Burengiin Nuruu Mountain Range

Burengiin Nuruu Mountain Range

History of the Peace Corps Program in Mongolia

Peace Corps began its program in Mongolia in 1991, the same year the US Embassy opened in Ulaanbaatar, the nation’s capital city. Since then, over 600 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in Mongolia as English language teachers trainers, English teachers, community economic developers, environmental educators, and health educators. I will be a member of the 18th group of Volunteers to serve in Mongolia and the 3rd group of Community Youth Development Volunteers (the 1st CYD Trainees came to Mongolia in June of 2005).

Country Assignment

  • Country: Mongolia (Outter)
  • Program: Youth Development
  • Job Title: Life Skills Trainer (also: English teacher, Child Caretaker, Fund Raiser, Events Organizer, and IT Trainer)
  • Orientation (Staging in Atlanta, GA): May 31-June 2, 2007
  • Pre-Service Training (in Darkhan and Sukhbaatar, Mongolia): June 3-August 18, 2007
  • Dates of Service (in Darkhan at Sun Children formerly "Asian Child Foundation" - a non-profit, non-government Japanese funded orphanage of 37 Mongolian children opened since 8/25/2005): August 19, 2007- August 18, 2009

Location and Nature of the Job

CYD Volunteers are placed in provincial centers with population between 15,000 and 70,000. A few CYD Volunteers are placed in Ulaanbaatar, where the population is reaching 1 million. I will work with youth-focused NGOs, children’s centers, schools, and civil society organizations to address major challenges confronting Mongolian youth today, such as education, life skills, employability, and leadership. In addition, the work will involve workshops and presentations at schools and community agencies and will entail traveling to other outlying communities that have less access to information and training. Given the vast distances in Mongolia, these visits will often require overnight stays.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Med-Evc to Bangkok, Thailand

Being med-evc to Bangkok, Thailand for "additional tests" had it's advantages.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Vacation After 6 Months at Site

After the kids returned to school in beginning of Sept, my job has become fairly easy and much more relaxing. September went by without much work; the children and teachers were busy building a new haasha fence and remodeling one of the buildings on the orphanage compound in time for a week-long visit from our Japanese sponsor organization. Then it was preparing for a 3-week visit to 4 various parts of Japan to preform 4 concerts. 18 children, 4 teachers, and the Director will be in Japan Nov 3-20. The remaining children and teachers will make a
trip in Mar. I'm crossing my fingers that I am included in the count. Wouldn't that be a wonderful peak of being a PCV? A free trip to Japan? I might be getting an upcoming free trip to Thailand too but that's more of medical reason which I won't concern you with. On with the update...

Since they are busy in preparation, it was prefect timing for my 3-week stint to the eastern provinces of China (in order: Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau). Another PCV and I leave via the UB-Beijing train this Fri morning; 4 person sleeper cabin, 30 hours. I always wanted to see the expansive
Gobi but didn't want to trek there (it's not very pretty except for only selective areas); this was a great way to view it and Inner Mongolia. Once we are in the country, its local trains and buses all the way to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, we will fly back to Beijing and wait to take the train back to UB. I've planned an exciting itinerary (tombs, puppet theatre, Peking duck, monasteries, jade and pearl markets, gardens, teahouses, islands, beaches, seafood) - each city stop holds a particular reason to be there. I am hoping that the trip runs more smoothly then it was to get the Chinese visa. Visa requirements have been ridiculous a few months prior to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and haven't ceased.




Wednesday, October 8, 2008

16 months Later...Vacation, Finally!

I've be come shamefully terrible at responding to emails and have given up trying to maintain a regular blog. Never a place I've have known to suck in time as cold Mongolia. Maybe this is how it feels to refrigerated; all activity comes to a slow crawl, age, time, and productiveness. I know the latter rings true in Mongolians and, a year later, I find that it too has affected me so.

After the kids returned to school in beginning of Sept, my job has become fairly easy and much more relaxing. September went by without much work; the children and teachers were busy building a new haasha fence and remodeling one of the buildings on the orphanage compound in time for a week-long visit from our Japanese sponsor organization. Then it was preparing for a 3-week visit to 4 various parts of Japan to preform 4 concerts. 18 children, 4 teachers, and the Director will be in Japan Nov 3-20. The remaining children and teachers will make a trip in Mar. I'm crossing my fingers that I am included in the count. Wouldn't that be a wonderful peak of being a PCV? A free trip to Japan? I might be getting an upcoming free trip to Thailand too but that's more of medical reason which I won't concern you with. On with the update...

