Video - Buryatia

Videos from the days we spent in the two villages.




Fights in Buryatian Surharban

Photos!

We are back from our Summer School in Buryatia experience. There are a lot of things to tell, so many new things, a very special experience. We will write posts about it when we have time, and also some individual emails.
Here's the link to my flickr photo page with some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photos-eva/sets/72157621025438518/

Buryatia School - Engorboy

Engorboy was only 800 inhabitants, there were no asphalted roads. The village size was more of less the same as Mikhaylovka. Besides the many cows there were also some pigs and horses in the streets. Finally there I had my long running question answered. We were at 1200m above sea level. At our presentation outside the school building with several of the teachers and students, some teachers knew the answer. The sun strikes strong that high and we felt it during those 10 days.

Engorboy had a small centre where the shop, post office, club, library and school were seated around. The shop had few less items than in Mikhaylvoka but more drunk people at the door hoping for bottles of vodka to fall down from the sky. The club and library were in the same style but smaller.

The school, quite old, all wood, was divided in three buildings. It was being fully repainted - chairs, tables, walls, cupboards, floors - as full maintenance of the ensemble. It remembered me of the lighthouses in Portugal. Again it was a school for 6 to 18, where table sizes had to fit all and seemed a bit small for an adult. They had, like in Mikhaylovka, computer and two projectors - one they asked me to diagnose why it did not work. They also had a gym with some basketball baskets and gymnastics material.

The houses were pretty much the same but the gardens were bigger and on each one there was a water pump making less but more frequent the work of getting the water (smaller buckets used).

We were this time living with Ayuna and her grand-mother in a single room, only with small hide-outs around the winter stove. The toilet in this house was further away and the grand-mother as well as the grand-sons living there were peeing just in the garden, not to walk all the way to the hole.

Engorboy was a fully Buryatia people village and people would speak Buryatia language (similar to Mongol) among them. Kids were learning Russian only at school. Ayuna grand-mother was not speaking Russian at all making communication even more difficult.

The mean of transport to go to surrounding fields was horse. There was also a river where I swim once but the water seemed colder than in the other village.

No particular differences in the Sur-Harban festival, just added a disorganized 100 meter race where I participated and was 6 or 7th among 30 (I was representing "my" street).

Because of the school painting and no help of the local administration the first day of school was held half inside half outside (aerobics). We presented ourselves with some history background, then Kate gave an English class and I gave a internet/email class. No kid had email neither notion of the usefullness of internet except that they could chat and play games. The internet was painfully slow (satellite+modem I think), the room was hot and the kids less interested to learn than touching a computer. The class was quite bad. On the second day it was raining and it was after the drunks at night story, so environment was not good. We met few kids at entrance of a school building and Ayuna wanted to give class there, on the edge of the rain. Kids found that we could go to the canteen that they were going to paint. Small english and other languanges classes with not so much attentive kids before that the smell of painting was too strong. We had no place to go, no alternative was proposed but Ayuna wanted to continue. I was tired and out of the game. We get to agree for the library to be open for us the next day (again, help of the kids) and we went all, kids and us, to Ayuna's grand-mother house. She knew it was necessary to discuss among us but she wanted the kids to have more school. We set 20:30 as limit to end the school that day. After we discussed and was clear we had to finish the school earlier, there were no conditions (logistical and mental) to continue. Next day we still had classes in the library - english with drawing; health for alcohol prevention but kids were to young to understand; aerobics/judo and journalist where the kids where completely uninterested to learn. The weather was perfect and we still went by the river.

The day after at 6am we were leaving Engorboy in direction of Ulan-Ude with the local "Schumacher", a crazy driver, for 7hours.

