Erecting a Ger - Part I: Building Materials

Since I’ve already discussed winterizing an already-standing ger, this time let’s discuss putting up a ger from the ground up. Three months ago (of course) I got to help put a new ger together, although I ended up doing more photography than actual labor. It’s OK though, they understood that I don’t get to see this in the U.S.

Seeing as this is so long, I'll try something new and split this into several posts. It's a ger-building series!

Elements of a ger

In this first picture you can see the parts of a ger gathered together and laying in a dusty yard. We have the doorframe, walls, center pillars, canvas cover, tarp, wall hanging, rope, roof poles, center ring, and floor. Here they all are individually:

Ger floor

At this point the floor (шал or хаяа) has already mostly been put together. The workers swept, leveled, and stomped the area where the ger would be put up, and layed out nine wooden floor pieces made of boards nailed together. Then there’s a thick plastic sheet with a fake linoleum design on it.

  

Ger walls

A ger wall (хана) is a framework of hinged wooden beams that can be compressed or stretched out like an accordion. The size of a ger is expressed by how many walls it has. My ger is a five-wall ger, so there are five of these accordion-like segments put together. This ger only has four, so it’s a little smaller than mine.

Here's a close-up

Roof ring

The roof ring (тооно) is the ger’s “window,” the round opening at the top of the ger in the center. It is painted with traditional designs. The outer rim of the ring has slots for the ends of the roof poles to fit into.

8259

8263

Roof poles

These poles (унь) form the roof, or at least the basis of the roof, of the ger. One end of each roof pole has a twine rope threaded through it. The other end is tapered.

Pillars

These pillars will hold up the roof of the ger. They are also highly decorated.

Ger coverings

Among the various sheets and covering that go in the ger are the canvas layer, the wall hanging, and the water-proof plastic tarp, all shown here.

These paper sheets - basically like a giant paper bag - also form part of the covering.

Felt sheets (эсгий)

Ger door (хаалга)

Next up: Assembling the framework...

MWW 8: дээл

A girl wearing a deel, the Mongolian national costume. Hidden in the pattern of her deel are the words for various traditional Mongolian clothes, written in эвхмэл бичиг.

Since we recently had Mongolian National Deel Day, дээл (deel, often spelled del) is a fine word for this issue. In this case, “Mongolian National Deel Day” is not really a “day.” Nor was it a “week.” True to the way of doing things here, which sometimes seems strange to me, Deel Day was actually four days long, lasting from Monday through Thursday (but not Friday). Also, it was not a nation-wide celebration. It was our school’s idea to do it and as far as I know only we did it. “National” here instead is meant to refer to the fact that the дээл is the national dress, for both men and women. The point of Mongolian National Deel Day was probably to stir up pride in traditional culture. More concretely, it was to get all the faculty, staff, and students to wear the national costume for four days.

Cyrillic	дээл
Transcription	deel
IPA	[te:ɬ]
Layman’s Pronunciation	DALE
Translation	del/deel, traditional Mongolian robe
In Genghis Khan’s time it was debel.

The дээл is a kind of robe, but instead of being buttoned in front like American clothes, it’s fastened on the side. Putting on a deel, first the right side of the robe is pulled over the front of the body, all the way over to one’s left side. Then, the left side of the deel is pulled over the right side. On the edge of that left flap are tiny cloth loops. There are also tiny cloth knots on the right side of the deel, under the sleeve and on the shoulder. To fasten the deel you slips the knots through the loops, just as you would slip a button through a buttonhole. Then a бүс (deel belt) - like a long scarf - is wrapped snuggly around the waist. Your deel is fastened!

The left and right flaps of the deel and the belt create a large pocket on your chest. Deels have collars, that can also be fastened by loops and knots. The bottom of the deel usually goes all the way down to the top of one’s boots, covering the legs too. The sleeves are much longer than a person’s arms. Traditionally Mongolians didn’t wear gloves. When they went ouside they just let the edge of the sleeve hand over their hands, and when they needed to do fine handwork, they flipped back the sleeve.

