Finally........An Update!

Alright, try not to hate me, it has been a month and a half. However, when I am done with my update I hope you can be understanding. First, we made it to Renchinlhumbe soum in northern Mongolia safe and sound. Here is a map of where we were in Northern Huvsgul. If you want more information on where this is in relations to other places in Mongolia search out lake Huvsgul on google.

When you see where it is located you will not be surprised to find that it was still snowing sporadically there after we arrived on May22nd. Wow, that lead to some miserable nights even if we were staying in a ger.

The valley though was beautiful, ringed as it is by tall mountains. I can see why BioRegions, the NGO from Montana State University I was working with, was so dedicated to preserving their natural beauty and resources.

The work began right away. There were interviews at the hospital, the government center, the school and the Mongolian local coordinater of BioRegions. Fortunately, I had attained permission to work from the Ministry of Health and was ably assisted from the state capitol of Murun by the state health director. Also, the physician I had brought along to assist with my surveys was very quickly able to build relationships with the local people. A few days after we arrived we drove about 4 hours out to visit a remote mobile ger hospital they have developed. We got to see the rural health in action as well as pilot our survey.

The work was turning out to be challenging, however, as technical support for the development of our work was unavailable. It took us two weeks to find a printer that would work, there is no electricity and an unreliable supply of petrol to operate the many personal generators that are around, only one central place to make phone calls, so of course no internet, and the nearest place we could go to to find these necessities was a twelve hour jeep ride away ($175 round trip). We had to improvise as best we could. A description of the work we carried out and our results will follow. Stay tuned...