Buryatia Experience Part 2: Teaching the children

The aim of the volunteering project was to teach something to the children in the 2 villages. We were free to choose our subject and teaching method, and once we were there, we soon realized that we had to be VERY flexible. Due to numerous festivals and other activities, the days of actual teaching were numbered, but even outside school we had the chance to be in contact with the kids (swimming in the river for example) so I guess this also counted a bit as "teaching", as most of these children never had been in contact with foreigners.
Our subjects were: English (Kate), Judo (Juergen), Journalism (Ayuna), Children's rights (Miguel), Health (me). The "improvised" subjects were: aerobics (Miguel), games (everybody...).
Ok, there were not as many children as I somehow expected. But those who were there were very motivated. I rarely saw children as open and curious as them. Of course it was easy to spot the brighter ones.... some were able to speak some simple english, or at least to communicate with non-verbal means. They were eager to participate in the painting (for the English class and my health class). On our last day in Mihailovka we organised a treasure hunt, which was very successful. Afterwards, we had a big autograph session, as all the kids wanted our signatures and e-mail addresses.
In the second village, Yengorboy, the children seemed a bit younger and less concentrated for sit-down activities, but it was still fun and we just did a bit more games with them.
I think just the fact that they saw some foreigners for the first time in their life made some of them realize the importance of learning english and going to school and on to higher education, and that other countries exist not only on the world map but also in reality.
We also learned a lot, about their everyday life and culture, and also that there are still very motivated children in the world who are not spoiled by computer games and TV.

One of the strangest nights of my life - Comedy/Terror real story

(translated from Portuguese without much thinking)

With Ayuna the relations continue very tense. Yesterday night she went for a walk telling us "help yourself" at her grandmother place. It was 20:30. At 21:45 I went to uncle's house where only her uncle smoking and Sasha (the oldest -5years- grand-daughter) were present. There were no signs of dinner. At 22:45 Ayuna returns saying that we could cook the rice that was standing there. There was no light in the kitchen and she goes away again. An uncle of hers comes over, a bit drunk and showing us that there is also meat. We say we go to sleep. Five minutes later he returns saying that we can go and eat at the other house (uncle's house) but we refused. It was 23:00.

We fall asleep.

At middle of the night some people start knocking hard at the door and screaming. Ayuna and the grand-mother (we are living/sleeping all in same room) wake up. Ayuna starts crying and the grand-mother to scream to the 2/3 men in the street who try to open the door and knocking also on the windows. There were 5 or 10 minutes of this. When the men leave the grand-mother pees in the bucket she has by her bed.

After a while - 1 or 2 hours, I don't know - another person comes to knock the door and windows, trying to open the door. He calls for the grand-mother in Buryat language. Ayuna does not make noise and the grand-mother gets-up and pees in her bucket. The person gives up quickly. There are lightnings and thunders at 15 and 30 seconds away. Starts to rain. Eva holds me and we can't sleep for a long while.

At 6:30 - I can now see the time - someone knocks the door and screams. The grand-mother in underware get up and opens the door. They speak and the person goes to sleep with the grand-mother. It is a women.

At 9:30 continues to rain, is the time we had set to leave home but every one sleeps. Eva and then me got up to go to the toilet and start the day. At some point Ayuna's aunt appear and then the oncle saying to cook the rice. We try to do it. There is very little electricity and the oncle goes to cut wood and start the wood oven. The grand-mother wakes up and join us, washing the dishes and taking the breakfast with us. Everyone then disappears to the uncle's house.

It's 11:30 and Ayuna gets up and, knowing the time, asks me why I did not wake her up. I think I'm not an alarm clock without being asked but I only say that I thought with the rain we would not go to the "arshan". I ask what happened during the night. She will say after she comes from the toilet, Ayuna says. One hour has passed, it still rains. There is another person in the grand-mother's bed and we don't understand anything what is going on. I ask my self about Jurgen and Kate. It is now 12:30.
---
Later we left to Jurgen and Kate place to tell our adventure. In the evening finally we know from Ayuna that the drunk people wanted "just" to talk with us. She did not listen the second person and we did not ask about the women (her cousin). Both Ayuna and us were scared and did not know what would have happen if they would open the door. Fortunately the event did not repeat and it was, mostly for sure, a side effect of the general drunkness that day after the summer party of the village (sur-harban).

The story of the sheep's head

Those of you who have been on my flickr homepage and seen the photos from our Buryat Summer School experience are probably impatient to hear the story of the sheep's head... :-) so here you go.

Part of our extensive "social program" during the Summer School was to visit some buddhist celebrations called "Surcharban". One of them was quite big, involving several villages. Each village mounted a yurt that was decorated inside, and there was a contest for the most beautiful yurt. Some of them were richly decorated with carpets and had tables almost breaking under a huge quantity of food, others were simpler, showing traditional farming equipment and some simple homemade food.

