Mongolia - Diary of a field worker

In Mongolia ASIA is carrying out a project with Mongolian veterinarians to counter the various diseases affecting livestock and a methodology suited to dzud resilience. ASIA's Project Manager is Anna, a 35-year-old veterinarian who has been in Mongolia since the start of the project and, through her account, describes what happens in the field.

Day 1
The pure joy, the joy of a curious child, that I felt in these first two weeks in Ulaambaatar, gradually fades and turns into a more rational gaze.

Two weeks of research and questions to understand where I am and how the veterinary system (and much more) works in the country: I must, I want, I would like to try to organise training courses that are genuinely useful for the veterinarians of Sükhbaatar province, the first of the activities foreseen by the project Strengthening the capacities of all veterinarians in Sükhbaatar province to improve the veterinary system and the resilience of the herds.

Reading articles or listening to the accounts of those who are far away is not enough; it is better to listen to things when your eyes can also see them, using hearing and sight to reconstruct in your mind what actually is.

My colleague Otgonsuren and I therefore move towards Baruun-Urt, the provincial capital of Sükhbaatar; we move towards the great spaces that tourists come to admire, even though in the East, apparently the least attractive area of the country.

On the road I cannotsee anything but yellow-green, undulating, endless expanses: not a tree, not a shrub, just a vast space covered with sparse yellowed grass, the only silhouettes on the horizon are those of grazing animals. Animals whose change of winter coat accentuates the scruffy look given by their thinness: at this season it is normal for animals to be thin, they have just come out of the long and exhausting Mongolian winter, and everyone, people, animals and land, is waiting for the rainy season, which in May begins to colour everything green. A single goal, a single wait, as if to remind us that, in herding, people, animals and their land are one, an indissoluble union of mutual dependence.

My eyes do not leave the window and what looked like an endless void gradually fills with life: birds of prey taking flight as we pass, ground squirrels quickly hiding in their burrows and demoiselle cranes, still, in all their elegance. Unknown animals that immediately find a name thanks to someone who knows this country well. Baga Nuur, Chinggis Town, Munkhhaan are the few towns we pass through on the journey: at the stop the children point at me giggling, their lips and faces stained red with over-coloured sweets.

And it is the joy of the people that we find on arrival, in a Baruun-Urt celebrating the opening ceremony of the Sükhbaatar Province Olympics, along with the proverbial hospitality of Mongolians, who take care of us from the moment we get off the coach, even though they have never seen us before.

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Read the account of day 2 of the mission>>