Since they are busy in preparation, it was prefect timing for my 3-week stint to the eastern provinces of China (in order: Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Suzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau). Another PCV and I leave via the UB-Beijing train this Fri morning; 4 person sleeper cabin, 30 hours. I always wanted to see the expansive Gobi but didn't want to trek there (it's not very pretty except for only selective areas); this was a great way to view it and Inner
Mongolia. Once we are in the country, its local trains and buses all the way to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, we will fly back to Beijing and wait to take the train back to UB. I've planned an exciting itinerary (tombs, puppet theatre, Peking duck, monasteries, jade and pearl markets, gardens, teahouses, islands, beaches, seafood) - each city stop holds a particular reason to be there. I am hoping that the trip runs more smoothly then it was to get the Chinese visa. Visa requirements have been ridiculous a few months prior to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and haven't ceased.


Eastern China _10.10-11.2.2008">

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Questions from the Bi-Yearly Peace Corps Progress Report Questionnaire

  1. Please describe your biggest challenge during the past six months.

    One of my biggest challenges was trying to implement the Peace Corps' primary goal of Capacity Building through trainings for CPs; it was like pulling teeth. As a non-profit that worked with vulnerable children that receives its funding through monetary and material donations from foreign organizations, it seemed to me that if a project idea did not have an immediate end result of a physical gain (i.e. money or material goods), then they were not interested in the training. Learning a new skills set (i.e. learning English or how to start up a small business), in which the end result was applying the new skill on your own, had no takers at this HCA. Maybe the reason lay in the type of agency or because of their lack of exposure to training and its benefits (as compared to a formal school where trainings are setup by the local Education Center) that was the cause of their lack interest.

    Secondly, I did not really having a counterpart to work side by side with on projects. My only English-speaking CP, like most of my CPs, had a totally different job responsibility and work schedule than myself. My CPs are orphanage caretakers that worked a full day schedule plus a rotated a two overnight stay per week at the orphanage Mon-Sat while I worked a 9am-5pm workweek Mon-Fri. Thus, it was hard to coordinate time to work on projects together. She was merely my glorified translator.

  2. Over the past six months what have you done, or what ideas have you generated, to promote a better understanding of Mongolians on the part of Americans, both during and upon completion of your service? (Peace Corps' Goal 3)

    I hope my daily interaction with my CPs and children have caused them to understand not only me but also my Western mindset and my "American" ways of approaching projects (e.g. potluck community meetings in my home, researching information through the internet, networking through meeting new people through people you already know) and teaching/training methods. Socially, I have invited my CPs over to my home for dinners and conversation (broken Mongolian combines with hand gestures and animated facial expressions goes a long ways). I have found that the key to quickly getting projects accomplished and ideas across is if you first build a personal connection with the people you are trying to work with.

  3. If you left Peace Corps tomorrow, what would you miss most about living and working in Mongolia?

    I would miss the ancient monasteries and the landscape; being struck in awe at the magnificent of beauty in the rock formations, the endless blue sky, the rolling hills, the high mountains, the winding rivers, and the peacefulness of it all. Mongolia is so unique in its nomadic (aka: simple) way of living; I would miss that also. And I would miss my children dearly.

    What I wouldn't miss is the daily smell of urine in my stairwell, the backup pipes in my poorly made Russian building that gives off a putrid smell, the careless littering combined with lack of an organized government trash pickup system, and the very, very packed meekers in an 8+ hour dirt road trip.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Agency's Participation in Global Youth Service Day 2008: Youth Sports Tournment Weekend (Darkhan Community)

Global Youth Service Day

Organization
Sun Children (formerly, “Asian Child Foundation”)

Description
The orphanage was in desperate need of a fitness facility. The only thing it already had was an old basketball court with broken hoops and an empty backyard. Not so much as an inflated ball. The youth expressed this need to the Agency’s staff members back in September 2007. Sports instill a sense of camaraderie and self esteem. It transcends the cultural, language, and age barriers that inhibit communication. Prior knowledge of the rules of the game are not need to play and participate, one only has to observe. In addition, sports and fitness advertises a healthy body image. Thus, we, as an Agency, felt this idea was an excellent one. With the help of the United States Marine Humanitarian Civil Action program in conjunction with the US Embassy in Mongolia and the 330th Mongolian Army (based in Darkhan), the orphanage received financial and labor assistance to renovate the existing basketball court, build a volleyball court, and soccer goals; the funding for materials and the purchase of the materials took place in October 2007, while the building of the sports field was in late November 2007. Continuing with their goal, the youth gutted out an unused second kitchen in one of the three buildings on the orphanage compound to build a fitness room/gym; the planning and labor of this phase took place in December 2007.