As foreigners, we were the super special VIP guests there. May sound nice, and IS nice, but also very very tiring, and unusual for all of us, as we really consider ourselves as just ordinary people.

Anyway, one of our "activities" consisted in visiting the other villages yurts, which involved each time sitting down at the table (women on one side, men on the other), being offered food and, of course, vodka (which was ok not to drink, it's mainly a sign of hospitality but a lot of vodka is acually thrown away). In one yurt there was a lot of meat on bones but also soup and bread, in a second yurt the food was very simple (cheese, bread, butter, milk vodka), but in the third yurt we had a special experience. There was no food on the table, but the traditionally dressed up "chief" asked us to sit down at the table. We then learned that we would be offered the highest present that could be offered to guests: a sheep's head. Oh-oh....

So, who is the oldest man among the group? It was Juergen, our austrian friend. He had the honour of receiving the head and then cutting around it in the traditional way. Only the knive didn't cut.... When the "chief" had shown him a few times how to do it but the knive still didn't cut, he went on to the next stage: turning the head around and putting a small spoon into the region of the brain (with a througly disgusting squelching sound). We were then supposed to eat a tiny bit of it (or at least pretend to eat). Juergen pretended, Kate (sitting next to me) was very strong and tasted a bit, but before I could witness this I felt I was going to throw up right there and just went out of the yurt (which caused a bit of confusion with certain people, later I apologized about it but really I'm not used to this kind of thing...) so I didn't see the end of it. I then went for a short walk in the woods and missed the fourth yurt where the rest of the group had to spend about 40 minutes... Finally I wasn't so sad about it, being able to see the end of the horse race and part of the beauty contest.

Buryatian dictionary

Aimed to portuguese readers, some of the words we learnt during the school:
Good night - Han Untugti
Thank you - Han daa
I'm portuguese - Be Portugalia'ha
Good morning - dobro utra (as russia)
I'm full - Sadap
Water - Uhan
Hot tea - Alunze
Grand-mother - Tovi
Hello - San bene
See you - Baierte
Bread - Talhan

Burtyatia school - Mikhaylovka

Mikhaylovka is 1200 inhabitants. About 500m from the main highway, the village is more or less surrounded by a cow gate, so the cows are kept in the village. Two roads have asfalt: the one from the entrance and, prependiculary, one connecting the school to the "club". Other roads are made of dirt. All roads have cow shit around. At one side of the village runs a river, 25km long at that point, with clear water were kids swim in the summer.
The school has kids from 6 to 18 years old, about 180 of them and 40 teachers. Twelve graduated this year. The school reminded me of and old primary school. There were two old sport fields, one concrete for basketball and other grass for other sports (volley, football, fight, etc). The toilets were outside, a barrack with 5 holes for boys and 5 for girls, no separation between holes (only between sex). There was an anfitheatre were we saw a ridiculous graduation cerimony with teachers, parents and students, each group at its time, singing and saying bad memorized poems. There was also a canteen, looking again from a very old primary school.
At the middle of the paved road it was the commercial centre with three shops. One was shut, other almost and the survival one sold basic things, mostly in big quantities.
The sum was made using abbacus (we saw this multiple times all around Buryatia) and there was a credit notebook. The other edge of the road was the "club" which comprised a gym/auditorium/theater, a kitchen, a small room and a library which was closed most of the time (even if the timetable would not say that). It seems there was also a projector room but it was broken. The library had some hundreds of books, 2 computers and 2 paid internet kiosks used by no one. They had no money to buy new books and were living of books donations. There were no english books.

A kindergarten and 20 sheeps were in front of the "club". The village administration building was also on this road, a small one floor house with repainted offices, couple of computers, no internet. The village had also a post office else where.

Makhailovka houses were made of wood with, sometimes, colourful roofs and windows. Each had a garden with banya, some cumcumbers, potatoes, a dog and toilet - small barrack with a hole. Our home garden also had two pigs, and others had cows stable. There was electricity with fluctuating current, telephone and TV. No radio signal was received here, nor mobile phones worked. There were water stations across the village with mechanic pumps taking water from couple dozen meters below.