Deels can be made out of different kinds of fabric. There are also different seasonal deels. Summer deels are thin and light. Winter deels can be very heavy and are often lined with felt. Both men and women wear deels, although the fashions for each of them differ. Everyday deels are usually a dull blue or green, but festive deels come in all colors and usually have geometric patterns embroidered on them. All Mongolians used to wear deels, but under Soviet influence and modernization, professional people began to wear suits. Since the nation’s democratization many people follow Western fashions, and kids dress a lot like kids in the U.S. Nowadays some herders still wear deels on a day-to-day basis, but for everyone else, deels are usually worn on special occasions, sort of like tuxedoes, or like kimonos in Japan.

Mongolian students wearing deels

Blue Christmas

You know, now three weeks without using the internet doesn’t seem like such a long time.

I was excited to get a nifty thermometer for Christmas and installed it in my ger. If I make a fire, the thermomemeter will spring up as high as 37°C (98.6°F). If I don’t make a fire, during the middle of the day the temperature in my ger stays fairly consistently just below 0°C (32°F). Unfortunately, it only goes down to -10°C (14°F), and every morning when I wake up it’s at the lowest reading, so I’m never sure if it’s really -10°C or if it actually got colder and my thermometer was just unable to register it.

Speaking of Christmas, I spent Christmas in the аймгын төв (aimgiin töv, provincial center) with five other regional PCVs, two Korean KOICA volunteers and some of their Mongolian friends. Mongolians don’t get Christmas off, but luckily it was on a Sunday this year. Next year I may have to file for time off to celebrate.

When I got back, some of my possessions were frozen, and some weren’t. The peanut butter, 5% vinegar, soybean oil, and milk (4%!), as well as all water, froze. The jelly, 70% vinegar, bleach, and dish soap did not.

My village had a Christmas-themed New Year’s party with a blue Santa Claus. Mongolians don’t know much about American holidays and most of them think Christmas is the American New Year. I told some people that it’s a different holiday, but I think what they got out of it was, “Americans celebrate New Year’s on December 25.”

Santa Claus

Left to right: School director, Santa, student, soum governor, two students, school social worker. The students won an art contest.

Santa and the snow fairies

MWW 7: гэр

Cyrillic	гэр
Transcription	ger
IPA	[ker]
Layman’s Pronunciation	GAIR
Translation	1. home 2. yurt
In Genghis Khan’s time it was ger.

Since I wrote about my ger in the last post, why not make ger the next word of the fortnight?

My ger

Ger in the snow

Ger has both a general meaning and a specific meaning. In the specific sense, it refers to the traditional Mongolian nomadic dwelling made of felt over a wooden frame - otherwise known as a “yurt” in English. But aside from that, in the general sense, ger means simply “home.” Of course for many Mongols, possibly the majority, the two senses coincide and no distinction need be made. But wherever you live is your ger, whether it’s a yurt, a house, an apartment, or a palace. Even the president of the United States, as he heads to the White House, would be justified in uttering this common phrase,

Би гэрлүүгээ явлаа.

Bi gerlüügee yavlaa.

“I’m going home.”

in which gerlüügee is the same as the English adverb “home” - composed of ger, “home,” lüü, “to” (an allative case suffix), and ee, the reflexive possessive suffix, which is really interesting, but basically means that the thing it’s attached to belongs to the subject of the sentence.

Rural ger decked out with solar panel and satellite dish.

гэрлүүгээ харих

to return (to one's own) home

гэрийн даалгавар

homework

гэрийн ажил хийх

to do housework

гэр барих

to build a ger

гэр дулаалдах 

to winterize a ger (link)

I could go on with this word, but why not stretch it out and save some of the more interesting derived forms for later posts?

Gers should be cleaned out regularly.

Winterizing a Ger

Gers change through the year. In the summer, they're light and cool. In the winter, they're heavy and warm (provided you keep your fire going). To ensure this, they are modified twice a year. These processes are called "winterization" (дулаалах) and "summerization." Peace Corps has requirements about how and when the gers that volunteers live in are to be winterized. As you may recall, the frost came on September 7. Three days later, on September 10, my хашаа (hashaa) family came and said they were going to winterize my ger. Looking up at the bright sun, I thought, "Whatever," but we got down to work and worked up a sweat. There was more sweat on their part than mine, because I spent so much of the time taking pictures. My hashaa dad seemed to think it was funny, but they all understood that this was all really interesting to Americans, even though it was pretty mundane to them. Even though it didn't seem like winterizing was urgently necessary, the the Mongolians, naturally, turned out to be right: two days after that, we got our first snowfall.

