Bayankhongor Here We Come

We’re going to Bayankhongor!

We’ll be living in the provincial capital called Bayankhongor City where Leslie will be working with at-risk youth at a children’s center and at a children’s theater, and Nathan will be working with ADRA, a international non-governmental organization (NGO or INGO or NGIO or LMNOPQRSTUV, but mostly NGO), which provides emergency disaster relief and education in business, health and food stores. We are both extremely excited to work with our new Mongolian counterparts.

We’ll be flying out Thursday from UB, and it’s about an 11-14 hour drive if we were to drive. We’ll be in an apartment of a former volunteer who recently left. It’s only about two years old with running water including indoor toilet, but no hot water. We’ll have electricity, though it went out a lot last year, we’ve heard. We’ll be extremely close to other Peace Corps volunteers from last year and walking into great programs started by recently departed volunteers with projects in environmental awareness, mentoring and more, which the town really wants us to continue. We’ve been told over and over again that our town contains perhaps the most highly motivated supervisors and community members in the country.

Each site that gets a volunteer is well researched starting with an application the requesting agency fills out to receive a volunteer – often years or several months in advance. Then, Peace Corps staff meets with them to find out their goals and if they overlap with the countries requests of Peace Corps. They continue to vet the best sites, traveling the country to visit each possible location to determine if they meet the minimum requirements for access to transportation, communications, and other criteria. Once volunteers reach the country, Peace Corps staff continues to cultivate the sites and assigns volunteers to those spots in an inside-out sort of way by placing the volunteers they have as best they can into positions they have, instead of recruiting specifically for each open job. Because of this, some people aren’t perfect matches for the region of the country they might prefer, in the housing they might prefer, or in the exact job they might prefer. Even still, Peace Corps staff does the best they can to accommodate all those variables, so the more flexible the volunteers are, they happier they are with their eventual placements. Indeed, we are. Indeed some are not, but in the bell curve of life, most volunteers got much of what they requested.

Our new supervisors showed up in Darkhan last week for some further orientation. They met amongst themselves, then in a short ceremonial rite of introduction, most of us met our new colleagues. We knew the agencies we’d be working for and where by this time and dying with anticipation. All the volunteers lined up on one side of the room while all the supervisors grouped on the other side. In Mongolian, each site and city were announced together, then the two parties met in the middle. Nathan’s counterpart was unable to get there on time because of a delayed flight, but there was an awkward confusion (not his fault) that had him meeting someone else’s new boss. Once the confusion was settled, we all went back to the hotel for lunch, more orientation and further introductions. Because Leslie has two supervisors - one from each agency she’ll be working for - Nathan was able to help her handle the barrage of excited questions.

The next day (after Nathan met his supervisor), with the help of translators as needed, we sat down with our supervisors to iron out the expectations of our jobs. Though we don’t know how everything with play out in real life, we are both thrilled with the possibilities. One goal of Leslie’s theater is to learn English language repertoire and put on a show in English. Nathan’s job with have him traveling a lot, seeing much of the large province that contains beautiful mountains in the North and the Gobi Desert in the South. Needless to say, we’re both excited! Regardless of our primary assignments with our new agencies, we’ll also be expected to do other work within the community and most likely with each other and the other volunteers in the area. In clustering volunteers as we are, they have found that we are able to accomplish more than if we were more scattered across the countryside. Only time will tell, but we both think we’re going to be really happy in out new community.