Naadam

This past weekend was a holiday here in Mongolia. The big summer event is Naadam, which is celebrated with the three manly sports -- archery, horse racing, and wrestling. The big celebration is in UB, but it’s celebrated all over the country on different days and in different ways. My town’s celebration isn’t until October, which I believe is because my town is full of farmers. During the summer they’re incredibly busy with harvesting. So they wait until after the work is done to party.

Manly men
I went to Darkhan’s stadium to watch their games. We missed the archery, but we saw plenty of wrestling. Mongolian wrestling is pretty tame. Especially since you expect to see some WWF action when you see the traditional outfit. They wear a colorful half-shirt (just sleeves and a back), blue underwear and fancy boots. We’ve been told that the shirts used to have fronts, but one year a woman pretended she was a man, entered the competition and won. Women aren’t allowed to wrestle, so since then, they don’t cover their chests. Aside from the outfits, the wrestlers do a little eagle dance before and after each match. Some matches seem pretty uneventful. The object is to get the other guy to touch a knee or elbow to the ground. Most of the match is the two guys bent at the waist with their arms around each other, waiting for someone to make a move, hoping that move is the wrong one. The amateur matches are a bit more exciting. There are no weight classes, so there is often a larger guy with a smaller guy. The match often ends quickly with the larger guy picking the smaller guy up by his panties and throwing him to the ground.

No Janet here
My family watched UB’s Naadam celebration on TV. It felt a lot like the Super Bowl, with advertisements and all. There were pop stars singing in between events. Then a parade of trucks covered in banners of coffee brands and cell phone companies filled the TV screen for a couple minutes. The most entertaining part was when two couples began waltzing in the middle of the field. It was very elegant ... and then I noticed that the rest of the field was full of hip-hop dancers performing their own choreography to the ballroom music. I was a little thrown off, but it really grew on me. I think maybe 50 cent should look into that idea for his next video. I unfortunately didn’t get to watch too much of UB’s celebration, because I received a text message saying that my host father and sister were waiting in the town square for me ...

Confusion
This was one of many communication breakdowns that I’ve experienced. The day before, one of my sitemates mentioned that her host sister was taking us to the hoodo (countryside) to watch a horse race. I asked my host family whether they knew anything about this outing. They did not. But they had spent the past two days chopping up a goat they had slaughtered. I asked what this was for, and they said the father was going out with friends from work. No mention of anyone else joining him. The next morning, my sitemate sent me a text saying she was leaving now for the hoodo, could I let the others know. Well, since I had spent the entire day before in the sun, and since I wasn’t ready to go, I decided I would stay indoors and watch TV with my host mom. So when I received the message about 45 minutes later, all I could do was shake my head. I think what happened is that my host father hadn’t planned on inviting me, but when he realized there were other Americans going, he thought he should invite his American.

Ohio represents
We took a meaker out to a mountain, which all the men climbed to worship and ask for rain. The women, and the American men, waited for about an hour in the blazing sun. After the worship, we went to the river, swam, ate meat, dried milk curds, cookies and, yes, I finally drank the airag (fermented mare’s milk). Not the best drink I’ve ever had. Luckily, you’re just supposed to sip it and pass it. We also had our own, personal wrestling competition. And since they were one Mongolian wrestler short, my sitemate Nick (from Dayton) was asked to step in. He didn’t wear the fancy panties, but he gave it a good run. He lost to the second-place finalist.