Phase I: Adding Insulation

One of the great things about gers, compared to houses or apartments, is that you can easily take it apart, fix something, and put it back together without too much time, effort, a work permit, or contractor's license. Phase I consisted of improving the insulation of my ger by adding more felt. This is the biggest step in making the ger warmer. It can be compared to putting on thermal underwear in that you have to take off your clothes, put on your thermals, and put your clothes back on.

Step 1

The first step in winterization, naturally, is to strip the ger almost naked. The ropes are surrounding it are untied and the outer canvas layer and the waterproof covering are removed, exposing the layer of felt inside.

This is my felt-y ger with the blue tarp lying on top.

Step 2

The next step is to add more felt. Felt layers are what keeps insulates the ger. In the summer, there's only one layer, and in the winter there are usually two. You could add more, but I've been told that if you too much felt, if it gets wet, it won't dry out quickly enough and can get moldy. Each layer of felt actually consists of five or so separate pieces: three long rectangular sheets that go around the sides of the ger, and two pieces, shaped sort of like half-moons or wedge fries, that go over the top around the central opening.

Mongolian men hauling pieces of felt

Unless you're a giant you can't reach all the way across the top of the ger to pull the felt pieces up and lay them out neatly. We heaved the top pieces as far up the top as we could. We used a roof-pole to reach over the top, pick up the felt, and spread it out as needed. Then we pulled the felt back down to get it to the proper height.

A roof pole helps to manipulate the felt when it's out of reach on top of the ger.

Spreading out and pulling down a piece of felt on the roof

The men use scissors or knives to puncture a few places in a piece of felt. Then they run string through the holes in different pieces to tie all the felt together and keep it from falling off the ger.

Securing a piece of felt

We also put up a clothesline inside, because it will eventually get too cold to dry clothes outside.

Ger with new felt layers in place

Mongolians are wonderful with spontaneous, DIY responses to certain issues that come up in the middle of certain processes. In the case of my winterization, it turned out that the top felt pieces didn't completely cover my roof. So they made up the difference ... with a quilt made out of old clothes stitched together.

Notice the butt part of some jeans in the quilt draped across the top of my ger door.

Step 3

The last step of the insulation phase is just the reverse of the first step: putting back everything you took off in order to add more felt. We took this opportunity to add more plastic tarp as well, since I had some leaks the last time it rained heavily. At this point one of the other English teachers helped us, and since she is a short little woman, she was small enough to climb on top of the ger to smooth things out around the roof hole, without upsetting the balance of the ger.

Putting the tarp back on

Putting the outer canvas layer back on

Gers have two ropes that encircle the walls of the ger and secured to poles on either side of the door frame. They're another way of keeping the ger together.

Putting the encircling ropes back on. Left: history teacher; Top: English teacher; Right: hashaa dad / social worker

The top of the ger has an opening, which is covered with a square piece of cloth (not pictured). Each corner of the cloth has a rope attached to it. Three of these ropes - in the back and on the left and right sides of the ger - are threaded under and tied around the encircling ropes, then tied to a rock or brick on the bottom of the ger. The weight keeps the flap from blowing away in the wind. I think it also stabilizes the ger itself. Are there any engineers reading this who can explain how this works? The last rope - in the front - is not tied down with a brick. This way you pull it back to open the top of the ger, or pull it forward to close the top of the ger.

Tying a brick to one of the ropes running from the roof flap. In the larger view, notice that this rope is also tied around the ropes that run around the ger in a circle.

Phase II: Sealing the Bottom and Erecting the Ping

The second phase involved sealing the bottom of the ger with dirt and erecting a shed called a пин (ping) in front of the ger. For this phase, my hashaa dad recruited Class 10b students to do the dirty work.

Step 1

In preparation, students took strips of plastic tarp and put them around the base of the ger, tucking them into the lowest rope that runs around my ger.

Putting sections of tarp around the bottom of the ger

Strips of tarp tucked into the ropes

Then the students hauled buckets of dirt (not hard to find) over to my ger and dumped it around the base. When it surrounded my ger from one side of the door to the other, they ramped it up against the base and compacted it with their feet. The floor of the ger is always the coldest part, because cold air seeps in under the canvas and felt. The hard dirt blocks air coming in around most of the bottom. And in the event rain or melting snow dampens the dirt, the plastic protects the ger from moisture.

