After sitting and chatting in the ger for a bit longer, Wendy and I
decided to go for a walk along the river. The sun had come out again
and it was promising to be a pleasant evening. So we walked for about
an hour and a half, with me recovering from my little trauma of the
afternoon.
We had decided that on our return we would have some more tea and
then go to bed. But in our absence, the family had been catching fish
for us in the river. This is all the more amazing when you consider
that Mongols don't eat fish, *ever*. On our return from our walk we
were presented with these lovely small fish (don't know what they were),
and we were told that if we knew what to do with them we could have
them; the Mongols had no idea of how to prepare them. Actually, nor did
I, but Wendy's dad is a keen angler so she had seen what to do. So we
prepared them and fried them in butter with a bit of salt, and they were
*really* good. I offered a piece to Byamba, and he ate it and appeared
to enjoy it. I offered another piece to Baasanjav, but she just laughed
and said "Ochlaarai! Idekh chadakhgui!"
There.
End of story.
bayartai,
Dan.
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