MONGOLIA...

land more naked than I have ever seen, folding gently upon itself...

Walk alone in the hills, sit, sing and be humbled by the simple song of the cricket. A thousand worries melt in a moment of the earths stillness. Tending to horses under the growing dusk whilst the moon rises, cream and warm, over smooth hills. Watch as the night sky explodes with stars.

In the land of eagles soaring,

silence deafens even thought.
Soundless circles glide on sky blue,
shadows racing underneath.
Stillness settles, hushing worries,
nothingness waits with baited breath.

Buddhism is the main religion of Mongolia. But outside the cities' temple of garish gods, lives an older tradition that, like the lives of those who follow it, is rooted in the land. Stone cairns dot the horizons, with broken branches waving silk scarves: blue for the sky and eternal truth, red for happiness and unfailing courage to overcome obstacles, yellow for life, undying like the sun, white for goodness and humanity and green for growth and fertility. The temple is here, this very earth where prayers are not constrained by walls, nor Heaven limited to ceilings of gold.


There is an emptiness on the land...where once temples nestled amidst the hills, there are only ruins or absent holes. Under the USSR, almost all Buddhist temples and relics were destroyed. Some have been rebuilt, but Stalin's mark still leaves enormous cultural and religious voids in Mongolian history.

Monoglian writing is in Cyrillic after decades of control and governance by the USSR. But a whisper is sounding, growing, rumbling, for a return to their own language, their own words, their own voice. A local artist presented an exhibtion on traditional Mongolian calligraphy, painting the words into symbolic art. This quote is from the character 'leaf'...at once both word and depiction of a leaf falling in the wind.
"Thought, dream, wish, sadness and joy are described by nature, tree, flower and leaf in Oriental calligraphy. The point of the 'N' of 'nouch' (leaf) describes a yellow leaf of fall doing its last dance in the air after being torn away from a branch. This is like reminding us to live with a goal and to live and not regret it. Birth and death happens in every moment of existence".
In another captivating image of the phrase 'creation defeats death' the words flow into the image of (what appeared to me) a side view of a pregnant woman.
"It is wonderful to be a creator of a human life..one must be a creator to win over death".
It makes me wonder where to do we put our creative energies? Are we investing our lives in that which breathes life-giving oxygen to others or are we scaredly consuming and hoarding all that oxygen for ourselves? Sometimes maybe it is that simple....

The skull of the winning horse of the Naddam festival, facing West to the setting of the sun. In many ancient pagan cultures, West was the place of the dead and faces were turned towards the West in burial. The horse in Mongolia is central to nomadic life. Unlike the horses of Britain, Mongolian horses are small and tough and in the deep lands of the steppes, many still roam wild.

Her dust dried wrinkles were as deep as my thirst. Over water our eyes met in common need; ice blue against an indecipherable dark. Uncertainty bordered on fear as she eyed me cautiously.
I smiled.
The myriad life lines deepened as her mouth stretched wide in warm response. I wondered on the tales of mirth, love and loss each wrinkle could tell. But, like the flash of smile on a hardened face, she vanished back into the desert dust....a thousand more wrinkles to live.

Christina Noble Children's Foundation
The post-Cold War withdrawal of Soviet assistance to Mongolia, left a country struggling to deal with economic and social disintegration. Thousands of children found themselves homeless on the streets of the cities, finding shelter from the bitter cold of winters, reaching almost -40, down the manholes where the power station pumps the cities' hot water. The Blue Skies Ger Villages gives a home to almost 50 children who were orphans or abandoned. Have a look at the website yourself for further information. www. cncf.org.

All I am able to say is an afternoon spent watching and learning about how the orphanage works, was incredibly humbling. These children have experienced horrendous physical, sexual violence and abuse from their own families and continue to face stigma as orphans. It is so easy to be over critical of 'development' work these days. But whatever the criticisms, the harsh facts remain that there are many broken lives out there, many problems, and, carefully, something must be done where it can be done. To hear the life story of a five year old girl who was force fed sleeping pills by her own mother to kill her, the story of a young teenager gang raped and rejected by her family, the story of a small boy whose new step-father threw boiling oil over him to make him leave....to hear all these stories and to see those same faces capable of smiling, laughing and playing like normal children....

It is a reminder that the power to change the world does exist. By changing individual lives, by holding the balance between working to change the wider picture and everyday lives, and by sustaining the hope that change is possible, not perfect, but possible.