Houses had usually a summer kitchen, not so insulated part of the house, with an electric stove, a table and several small buckets for all kind of purposes (milk, washing dishes, dirty water, clean water, etc). There was also a hand wash basic, which we would fill with water and with a small lever we could wash the hands. The used water would go to a bucket below. The next room had as central piece a wooden stove used mostly in the long winter and, depending on the house, more or less separated spaces with boards or vertical hanging carpets.

Our house in Makhailovka had a light courtain door to our room, where there were two beds. One wall was cardboard up to 30cm from the ceiling and two others were outside walls. There was a small winter kitchen were the cooking part of the big brick made wooden stove was; a living room with a TV, a buddha corner some books and pictures and, behind some cupboards, it was the other room of the house with a double bed where the daughter and sometimes also the mother slept. Our host family had a quite big banya building where in the first room they stored the pig's food and the second room was the banya itself with the iron made wood stove with hot water container and stones for steam. The room had dry side to sit and wet side to wash, where the wooden floor had holes. The toilet was about 50meters from home. For us they bought toilet paper but usually they used newspaper. Our family had a second house ('house there' - дома там) where mother and step-father would stay and where they milked their cows.

Our host family was composed by Lisa, the library responsable; Valery, her second husband; and Irina, daughter of Lisa and student on the 3rd year of English-Chinese studies. Her english, however, was like a high-school student in Europe.

English was one of the most amazing things people, including young, did not know. Among the graduated students that year from school only one would be able to articulate some sentences with very limited vocabulary. Other amazing thing was the alcohol available in the schop and the amount of chronic alcoholic one would cross in the streets of so small village.

During our stay once we had a young alcoholic guy who did not believe we were living there and wanted to force us to go to his place. His girlfriend shouted to him to leave us but he ended up to enter our house and sit down until we found Irina who explained him what we were doing there. He drunkly apolagized himself. Other time a very drunk old men, in need of vodka, followed us asking for money until we got home. Kate had to stay a while with us until he left. Cheap vodka costs one euro the bottle!

People are in general small for European standards and seem 10 to 20 years older. Life expectancy is around 60 years old. The oldest people in the village was a couple - she 95, he 94. Retirement age in Siberia is 50 for women, 55 for men (in European Russia is 5 years more).

People's diet was dased on dairy products and meat. From the milk they would do several products - cheese, kefir, tvorak, vodka. The meat was mainly boiled in a soup or mashed and put in 'buuzi'/'pozi' (Buryati/Russian), the Buryati national dish. To drink was always tea with milk and the table was always with cookies, candies, sugar and home made bread. Cumcumber, radis and cabbage where the vegetables found on the shop and planted at home. Eggs and potatoes and apples were also easy to find (most people had potatoes field in their garden).

On our arrival to Mikhaylovka the head of the administration received us in local costumes giving us milk to drink from the left hand - milk is symbol of cleaness -, a cloth with traditional drawings and a glass of vodka over a bank note (of about 1 euro), which we should keep for luck. This vodka ritual was repeated several times during our stay. and as soon as our glass would be empty they would refill. Soon we got to know that we are not obliged to drink and the only mandatory elements of the tradition is to accept and touch our lips at the end of the (long) toast.

While in Mikhaylovka we participated to two annual summer parties called Sur-Harban. One on the village level and the other on district level. It happens in a big green area where they built a stage. On the stage people sing and dance. There are sport competitions of wrestling, volley, rope pulling and a horse riding race. All ages participate on the wrestling competition and the aim is to make the opponent to fall or to lift him up from the ground. Some drunks also take part. The volleyball is for school ages. Around all this there are people selling 'buuzi' and tea and couple of shop-cars selling either food, clothes or ustensils. The party lasts all day and big part of the village participates. Jurgen tried some judo class and I organized a garbage hunting game. Both did not have much success.

On the district Sur-Harban 40 villages were represented, each with their own yourt, also part of a beauty competition. As honorable guests we made a tour of couple yourts where always we were offered food and vodka. Once, however, we had the most distingable honor with means 'sheep head'. See Eva's entry about this.

