Training in the Land of a Hundred Trees

Leslie and I have been trainers in our respective fields for the second half of pre-service training to our the newest round of prospective volunteers. They arrived in the middle of June, had 4 weeks of language, culture and "tech" training (I'm a business volunteer so my tech training is micro to medium business), and now we've embarked on our 5 weeks. During this time we have been out of Bayankhongor, the provincial capital where we've been volunteering for almost a year now. We've been in the country nearly 14 months to date.

Leslie is away at a children's camp all weekend, so I thought I share a little bit about what this tech training is all about.

All the trainers for the different tech areas (English, health, youth development, business) have office hours during the week at the Peace Corps office in UB where we prepare sessions, and then three days a week, we travel to their training site in a nearby provincial capital called "Hundred Trees."

There are some classroom hours spent talking about Mongolia's history, most of the which is introductory topics about the switch from the planned economy from the 1920's to the relatively new free market system that's been in place since the early 1990's. We also talk about how to work with Mongolian counterparts, translators and the expectations of the work ahead of them.

Meet the crew:
Of the seven trainees, we have two women, both with exellent creditials and advanced degrees in business. We also have two married guys with some good experience between them, and whose wives are CYD trainees (youth development), just like Leslie and me. The other guys have business related backgrounds and perhaps more limited experience, but have a lot to offer our program.

During this day of training, we got out of the classroom, as we like to do, to visit some working small to medium-sized businesses. The trainees ask questions about the businesses and get an idea of what they're in for.

Mola translates as we visit a family with a small garden of carrots and potatoes and greenhouse with tomatoes and cuccumbers for sale. They are supported by the NGO World Vision. We were excited to see them growing peas and green beans outside, but for now, those are just for personal use.

My counterpart for the summer, Mola, has a great background in business and is a real task master. She makes all the phone calls to set up these visits. In this case, we contacted three NGO's in the area and asked them to connect us to a couple of their clients who'd be willing to talk to us.

Our second visit was to a car repair shop that also has the town's only car wash, operated by the son. Notice the motor on top of the blue metal container.

Mom does the tire repair using a fancy piece of equipment they were able to purchase with a loan, and Dad does most of the welding with an electric torch they recently purchased. He was trained in Russia many years ago and seems to have it all down, though he's not wearing a protective mask, but rather a cheap pair of what appear to be off-the-rack sun glasses. He's making repairs to the ramp he use to elevate the cars.

Mola does all the traslating during these visits and is an intrgal part of our training. She's a real pro, having lived in the Colorado for a while.

The first business was a micro business on a very small scale, the second was a small family business on a larger scale, and the third we visited was a member of the chamber of commerce and a well established dairy farm with a barn, stables and some pretty modern equipment, something I had not seen before. It was a real education for me.

[Left] The indoor stables are not heated in the winter, but provide a great place for the 30+ cattle to while away the -30 degree cold. [Right] A two year old cow stands on some "handy work." Cows aren't fed hormones and only feed off the native grasses during the summer and prepared grass fodder in the winter. We all agreed that a two year-old cow in the States could eat this cow for lunch. The owners were a little surprised.

Leslie and I carpool in the Peace Corps microbus with the health trainers, whose site is on the way. We drop them off, then pick them up on our way home. Each way the trip is about an hour and a half, so after our 3-4 hour sessions, we usually don't get home until after 7:30 in the evening. This particular day, there were some host family issues with one of the health volunteers, so we hung out in the microbus for a few hours while the trainers worked to resolve it.

Mola passes a volleyball back and forth with the school's caretaker while I lounge in the microbus. We made it home by 9 that evening and were back at the grind by 9 the next morning.

Trainees still have until the middle of August in training where they'll set up a community small business syposium attended by local business owners and do some practical consulting with individual businesses. They are up to the challenge, but they are also eagerly looking forward to where they will live out their days as volunteers, which won't be finalized until the middle of August as sites continue to be developed.

Stay tuned for Leslie debriefing of training a the children's camp.