Hauling dirt

Compacting dirt

Step 2

Then they put up the ping. This was actually the small outdoor kitchen that my hashaa family used during the summer, taken apart and moved across the yard. The area in front of the ger door was cleared and a wooden floor put down. Then three wooden walls were put up, and finally a metal a roof, which also helped hold the whole thing together.

Making grooves for the crossbeams of the floor to fit into

With the floor of the shed in place, the walls can be put up

A little dirt is cleared from the bottom of the ger so the ping can be slid right up against the ger with no gap.

Fitting all the parts together and putting the roof on.

The inside of the ping

Ger with dirt ramps and new ping in place

Phase III: Windows

Phase III consisted of putting glass windows into the opening at the top of the ger. The windows actually rest on some wooden strips nailed to the sides of the beams inside the roof opening. With these in place, the flap can be opened a little bit to let light in, without letting warm air out.

Installing windows

Phase IV: Sealing the Ping

I don't have pictures, but later we ramped dirt around the bottom of the ping too, and put tied a rope from the roof to some heavy, rusty car part, probably for the same reason we tied bricks to the ropes from the ger's roof flap.

Phase V: Insulating the Door

The last addition to my winter ger was insulation for the door itself. This consisted of a sheet of felt, inside a pretty-looking cloth cover decorated with a traditional knot design. Hashaa dad set this up against the front of the door and secured it with some wooden strips nailed into the door through the cover. The sheet is bigger than the door itself, so it also covers the spaces between the door and the door frame.

Now my ger is all set for winter!

In the Temple of the Nose

In the interest of reporting events that are long overdue, in late September I went to Хамарын Хийд (Hamariin Hiid) with the teachers from my school. Hamariid Hiid, which means "The Temple of the Nose," is a religious complex located in the sands of Дорноговь аймаг (Dornogovi aimag), which means "Eastern Gobi (desert) province." Apparently it's a tradition of our school to visit this place. When the subject was broached to me, I was initially hesitant because I needed Peace Corps approval to travel, and I was sick. But the teachers convinced me that everyone else was going, and I would be alone in my village for several days, and starve to death. And then Peace Corps approved the trip because it was "work-related," so I went.

To get there we had to drive to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, then take a 10-hour train ride southeast into the Gobi Desert. Almost all of the traveling occurred at night, which meant that I was poorly rested the whole time. From the train station we hired some vans out to a ger camp. I only slept for a couple of hours before we were awoken and driven to a hilltop where we watched the sun rise.

Hamariin Hiid sunrise

Another part of the temple viewed from a distance from the hilltop

Once the sun rose, the pilgrims began walking around two stone mounds on the hilltop, splashing milk on them.

Then we got into the vans and left. For a second I was deeply disappointed, believing that this was the entire site, and that I had paid all that travel fare and lost all that sleep simply in order to watch the sun rise from a different hill. But we disembarked not at the ger camp, but by a large bronze bell. This bell has many inscriptions on it, in Cyrillic...

...in traditional Mongolian script...

...in non-linguistic imagery...

...and in Tibetan. Because Mongolians follow Lamaist Buddhism, which was imported from Tibet, almost all religious literature is in Tibetan. Tibetan inscriptions are found all over icons and temples, and monastic education - which was the only form of higher education prior to the 20th century - was conducted in Tibetan. I've barely learned Mongolian, and now I want to be able to read the Tibetan inscriptions too!

The First Temple

After the bell we went to an open-air temple further away. It consisted of a large open square framed by some sort of small minaret (ubiquitous on Mongolian temples), with a mysterious-looking building in front, an ovoo in the back, and two large gravel circles in the center.

Approaching the temple

A minaret-like thing that I see at every temple



The temple in front, looking vaguely Masonic or something


I began to question why the most salient feature of a temple named "The Temple of the Nose" was an image of a face with no nose. If I understand the explanation, it may be named not after a literal nose, but after the middle level of a mountain, which is also called a nose, and upon which some of this complex is located.

After this, my camera ran out of batteries and all the remaining pictures are on my phone. So there aren't any more pictures in this post.

In the center of the open space are two large circles made of gravel. After taking the guided tour and performing ritual gestures, and praying at the ovoo, everybody lay down on the gravel to absorb "energy" (энерги). Due to the use of a recent Russian loanword instead of, say a native or Tibetan word, I'm wondering if the "energy absorption" is a modern notion. Then we went back to the ovoo, where people sang a song.