For the third and final phase of our project, youth will host a “Sports Tournament” weekend during GYSD on the weekend of April 26-27, 2008. Between the months of February to April, youth will assist in the planning of this day that will include have meetings to determine additional subjects/topics for classes/presentations during GYSD, make invitation flyers to pass out to their fellow classmates (in their respective schools in the community), speak to local area business for support and donations (i.e. refreshments, tournament prizes, additional community member volunteers), and advise the GYSD event (e.g. making a radio advisement announcement). The already determined classes/presentations are:


• Trafficking in Persons (TIP) in Mongolia
• Environmental Conservation (pollution base; air pollution and littering)
• Fitness/Healthy Exercises
• Art and crafts projects; uses of recyclable items (i.e. plastic bottles, bottle caps, shards of broken glass, aluminum cans, cardboard boxes)

We anticipate 37 additional children from the community in addition to our youths making the total amount of participants to 74 youth ages 11-18 and 18 older youth and adult volunteers. The above listed classes/presentation topics will be given by 6 of these older youth and adult volunteers. Leading up to the weekend of GYSD, youth will participate in all areas of preparation including the setup of rooms for classes/presentations, food preparations, and opening and closing ceremonies.

Date/Time
April 26, 2008 at 11am-5pm

Location
Sun Children's Orphanage
Darkhan (New), Mongolia
Mongolia

RSVP Information
Name: Yoomie Huynh
Phone: + (976) 957-423-48
E-mail: yoomiehuynh@gmail.com

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Article: What is a Peace Corps Volunteer Worth?

By Jim Carl, Peace Corps-Mongolia Country Director in the Peace Corps Mongolia Monthly Memo, April 2008 edition

Or more precisely, what does a PCV cost? Last month, President Bush submitted his budget request for fiscal year 2009 which included $343.5 million for Peace Corps. Where does all that money go? I did an easy calculation; if you take the current year's budget ($331 million) and divide it by the average number of PCVs in the field (8,100) you realize that for every PCV, American taxpayers are shelling out about $40,000 per year…

…By now I imagine you are looking at your lasts [monthly] living allowance (127,000T/about $109) and the figure $40,000 and shaking your head in disbelief or at least trying to figure out why you're not getting a bigger piece of the pie. But the truth is, you are really getting most of the pie.

…You receive about $4,500 per year including living allowance, leave allowance, readjustment allowance, and pro-rated part of your settling-in allowance. And housing and utility costs, that average[s] about $125/mo or $1,500 per year. So that's $6,000 easy but what about the other $34,000?

To get you into the country and back home again with a little extra added to cover the few who get special leave or emergency leave is another $4,000 ($2,000 per year). And then there is health, which sets us back about $4,000 per year per PCV. This includes the occasional medical evacuation; at less than $350 per mo is real bargain for 100% coverage that includes prescriptions, vision and dental care.

Remember the recruiter that you spoke to occasionally…when you were joining Peace Corps? Well, it cost about $6,000 per PCV ($3,000 per year) for 2 years of service to get you recruited. This includes the whole recruiting network as well as getting medical clearances and security clearances. This also includes you sharing the cost for the thousands of applicants every year that is not selected or opt out the last minute.

And if there is one thing Peace Corps does a lot of, it is training. The cost of your staging, Pre-Service Training (PST) and In-Service Training (IST), and [language] tutoring runs about $3,500 per year for each PCV. PST is the biggest chunk of that with hiring of trainers, renting rooms and offices, paying host families, etc. Miscellaneous cost, many of which you may never use, average about $1,500 per year. These include the cost to evacuate or close a post, open a new post, hire attorneys for PCVs with legal problems, search for missing volunteers, move offices, air ambulances, and…weekly Newsweek subscriptions, Corps Care Insurance, and programs like World Wise Schools.

What is left is split down the middle to maintain the support structure in Washington, DC and the local Peace Corps Office [in country]. The office in DC provides a certain amount of direct service including Peace Corps publications, Returning Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) services, emergency services, and Peace Corps Response (formerly Crisis Corps). Locally, [operation includes] everything from site development…[to] sending out Monthly Memo [newsletters].

While $40,000 per year may seem like more than you thought it would cost, it is just a drop in the buck compared to what it costs to field a Foreign Service officer or USAID technical contractor. This makes Peace Corps one of the most cost effective programs in the US government and by far the most cost effective among those offering foreign assistance. All this and it comes with a human face.

