In Mongolia with the Peace Corps

[Guest post by Cal Brackin in Choir, Mongolia] I
arrived in Mongolia to start my two-year service as a Community and
Youth Development Volunteer with the Peace Corps in 2013. The Peace
Corps started in 1961 under Kennedy’s presidency to help people in other
countries meet their need for trained men and women, and help promote a
better understanding between Americans and other peoples. I work at a
secondary school (1st-12th grades) alongside the school social worker. I
live in the regional capital of Choir (Чойр) on the northern fringe of the Gobi Desert in the province of Govisumber.

I
like to draw the people and architecture that surrounds me, but the
most compelling are those subjects that I can build a story from. I like
drawing people in dramatic situations, sequences that tell “how-to”,
and the picturesque images that I want to embed in my memories.

Naadam, for instance, is an annual, summer-time festival where
spectators watch archery, horse racing, and wrestling. At least 100 wrestlers compete
at any one Naadam, and they wrestle each other in single-elimination
bouts until there is one champion. A wrestler loses when his back
touches the ground. It is a lot of leaning, grappling, and pushing until
one can make a swift trip or throw to knock the other to the ground.

Here I tried to
create the image of the crowd around me as we watched the wrestling.
When I had finished with the ink and watercolor the man next to me asked
if he could see it, and then he passed the Moleskine through the rest
of the crowd. (Can you see me in the drawing?) Everyone had a good laugh
at picking themselves out.

The
people in Choir are hospitable and are mostly employed in the
government, schools, railroad, police and fire departments, or local
shops. The Google Images version of Mongolians depicted living in the
countryside in gers (or yurts) and riding horses is not what my
neighbors are like. They drive modern cars, live in Soviet-styled
apartments, wear western-styled clothes made in China, watch TV, and
carry smartphones.

This drawing, however, is of the
interior of the ger in which I lived
during my first three months in Mongolia. The dry-sink is where I would
wash my hands and face, and the stove in the middle is where I would
make
fires to keep the ger warm. The stove is the essential item of any ger
and is used for cooking, making tea, and heating the home. The landscape
surrounding Choir is flat, semi-arid desert with little vegetation.
During Mongolia’s socialist era, Choir was used as an army base for the
Soviet military and at one time boasted a huge base, with 11 apartment
buildings and a population of about 20,000 Russians. After the Mongolian
Democratic Revolution in 1990, the Soviets abandoned the base and it was
razed
by the Mongolians for building supplies, but the apartment buildings
were left
standing as a ghost town for nearly a decade. Today, they are occupied
by Mongolians, and now I live in one of the flats.

I
went to a shaman ceremony with a friend and I was given permission to
draw during the ceremony. The shaman sang, dancers danced, we were given
milk, candy, and 10 Mongolian tugriks (less than one cent), which is meant to bring good luck and prosperity. I drew the
shaman and then near the end we were told to close our eyes to meditate.
We did and the shaman told us we were good. If you go to a shaman,
don’t forget to meditate!

For my sketching I use pocket
Moleskines with Micron pens and a Sakura field watercolor set.
Typically, I buy these products online and nowadays I have them shipped
to Mongolia because they aren’t available in the country.

When I need a haircut, there is one fantastic place called Grace Salon
where the barbers take 30 minutes or more per haircut. It is
dramatically different from getting a haircut in the States, where the
clock is ticking for people to get things done. In Mongolia there is no
rush and the quality of the haircut is so much better. People wait a
long time at the salon for their turn, which gives me time to sketch,
but the quality of the haircut is well worth the wait.

The
Mongolian countryside can be dramatic. A friend happened to find me
perched on a cliff drawing the early evening and took this photo.

I
live on the Trans-Siberia train line and use it to travel to the
capital, Ulaanbaatar. The train departs at 1:40am so when I get on the
3rd class, most people are already sleeping. If I can, I’ll try to make a
drawing before I settle in and sleep. I drew a resting train in Choir
during a warm day in the summer. The train workers were curious about the strange, drawing foreigner in their community and would
occasionally probe me with questions. I added the watercolors for this
when I returned home.

My
girlfriend Samantha traveled to visit me in Mongolia and she is a
beautiful subject to draw, plus she entertains me by holding relatively
still for as long as I ask her to. She enjoys crocheting so one night we
busied ourselves with our hobbies and I was able to sketch her while
she made a hat.

When I finish
my Peace Corps service in July 2015, I will return to the United States where
I will finish a graduate program in NGO Administration at the University of Wyoming. You can see more of my work at www.calbrackin.com

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