A very Mongol Christmas

Christmas makes sense in Germany. Mulled wine, marzipan cake, snow, the thick red suit worn by said archetypal father-figure famous for benevolence (commonly known as Santa) – all make sense.

Christmas in Australia is perceptibly displaced. But that’s ok, I’m used to that. Santa just hangs out at the air-conditioned shopping centre and we buy cans of fake frosting to decorate the baby-pine tree we’ve hacked from our neighbour’s bushland.

Christmas in Mongolia is the third-generation of displacement. Yes, the weather is cold. Fucking cold. And it's white, with snow, all over. 10-meter tall Christmas trees stand erect in Sukhbaatar Square and outside the State Department Store, complete with large baubles and lights. Street vendors that previously sold phone calls from their portable house phones, now sell tinsel. All these elements seem especially forced considering that Mongolia is a Buddhist country.

At Mongol Televis the other day, I observed the editing process of a Festive Season Special. It documented Santa running across town sprinkling sparkle on trees. Said father figure was dressed in a blue deel (traditional Mongolian dress) with white fur trimmings on the sleeves and headdress. In Shamanistic tradition, the colour blue, connected to the endless sky, is very significant.

Ariunn, our Mongolian Director, told us to produce a Voice Box Festive Season Special. She told us months ago. In fact, she told us right before we started filming our first episode. We’ve therefore had it in the backs of our over-stimulated minds since then.

When someone tells you to do something special, invariably that something, which would otherwise be a cinch, all fun and merriment galore, becomes trying. Indeed, the making of our Festive Season Special has been an experience in resourcefulness, for reasons forced and otherwise.


‘SPECIAL’ PLAN #1
The Khan Bank sponsors the Voice Box Show. While buttering them up for more milk, we swindled tickets to a particularly popular Mongolian pop star’s album launch. She was releasing her album in 4 languages, which I personally think is pretty remarkable.

We attended her launch, spoke to her ‘manager’ and agreed to share a dinner. Later in the week, over Indian, she agreed to be involved in our Festive Episode. In response to asking if she would mind singing a Christmas Carol, she balked. No, she would rather write a brand new melody to sing on the show. Awesome, we said, very awesome.

At this dinner, she also indicated that she would set me up with the sexy lead singer of an up-and-coming Mongolian Indie band. But this is story is for another time.

Ecstatic with the way our ‘special’ episode was coming together, Mitch and I departed for Beijing (see blog entry #2) with very rosy cheeks and hands resting languidly on our bellies as we reclined in our director chairs.

Upon return to UB, we contact our pop star-godsend. We communicate only through her ‘manager’. I’m not sure if this procedure is a product of the language barrier or of temperament alone. Through 'manager', we deduce she is busy. The festive season is very demanding for a pop star-godsend. We learn that an entire new single has been written and composed. Wasn’t that what the Voice Box team requested for their Festive Season episode? We are delighted. How fantastic. How freaking fantastic. We have exclusivity to release the brand new single from one of Mongolia's finest artists. Ariunn will be happy with us.

We then learn that Voice Box is to fund the single: the studio time, the musicians, the producer, the equipment. Indeed, the lyrics and vocals will both be donated free of charge. I do not often use this word, but here it seems appropriate: we are bamboozled. I explain, probably in a clunky, graceless way that the production cost equates to about one sixth of the Voice Box annual budget.

Hmpff, divas.

As it conspires, we now have said pop star-diva as a guest on the show, no earlier than about May 09. By May, she will have finished recording her next album. Then she will have time to talk with us. I'm sure by May she will feel free to be candid about being an internationally acclaimed musician, about singing in English and share with us some of her very powerful and evocative Aretha-Franklinesque music.

As Producer of Voice Box, the lesson is to not pack all our ‘special’ eggs into one sequins-covered, all singing, all dancing Santa’s sack. Moreover, I should have known that a talented diva is the kind of diva to have the prerogative to act like a diva.

‘SPECIAL’ PLAN #2
With two weeks to deadline, our ‘special’ episode was looking a little matte. Should we sing carols with the orphans out at the Lotus Children’s Centre? Doll them up in red and green foil, recline in an armchair and appreciate the true meaning of Christmas.

There just wasn’t time. My older brother Roly and his mate Craig were about to arrive. We had a trip planned to the South Gobi. We would be away 6 nights and by the time we returned, our episode needed to be ready to print to tape and go to air. Yes, the orphans would have to wait. Perhaps they can be bunny rabbits or eggs at Eastertime.

Roly and Craig are on an oddessey. Beginning in Vietnam they’ve travelled overland through China and up to UB. When they leave from here, they will head yonder through Siberia to Moscow and Europe, then South America. By nature of small-budget world-trips, we simply had no option to cancel or postpone the Gobi plan.

