As someone who at times considers myself to be a bit of a 'dude', I can appreciate a laid back attitude, occasional laziness, sleeping in, relaxing, and 'taking it easy'. As someone who's from the U.S. and has been a hard worker since the age of 16, sometimes working two or three jobs at a time, if necessary, to pay my bills and be able to afford what I wanted, I also appreciate hard work. I appreciate the fact that when living in the U.S., if I had a lot to get done, I could wake up early, go out and run all my errands, get things done, and complete any number of tasks/errands in a few hours. Living and working in Mongolia, especially as an American idealist with big hopes and dreams of making sweeping, positive community changes, adjusting to a culture that has a very "relaxed" attitude towards work, can be frustrating, to say the least. Progress can be minimal at times in Peace Corps Mongolia, as I'm sure it can be in many other Peace Corps countries, so we learn to take pleasure in small victories.
Since my grant money arrived, I was surprised at how quickly the project moved forward. In one afternoon we purchased almost all of the supplies for construction and after about a week, the construction is almost complete. Today I went to the bank with Nurbol, Altinbek, and my director Doman, and we withdrew all of the funds. This was done under the impression that we'd be buying a lot of the furniture and the computers today. Nurbol, Altinbek and I went to the market, with high hopes (at least mine were) about making more progress and purchasing much of the necessary equipement for the project today. We arrived at the market area about quarter to eleven and discovered that almost none of the shops we needed to peruse for furniture were open. Keep in mind, this is on a Wednesday. Now, I know that days start later here, that's just the way it is. But when you go the market, it's almost lunch time, and almost none of the shops are open, it's a bit disheartening. This would make sense to me, I suppose, if the market was open until like 7:00 or 8:00 but no, the market typically starts closing down around 5:00. The lunch 'hour' for most businesses or organizations (like my work, the post office, etc.) usually (and I use the term loosely) runs from 12:00 to 2:00. This combination makes for a very small window of opportunity to get errands, work, or any tasks completed. As any Mongolian PCV will tell you, a small list of tasks or errands (even grocery shopping) will take you to multiple stores, across town, and something that would take you an hour or two in the U.S., can take a day or more in Mongolia.
After wandering all over town from 11:00 to 2:00, checking out prices on couches, computer desks, computers, and chairs, I came home with absolutely nothing to show for it. Nurbol and I discussed our options and now I am torn between buying overpriced computers in Olgii, which in theory will help the local economy, or buying better priced computers from Ulaanbaatar and saving a pretty good amount of money that could go towards other resources for the project. This afternoon I tried to contact Altinbek, went to work to find him and had no luck. I was hoping to get a few more things done today but wasn't able to.
To make my day more interesting (see frustrating), Agii called me and told me he had to meet with me asap. I met with him five minutes later to discover that World Vision is hesitating on giving us the money for the Olympiad, the money they said they'd give us. Apparently the regional manager thinks that the money we want to give the first, second, and third place teams is too much and that it's not necessary for us to give books (really good, practical books the students will put to good use) to all the students. I went and spoke to Marjan, a friend of mine and Laura's who works at World Vision, and she explained that Demid, the local manager, is meeting with the regional manager and they will have the answer for us later today. So now we wait on their decision.
Sigh...long day. I'm going to post a few pictures and then will update when I know more about what's going on with both projects.
In the meanwhile, here's a couple of cool songs/music videos by Canadian hip hop artist Classified. I really like Classified and I've been listening to one of his albums over and over again on my ipod.
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