So, to sum up:

Allowances: $4,000

Housing/Utilities: $1,500

International Travel: $2,000

Health: $4,000

Recruitment: $3,000

Training: $3,500

Miscellaneous: $1,500

Headquarters/Local Office Support: $20,000

Contribution to world peace: Priceless

Stay healthy and safe.

Jim

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Mercury Contamination and Poisonous Vodka

Days of -30C degrees, blizzarding snow storms, wearing yak tracks to prevent falling on ice, and eight hours of sunlight days are over. Spring has finally arrived after four months of endless cold and freezing temperatures. With Spring come dust storms, unpredictable weather, greatly varying temperatures, and the occasion snow storm the day one decides take off the long underwear. Nowhere in my invitation did Peace Corps mention having to don three layers of clothing at all times for half of the year in order to keep warm. Then again, I would have had second thoughts if they had.

This winter saw the scare of a possible mercury contamination in the local rivers due to illegal mining (and, thus, affecting the drinking water) in the provinces of Bayankhongor, Selenge and the city of Darkhan (where I am sited). This news put Peace Corps Mongolia in a frenzy collecting water samples to be tested by the National Inspection Agency. Although the results concluded that the levels were lower than the US standards set by the EPA, Hongor soum (which is only 20 minutes away from Darkhan) in the Selenge province, is rumored to be heavily affected with news of massive migration out of the area, deformed animals, and the inability to sale vegetables.

Additionally, January held the ban on the sale of vodka for the whole month. Although the 14 deaths by ingestion of dangerous levels of methanol (the 20% of 'waste' product produced during the distilling process before it becomes ethanol) where only found in Asian Wolf vodka products, the scare caused a country-wide alcohol sale ban (including beer and wine) that started from New Years to Tsaagan Sar (aka: Lunar New Year). The lost of alcohol in a country that heavily uses vodka to celebrate joyous occasions during the most important holiday of the year was a blow.

So the sacrifice of two of my frostbitten fingers to the Weather God only resulted in a transition into dust and wind storms. Although national crisises of possible mercury contamination in drinking water and country-wide alcohol ban due to death by poisonous vodka have become a normal way of life, I will never get use to the weather.

Monday, January 21, 2008

A Typical Monday in January

I hurried to get dressed, trying to remember my "warm formula"…one medium layer of thermals under the jeans, a thick layer of winter thermals over the jeans, an under shirt, two sweaters, a short length down coat, long thick wool scarf around my nose and mouth, a rabbit fur hat that covers my ears, two pairs of gloves, thick wool socks, sheep wool lined Ugg boots fitted with yak traks to keep from slipping on ice… I should hurry. My English class starts in an hour and a half and it's a 45-minute walk to the orphanage. No time for breakfast; I will have to wait until lunch when I eat with the kids. I leave some dried food out for the cats and walk out of my Russian style apartment building passing the trash lady in my cold graffiti ridden stairwell. I weave through New Darkhan through a shortcut of alleyways and narrow cracks between buildings. I ignore the holler of the meeker-seekers' "Yvax uu?" for I rather walk the long distance in -30C than pay 250T for a taxis ride one-way. My PC salary doesn't allow for such luxuries. I reach the long stretch of road that leads directly to the orphanage; I can see it in the distance. The field next to the road is barren so the wind blows extra hard during this stage of the walk. My throat and nose are being to hurt from breathing in the cold air. I pull my scarf tighter around my mouth. I finally reach the orphanage compound and walk through the main building. Khishgee, caretaker of the day, greets me and then asks why I am there. She then proceeds to tell me that all the teachers are on holiday that week, which includes me. Didn't I get the message? I had not though I've gotten used to being told important information at the very last minute. I put back on my scarf and start the cold journey back home.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Article: Too Many Innocents Abroad

By Robert L. Strauss; former Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and Cameroon country director. He now heads a management consulting company.

The Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps' country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.

However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15% of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.

This wasn't the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it's much less clear what inexperience Americans have to offer.

The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates – as the top professional schools do – and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.

The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad's backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who has occasionally visited Grandma's cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I'm pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch o f hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no compressive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.

Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn't matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.

This lack o organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he cold think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.

The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need – at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.

Recommended Books on Mongolia

  • “Dateline: An American Journalist in Nomad’s Land” by Michael Kohn, 2006.
  • "Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford, 2004.
  • “Riding Windhorses” by Sarangerel, 2000.
  • “Twentieth Century Mongolia” by Baabar, 1999.

Recommended Mongolian Movies

  • The Story of the Weeping Camel (2004), Die Geschichte vom Weinenden Kamel
  • Mongolian Ping Pong (2005), Lü cao di