Emotions

There are these storms that come sweeping along all of a sudden. The day will be clear and bright, and then this strong wind whips along, and the weather shifts. The rain comes, and is followed by another wind, and the storm is passed. When I first arrived I would be enjoying the day, the wind would come, and I’d just watch as people burst into action bringing in things from outside and securing the gers. I quickly learned to also leap into action when that wind came.

The people here seem to experience emotion in the same way as the storms. Someone will get upset, and there is a big fight. There is yelling, tears, sometimes fists, and then it passes. Once it is gone, it really seems to be gone. The people around the drama react with open amusement at the display, and for the most part don’t get involved. Bystanders may say, “There, there. Calm down.” Otherwise, they don’t intervene. After the storm has passed, they don’t go to therapy or sit and discuss their feelings. They don’t have a big “making up” drama. They just go back to normal. I have looked for signs of grudges or lingering animosity and can’t see it. One minute there could be screaming, tears, running out of the ger and slamming the door, and 20 minutes later, the two people who had the fight are sitting next to each other watching TV. If the subject of the fight comes up later, even the people who were fighting think it was funny.

One day was the day of conflicts. People in my family weren’t getting along. Three altercations in my host family ended in tears. I left to go for a walk, and from a distance I saw a man on a horse driving a woman and girl along with a whip. He wasn’t seriously hurting them, but there was a lot of crying and screaming. The relative of Tsigmee’s I was with just laughed and shook her head. I couldn’t tell if this was a frequent thing…but the non-interference policy seemed to stand firm. I saw horses quarreling, squealing and kicking each other with full force. I was washing my clothes near the river and this puppy that lives with the grandparents was nipping at me and got a mouthful of arm in its puppy teeth. I reacted by hitting it with my shoe hard enough to make it yelp. I immediately felt awful, and even though it is right in line with what any of my host family would have done as acceptable behavior, I kept thinking, “who was that? I don’t hit puppies! This is not a cultural norm I can absorb.” The teenage boys were watching and laughed. I apologized to the puppy (in Mongolian of course, as the dog doesn’t understand English), which just made them laugh harder. In this case, I laughed too. It was kind of absurd.

Affection between friends is the most visible form of physical expression. Friends of the same gender can hang on each other, walk arm in arm, wrestle, even hold hands. It is not any kind of sexual thing, and does not mean the people are gay. (This norm has been true across Asia.) Adults also show physical affection with small children. They are carried and cuddled and comforted. My biggest surprise of the trip so far was when I was sitting in a ger with 14 people squeezed in, and the 65-year-old grandmother whipped out her breast for a 3-year-old kid to suckle. I later learned it is quite common for female relations to offer comfort this way to nursing kids, and that she was not actually offering milk. Children here are taken care of, but they are not coddled. If a child is crying, adults will come to check, but as long as the child isn’t in any danger, they let the child cry. It is a tough place to live and kids are expected to be more independent earlier than in the West.

There is much less contact between members of the opposite sex. Even between Enhee and Tsigmee, there is just an occasional touch or they will walk or stand very close. They can curl up together to sleep, but otherwise there is almost no public physical contact. From what I have seen and figured out from asking, when married people need privacy for intimacy and they are in a ger full of family members, they have to wait until everyone is asleep. If someone in the ger isn’t asleep, they would pretend to be. A couple of times I saw someone in tears and taking a moment to themselves in a ger full of people. They turned away, and everyone else turned a little away from them, and because a “wall” was observed, it essentially was there until that person re-engaged and the “wall” disappeared.

Living without physical walls was a challenge for me. People just come in to your ger at any time. I could be sleeping, dressing, crying (only once)…I got better at being ready for the door to open without it being a source of anxiety. I dressed turned away from the door. I took walks when I needed to be alone (though often ended up with a companion). I learned to create a space in my mind in lieu of physical space, while understanding that was still a Western need to create the space at all. I won’t be here long enough to lose the need for that space to be there. I wonder what that is like?