The Caves

Nearby are some small cliffs into which caves have been carved by generations of hermit monks. They exist now as objects of veneration by the Buddhist faithful, who crawl into the small rocky holes to bow and and make offerings. 100 or 200 төгрөг / tögrög ($0.07-0.15) is a standard amount. Atop one of the cliffs is another ovoo, and behind that is a slope back down into another ravine. This passes under a natural stone arch. We all walked down the slope through the arch in a long line holding hands. When you pass through the arch you are supposed to become a new person. At the bottom you're supposed to rub your exposed skin (like, on your back) against the rock surface to absorb energy from it. At that point one of the school cooks saw a snake in a bush, and everybody gathered to watch it. Some of them tried to get it to slither in our direction while the original woman knelt, chanted, and moved her outstretched palms in a circular motion that looked like praying. I was told snakes are good luck and Mongolians love them.

Petrified Trees

Then there was a spot further off where some petrified logs lie on the ground.

The Theatre

In another empty spot was a stone commemorating the establishment of the first theatre company in Mongolia.

The Other Big Temple

There was one more large temple (separate from the first one). This one featured a long walkway up to a walled, roofed, enclosed temple. All of the walls inside were decorated with very intricate bas-reliefs of Buddhist deities. Just as in Japan, the entrance had prayer wheels that you spin as you go in.

The Wishing Mountain

Our final stop was a mountain halfway back to the aimag center. Known as the "Wishing Mountain" (no, I don't remember the Mongolian word, it was explained to me in English), this protuberance of the earth's crust is famous for appeasing the desires of men. Men is the key word, because women are not allowed all the way up the mountain. Men can climb the mountain and when they reach the ovoo at the top, after observing the necessary ceremony, think of a wish and shout off the top of the mountain. So the men in our group, leaving the women (who comprised over 2/3 of our party) behind, followed tradition up the mountain. And proceeded to drink vodka. Even though I only sipped, the sheer number of people offering me vodka was enough to make me tipsy. And being tipsy on the top off the mountain is not good. Fortunately I didn't roll off and die. I did get a fantastic aerial view of the Gobi, which you can't see, because my camera had no batteries.

Conclusion

After that we took the train back to UB and a car back to site.

MWW 6: овоо

Cyrillic	овоо
Transcription	ovoo
IPA	[ɔ.’wɔ:]
Layman’s Pronunciation	aw-WAW
Translation	sacred place, marked by heap of stones
In Genghis Khan’s time it was obuγa.

Every language has certain unique words which have no simple one-word translation but which are of deep cultural importance in the language they belong. Овоо (ovoo) is one of those uniquely Mongolian words. It is what an American observer would describe as "a pile of rocks." But it's not just any pile, it's a particular kind of pile with a particular purpose, and the English phrase doesn't give a clue as to why Mongolian would need a special word for it.

Ovoos are sort of like the stone monoliths you find in Europe - the oldest monuments in Mongolia, dating to well before writing or the introduction of Buddhism, and having no historical builders. They mark a sacred spot, usually on mountains or other elevated ground. Although they can be venerated individually by people, shamans also perform ceremonies by them. In succeeding centuries Buddhism claimed some ovoos for various Boddhisattvas, and in the Soviet era ovoo rituals were banned, but with the fall of socialism, they have reemerged.

My sum has two ovoos that I know of. One, in the northeast part of town, is the place where cars wait to pick up passengers. Then on the hill behind my town is Хайрын овоо, or "the love ovoo," where people pray for success in love.

People may pay their respects at an ovoo before setting out on a journey, or on any other occasion where they feel it necessary. First walk three times around the ovoo in a clockwise direction, perhaps repeating a formula. Then put another stone (or three stones) on the ovoo. It's also good to make an offering by pouring milk or alcohol on it or tying a хадаг to it. Some people put money on them, but according to O. Purev in Mongolian Shamanism, this is not a traditional custom.

An ovoo along the road between Darhan and Sühbaatar

The Love Ovoo in my town

IST

So, the TEFL volunteers are passing through the city and out to some swanky resort for a few days of In-Service Training. This should afford me many opportunities to shop and use the internet!