But how would our ‘special’ episode come to fruition while we were away adventuring? Permaculture. – multiple yield, efficiency of resources. The purpose of our side-story dash to Dalanzadgad was to sandboard the Hongol Dunes. So, our adventure holiday quickly transfigured into the “Miranda goes Merry Gobi ‘Special’ Episode”. The premise unfolded effortlessly: Miranda is curious how people in the Gobi celebrate the New Year.

Brother and friend arrive on train.

Team of seven vagabonds, one sass-pot tour guide, one dark and mysterious van driver and one broadcast camera curl into Russian van.

Team drives for 14 hours to Mandalgobi, capital of Dundgobi aimag. We stay overnight in dark and mysterious van driver’s ger.

Through a Peace Corp contact, I had managed to organise filming at the Mandalgobi 1st school for early morning, day two. Sass-pot tour guide tries to ban said filming, expressing the need to get on the road first thing. I argue and throw my weight about and confirm the filming time.

Day two: I wake very early, waking everyone else in the ger. In the dark of the morning, by a soft-glowing globe powered by an old car battery, I paint myself in elfen make-up. Mitch has taken ill, almost seriously ill given the climate. He must sleep. So I demand dear brother to help with the camera. He obliges. A beautiful semi-lit morning; still and pinkening as we drive through the small, brown town to school. Intended vox pops are filmed: young people making their ‘09 resolutions (yes, ‘special’). To debrief, Roly and I enjoy a MacCoffee (n.b. very popular 3in1 sachet of brilliance) with the school’s Principal. And we’re on the road by 11am.

We drive. I learn to knit. I knit housemate a beanie. We drive.

It grows dark, early, because it is winter. Despite out team’s merry singing (Roly and Craig have brought their guitars along), tension between dark and mysterious driver and sass-pot tour guide becomes apparent. We are currently in a town. This, indeed, is an abnormality when in the Gobi. The intention has been to travel further South and spend the night bunked with a family in their ger, as close as possible to desination: Flaming Cliffs. The difficulty with nomads though is that they move about. They’re hard enough to find by day. Additionally, our Driver, it is revealed, has never been to the Gobi Desert before. He has never been to the Gobi Desert before? Never been south of his hometown Mandalgobi? If one was to put all the sealed roads in Mongolia end on end, they would not even stretch across the breadth of the country. It is imperative to know the land, to know mountains and turns. No need for alarm though - our sass-pot tour guide, quite ripe at 21 years of age, has been to the Gobi many times. She knows the way. However, she advises we spend the night safely in this town.

The hotel is novel, much like a Soviet version of a Sport and Rec camp. We steam pre-frozen buuz for dinner and enjoy some vodka and generally participated in groupism in a pleasant way. Leaving early the next morning, I notice a very motionless dog curled into the concrete corner of the hotel’s steps. I think she has frozen to death. She hasn’t. She is breathing. Just.

The Flaming Cliffs are the edge of an ancient ocean, a contemporary endlessness. The cliffs are vertical, rising up from the seafloor. I feet cheeky being allowed preview to the textures and contours of the seafloor. Surely one needs to be in a submarine or be heaps good at scubadiving to enjoy such privledge. Two gers, perhaps occupied by the same family, sit erect on the edge of the cliff: two lighthouses for dinosaur ghosts, two eyes.

After a 3pm lunch of 2-minute noodles, hot water supplied by the food-barren village resturaunt, heavy stone-grey clouds pillaged the blueness of the sky. Dark and mysterious driver is explicitly anxious. We set sail anyway.

More knitting, until it grows too dark. Darktime in the desert dispels the vast plains. Now you drive through a dense forest, with walls parallel to the slug of the van’s motion. And then, when the van needs to find another option of road, he does a 120 degree scan, high beam tailed by his body.

After one such scan, sass-pot tour guide turns from the passenger seat to address the gang.

“Of course, I am sorry. Usually there is a mountain to left. Now, cannot see in night. There are three options. I will tell you them after we go round back to ger we passed.”

The ger we passed was abandoned for the winter. We had stopped to ask for directions about half an hour ago but discovered it was locked. Upon returning, it is still locked and still abandoned. It is still night but growing increasingly colder.

Sass-pot tour guide again turns, her left arm holding on to the back of the drivers seat quite tightly. Do I notice a slight twitch to her nose?

“Of course, I am sorry. The driver has never been to this part of the Gobi. I have been a number of times and know these roads but it is too dark to see. Of course, there are three options. We turn around, we break into this ger, we sleep in van.”

