Mongolia is a strange place to be coming home to. Even when you think you’re prepared for the craziness (and in fact when that’s precisely what you’ve been missing), you’re not really prepared for the craziness. It constantly takes you off guard. Can a place like that ever really be home to an outsider?
Ulaanbaatar is in a state of panic – but panic pure Mongol-style, ie. totally inappropriate, illogical and likely to blow over in a week. Despite being still fragile after the two-day overland obstacle course through the seventh circle of hell, or Inner Mongolia (see my site for gruesome details), I am falling over laughing at the stringent anti-SARS measures, which include dodgy handmade surgical masks, gum boots, swimming goggles and the closure of all hospitals.
All open air markets have been closed but all indoor food markets are doing a roaring trade – indoors the food is kinda protected and there’s less, like, air, right?
The people who stand on the street with satellite phones wrapped in felt have now branched into selling surgical masks as a sideline. They’ve found their niche market, as all the chemists have sold out of face masks. I love the incompetence.
But this is the country where roosters lay eggs and people eat them, so nothing less should be expected. And for the moment, it’s home. Which means a bed in a room, music, work and some good people. A knowledge of the best back streets in town, the hidden temples. Shopkeepers who know me, people who worry about me.
I don’t quite know what people look for or need in a home. I do know that some people have a hard time accepting that the place I was born is not the place I want to call home forever and ever.
As much as I don’t want to live there anymore, I still pine for it, regularly. I yearn for a quiet empty beach, a storm in the afternoon, to walk in the bush with my dog, to sit in the same room as any member of my family. To be understood, easily and effortlessly – someone understanding immediately where I’m from, the things I grew up with, how to make me laugh.
Maybe everyone has a grass-is-greener syndrome. Maybe it’s just something that mellows with time. But maybe it never totally goes away.