The shool in Mikhaylovka was a success. Children gave us several 'thank you' drawing at the end. About 15 children from 8 to 14 participated regularly. One day some more come from a summer camp in a nearby village. With the usual more than 30 minutes delay (usual in Russia, trains excepted) we started with english class and games, then Eva gave a health class with some painting session, I gave a children rights class. After we follow with some judo, aerobics and journalist class. In the evening more aerobics. The second day of school was similar, small re-arrangements in essay to keep children more active and focused. A dip in the river followed. Last day we organized a treasure hunt around the village with questions broken-up in separate locations and questions about our classes and about us. Children run it all for 40 minutes in two teams.

After this we left to Engorboy, not before having one more pic-nic with the head of administration, our host families and white wine (there were drivers). It was then a 3-hour drive in mostly non-asfalted road.

Buryatia Experience Part 1: Departure from Ulan-Ude and arrival in Mihailovska

As most of you already know, we decided to participate in a volunteering project organised by a young russian student from Moscow, but originally from Buryatia which is a republic in southern Siberia. We were going there to teach something to the school children there, and also to experience their way of life.

The departure from Ulan-Ude was scheduled for the 24th of June, 6:30 am. All we knew was that we were supposed to go in a minibus. We still didn't know that we would experience the real russian way of travelling....

We were a group of 5: Kate from Canada, Juergen from Austria, Ayuna the organiser from Moscow, and the 2 of us.

Actually, to get to these remote places, a few minibuses leave every morning from the bus station. You just go there, wait, and when a bus arrives, jump inside to get a seat. As we were a group of 5 with quite a lot of luggage, we were supposed to have 5 seats reserved in one of the buses, which was supposed to pick us up at our hotels. But it didn't turn up, the driver had decided to drive to the train station... So we ended up waiting for an hour at our hotel, being driven to the bus station and waiting there for another hour or so. Finally, our driver turned up and we got our 5 seats. This was already a good example of how things work here. Don't plan ahead or you'll be disappointed....

After one hour we alreday stopped for "lunch" (it was 10:30 in the morning) and then drove for another 4 hours non-stop. Of course there was the usual drunk guy who was a bit annoying, but he fell asleep after some time and we didn't hear him anymore. It was a very scenic drive, the landscape becoming greener and hillier, with meandering rivers and a few small villages. Once there were cows on the street, once there was a group of running horses, and once the driver almost ran into a group of men who were doing repair work on the road.

At some point we arrived at a checkpoint. This being a border region, we needed permits to go there and our passports were checked (which consisted in writing down our names and a phone call to the boss, without noticing that Kate didn't have her visa with her). When the passport procedure was over, we were told to get out of the bus, this time for a welcoming ceremony by the head of administration (Svetlana) from the village we were going to (Mihailovka), which consisted in some chanted speech in Buryat, offering a spoon of milk (white foods are supposed to have a "cleaning" function) and the handing over of a coloured scarf. During the whole time, the other passengers waited patiently.

When we arrived to the village, we were introduced to our host families, who all lived in very tidy wooden houses with big gardens and a banya. We immediately got food, and then had a good wash in the banya.

The village had one asphalted road, the others were non-asphalted. Cows were wandering and grazing freely in the village. All the houses were wooden, often with colourful windows. No house had individual water pipes. Every street had its water pump station where people went to get water. Toilets were outside, "hole-in-the-floor", often far in the garden, but clean. Our family also had a few pigs, two dogs and a small potato field behind the house. The main foods are milk products, cow's meat and potatoes. Almost everything is produced for self-consumption, hardly anything is sold. Life seems very simple there. I also noticed a strong, mainly female community, with all kinds of activities (library, dance group...). All in all people seemed very happy there.

Two weeks away

From Tuesday (or Wednesday) next week, that means 23/24 June and for two weeks we will be in the yellow pins marked on the map above. we will be there participating on this voluntary project in two Buryati villages near the Mongolian border, where most of the children never saw foreigners. 

Eva will try to give some basic health and hygiene ideas and I will try to raise their wareness about human and children rights. Maybe doing some BodyCombat if weather and conditions allow (if there are speakers, CD player, etc). Today we already met Jurgen, an Austrian guy who will be teaching some Judo. There will also be Kate, a Canadian girl and Ayuna, a Moscovite which is also Buriaty and will be translating and organizing things. 

So, when I mean by away, is because we believe there might not be internet there. And mobile phones seem not to work (following our research on the russian operators webpages).

Web page of this volutary project is: http://buryatiasummerschool.narod.ru