Going backwards is boring. Breaking into ger turns out to not be possible. (Not to mention the poor ettiquette of the act.) We wrap the van in a large covering, line the van’s windows with our sleeping mats, pad ourselves up in sleeping bags, unnecessarily cook a pot of pasta on a camping stove resting on the large platform hiding the engine (yes, it’s inside the van, between the driver and passenger seats), necessarily drink multiple bottles of vodka, share some ‘anti-nausea’ pills, allow dark and mysterious driver to wake every hour to turn on the van to heat the van and next thing I know it’s the morning and I can’t feel my legs. There is some commotion when I wake though. Some of the boys are out and about. Someone, not sure who (I’m still a little groggy from the dead-sleep) climbs into the van accompanied by a gust of frozen wind. This person announces that we are in a snowstorm. Our van is going nowhere.

In the light, dark and mysterious driver is able to break the lock on the ger and we mobilise. Groupism is efficient and after maybe twenty minutes we have collectively moved all the gear, food and warmth into the ger. The ger is decorated in a homely way, complete with photos of its owners. We rationalise that the people that belong to these faces would not mind that we broke two locks to make camp in their springtime home due to the extreme conditions we have found ourselves in. They are nomads and are most likely well acquainted with the adversity of the Gobi. Which is probably why they have moved elsewhere for the winter.

‘SPECIAL’ PLAN #3
Ecstasy. Circular, confined, out of communicaton. For days. Who knows how many. Such bliss. We sit around in our new den for a little bit. I knit some more. We talk in groupism some more. Joke about who we will eat first, when it comes to that.

But shit, Voice Box. My jolly disposition at our enforced hibernation gives way to my commitment to producing said ‘special’ episode. We’re just going to have to film the whole thing in the ger. An introduction in which I explain our original plan followed by the revelation of getting waylayed in the Gobi and stuck in this snowstorm. So very jenxin (Mongolian for ‘authentic’). Roly and Craig can play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on their guitars. But no, their guitars were left outside the van last night and all the strings snapped in the weather. Well, it will just be a group sing-along-then. And we can cook a Christmas Cake on the ger-stove, with the eclectic mix of flour, sugar, peanuts and sultanas we have in our box of food. But no, we must ration our supplies. Who knows how long we’ll be here. This ‘special’ episode is looking even more matte.

Expecting to be in this ger for a number of days, there isn’t too much immediacy to filming, so I sleep. I wake grumpy to the sound of the boys returning from a hike into the snowstorm. Annoyingly, on their journey, they met the neighbours. The neighbours confirmed the road to Hongol Dunes was passable and in fact, we had been heading in the correct direction the evening before.

Groupism repacked the van, and I remained grumpy at my denied bliss-out. Furthermore, the show was back on the road.


‘SPECIAL’ PLAN #4
Hongol Sand Dunes are incredible. The highest dune lengthens his spine at two hundred metres, give or take according to the wind patterns. The tips of the dunes are razor edges. When the line is disrupted say by a footstep, sand falls away elegantly. When the side of the dune is disrupted, the visual pattern is much like the run in a stocking, where the sand falls away not only downwards, but up the dune also. It takes over half an hour to climb to the highest peak. The horizon is curved, the land is a moonscape. The furthest sight is softened by the atmospheric gases. We are still and now, after the hike up, our breath slows right down. We are people and this world is our soul. Beauty is in moments and is permeating in this moment of eternity.

We take photos, mainly of ourselves, with the backdrop of epic endlessness. We pin a toothpick Australian flag in the peak of the dune and take photos of us as conquerors. We set the camera’s timer and take a group shot with half of us not quite in shot, falling away down the sand. Then the guys sandboard downwards and I have that ‘Boys Light Up’ song as soundtrack in my mind (Is it Coke that used this for one of their advertisements? Go marketing.)

Then there is silence in my mind. The cool air pinkening my cheeks.

Back to camp and its camel riding. We get out the camera, dress everyone up in tinsel and merrily traverse a very wide, barren plain. It’s freezing. On sunset, we pause from camel riding to interview the very Jim-Morrisonesque Santa Claus I have accidently run into as he meanders the Gobi desert. Yes, an eccentric plotline but they were looking for ‘special’. While filming, the sun hands over to the moon and our bodies begin seizing up with the increasing cold.

Three days driving home and more knitting and the final touch to our ‘special’ episode reveals itself, as if organically. This is a ‘Wizard of Oz’ tale. Each bizarre segment filmed along our journey is in fact an archetypal hallucination from my collective dreaming. Or something like that. Due to our evening spent in the Russian van and in the snowstorm, we are a day late home. Our deadline is two days away. We film the introduction in which I slip on ice on Sukhbaatar Square and some kindly elfin men help me, taking me along the festive yellow brick road.

Indeed the final product is an eccentric hybrid celebration of celebration. Like I said, it’s a tough challenge to be ‘special’. Somehow though this episode makes sense in the way Mongolian Christmas makes sense. Or doesn't.