The Secret History Radio Program

Recently, we traveled back to Darkhan (our pre-service training site), to help record a radio program on the Secret History of the Mongols - in English. It will eventually be aired in all 21 Mongolian provinces and be packaged for sale. The final product should look something like the Mongolian version below.

The Mongolian version of "The Secret History of the Mongols Radio Play." The English version we worked on will also be packaged and sold, as well as played on the radio.

We got involved in the program after our friend Tysen recorded his piano audition peices for grad school with the producer, Javkhaa, who is well known to PVCs in Darkhan. He is always working on documentary film projects, including one we might be in about couch surfing in Mongolia. He'll also do a program featuring Tysen and other forgeiners who live in gers in Mongolia, which will air in Mongolia. He speaks English pretty darn well, has a jounalism degree and has a trade school degree in videography. He just turned 30 a few months ago, so he likes to tell us he is our older brother but we look like his BIG siblings.

Javkhaa: radio producer, director, videographer, editor. He's hard at work and enjoying his job.

First, Nathan performed as Jamukha, childhood friend turned sworn enemy of Temujin (later Chinggis Khan or Ghengis Khan, as you might know him). As a protagonist, Jamukha was a dark villanous character who eventually asks the great king to spare his life with a quick death. During that time in Mongolian history, the Mongolian tribes that were spread wide across the vast steppe were being organized by various regional powers. According to the legend, the most successful kings were Jamukha (later Gur Khan) and Chinggis Khan. Chinggis Khan offered to share the kingdom together, but the Gur Khan refused in favor one, unified Mongolian people.

Nathan spends some time in the recording booth playing Jamukha, sworn brother turned sworn enemy of Temujin/Chinggis Khan.

Because the parts have been recorded part-by-part, we had to play off Nargi, a Darkhan English teacher and summer Peace Corps trainer. Nargi's English is so good, he has a kind of California surfer accent mixed with his Mongolian accent. Javkhaa was able to direct us pretty well, but for the more complicated direction, he used Nargi as a translator. Incidentally, Nargi also wrote the screenplay for the English version we were recording.

Besides his charm and wit, Nargi is an Elvis impersonator, and a good one. He's a really talented musician and learned most of his English through music, he says. His most notable influences are, of course Elvis, and the Seattle grunge scene, especially Nirvana.

Nargi played various characters to set up our scenes. He also acted as director and translator making sure we got the most out of every scene.

Leslie played O'luen, mother of Temujin (later Chinggis Khan) and his siblings. Her part was a little smaller, but very powerful. Her energy and poise came through well as she delivered the well known stories encouraging Temujin and his brothers to stop fighting amongst themselves and to work together, which foreshadows Chinggis Khan's unification of the Mongol tribes into one, powerful people that eventually established the largest empire in history ranging from Asia to Europe.

Leslie turned on the drama as O'luen, the mother of Temujin/Chinggis Khan.

We enjoyed our time in the booth with Nargi and Javkhaa. Look forward to hearing this English version of "The Secret History of the Mongols Radio Play" on 106 FM in Darkhan next year after post production has been completed.

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.

Sworn In, Hanging in UB

So, we typed up a couple blog posts and saved them to our flash drive to bring to the Peace Corps office, but we saved them in Word 2007 and the computers here only have 2003. Instead of going back home, let me catch you up to date and we'll post those other ones tomorrow.

We've been in the capital since Sunday, a couple of days now, but before that, we were in Darkhan for a week finishing up our training and meeting our new supervisors. It's been busy and crazy here in UB, but it feels a little bit like we're on vacation because we don't fly out to our site until tomorrow, Thursday. We've been enjoying the more westernized circumstances here including nice restaurants and a variety of choices.

Today is our 3rd anniversary. We are planning to see a movie with some friends because the movie theater is just around the corner from the Peace Corps office. No clue what's there, but word has it, they're pretty new and the theater is nice. We'll give a full report.

We are officially Peace Corps Volunteers now after a cool swearing in ceremony attended by the US ambassador and some Mongolian dignitaries. In our welcoming ceremony in June, Mongolian children sang, played and danced for us, so for the closing ceremony, we were charged with doing the same. Each group of trainees had to have a dancer and singer/Mongolian instrument player, which was the highlight of evening.

Leslie and I sang a well known Mongolian love duet. Our two language teachers put us up to it and wrote down the lyrics. My host father taught me my part, and Leslie's mom taught her her's. We'd only sung it a capella until we got to Darkhan last week and planned on doing it without accompaniment, but we ended up singing to a karaoke backing that we thought was a little hokey. Hokey or not, the Mongolians couldn't have loved it more. When we got off the stage, we were given the star treatment with hugs, kisses and calls for us to take the show on the road. We were most surprised to find out that we'd made people cry, even Americans. The whole thing was incredibly surreal and unexpected, considering the high level of dancing and musicianship displayed during the event. I hope we can find a video of it from someone, because neither one of us remembers much about it due to nerves. In fact, the only thing I really remember was my legs shaking uncontrollably. Nonetheless, we were happy we didn't forget any words or miss an entrance.

A large party followed at our hotel with dancing drinking and overall joviality. It was the perfect way to end training.