What I'm Doing in Mongolia Work-wise

A lot of people have asked, “what exactly are you doing in Mongolia?”

In one sentence: I am conducting an international development consult for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office regarding rates of return in the Mongolian Livestock Value Chain survey embedded in a larger Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats (SWOT) analysis of the industry as part of my master’s degree.

This description causes many to ask, “OK, what exactly are you doing in Mongolia?”

“Drinking way too much milk tea and airag.”

As part of my Master’s in Development Practice, I am required to do an international development consult for an outside organization. Originally, I was supposed to go back to Thailand to work on a climate change project.  Funding fell through.  So that I did not get screwed, Professor Roland-Holst (who we affectionately refer to as DWRH) connected me with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Office (FAO). They wanted to do an analysis of rates of return to middle men in the Mongolian Livestock Industry, but weren’t really sure about how to go about it, and don’t really specialize in this type of work. DWRH had sub-contracted Berkeley grad students to do this kind of work before in South East Asia using value chain surveys.

DWRH in Ulaanbaatar

So, I was handed a terms of reference to a project about ducks and bird flu, and told to write some kind of work agreement for myself. Never having written my own job description before, and not knowing what a value chain was until I looked it up on Wikipedia, I pretty much just ran the words “Thailand” and “chicken” through find-and-replace so that the document read “Mongolia” and “livestock.”  I added a section on SWOT to give myself another tangible deliverable in case the quantitative survey failed miserably. According to DWRH, FAO liked this, and my project was a go.

I ended up in Ulaanbaatar on June 14 with minimal understanding of both livestock systems, and Mongolia. I mean, I could find Mongolia on a map, and vaguely remembered some stuff from 7^th grade history about Genghis Kahn (which I now know is better pronounced as Chinngis). Thankfully, Zilbo pointed me to this classic of livestock economics: Binswanger, Hans P. and John McIntire. 1987. "Behavioral and Material Determinants of Production Relations in Land-abundant Tropical Agriculture." 

My overall plan has been to start with the qualitative and move to the quantitative. Many in academia seem to view these tools as somehow at odds with each other, but really they serve complimentary functions. Qualitative methods yield understanding, and structure to the study of a problem. They produce concepts of how things work, and what is important. Quantitative methods measure effects, and, when well done, provide evidence for or against hypotheses generated by qualitative methods. 

Effectively, this meant that I spent my first week doing qualitative, unstructured interviews with NGOs in UB. From there, I flew out to Khovd to start talking to rural people, keeping my interviews free form and informal. That began to give me an understanding of the industry. From there, I have developed a survey tool (using Open Data Tool Kit), for the purpose of conducting quantitative surveys, which I have been doing since Ulliastai. It’s a tad unfortunate that I am both designing and implementing the survey, because I keep changing the questions in an effort to improve the survey, but so it goes.

That’s pretty much where I am now.  Going to where different actors on the value chain and having an interpreter ask questions.  And drinking lots of milk tea and airag on the way.

Going in with minimal understanding of both has actually been an advantage. All my theories have been generated by work I’ve done, not by preconceived notions developed in a classroom. And I’ve been too naïve to avoid 30 hour bus rides, which has led to better data.

This has led to an understanding of the Mongolian livestock industry, which probably makes up at least 40 percent of the country’s employment when you combine herders, transportation and processors, that sees choices of actors as more rational in their context, and products more interdependent than one would think as an outsider.

The Mongolian livestock industry does face internal weaknesses, and many outside threats. And studying the value chain has led to an interesting understanding of the industry here in Mongolia.  I’ll discuss my findings in later posts.

Naadam Horse Racing

Until then, travel safe everybody.

The Ironies of Mongolian BBQ

Back in UB, after a long trip to Western Mongolia (which I will post about at some point) I saw a Mongolian BBQ place.  Or perhaps better to say, THE Mongolian BBQ place in Mongolia.  As my long sojourn had demonstrated- there is no such thing as Mongolian BBQ out in the countryside. The only BBQ place in UB is on the corner of "what passes for souvenirs in Mongolia" street, and "high end foreign catering coffeeshops set in Khrushchev era buildings" avenue.

It's apparently the first American chain restaurant to open in Mongolia. Hurray the ironies of globalization.

Before I came here, everyone told me how awful the food was.  But that really isn't accurate.  It's not bad, it's boring.  It's always some variation of meat and noodle, or milk. And it lacks anything resembling taste.

Here's some real Mongolian food for you:

Buuz and Khuushuur 

Sometimes you get lucky and get some ketchup.

Buuz are dumplings made of white flour noddles stuffed with fatty mutton and then steamed.  Khuushuur is essentially the same thing but pounded flat and deep fried. Definitely of Chinese origin.

Pretty rich food to eat during the summer, but you could see where it would do the trick when it's negative 30 out.

 Aarul

Aarul is dried milk curds.  Basically they dry the curds of the milk on the roof of their ger. 

Sun soakin' bulges in the shade

It's hard as a jaw breaker. You have to gnaw off bits of the block in order to get any of it in your mouth.  Then you are rewarded with a sour milk flavored jolly rancher.

But it lasts forever.  I interviewed a herder that made enough aarul to sell it. He would make it all year long, and then, once in the winter, a guy in a truck would buy all of his product at once.  And the stuff didn't go bad.

The Kazakh version of aarul.  It's deep fried.

Tsuvain

I wonder who thought, "You know what these starchy noodles need? More starch!"

Tsuvain is another typical Mongolian noodle dish that probably originates in China.  This is typically a mix of noodles, potatoes and some meat. Strangely, the potatoes and noodles kind of work together.

When I visited the Kazakhs, they served me tsuvain with horse. It was surprisingly good.

Milk Tea (Suutei tsai)

Bane of my culinary life

Everytime you enter a ger, this awaits you : milk tea.  It's a major embarrassment not to have any to serve to your guests, and it is a big insult to refuse it.

It's made by boiling some water and adding an equal part of whole milk, a table spoon of salt, and a tiny bit of cheap green tea. Since my work takes me to a lot of gers, I find milk tea to be a major source of my calories.  Also, if my next cup I had to drink didn't come to me until after the sun had gone supernova, it would be too soon.

So my readers, appreciate all the pizza, Thai food, and burritos you've got.  Because whatever you're eating, it's probably more exciting than Mongolian food.  As for me, I'm looking forward to some Mongolian BBQ when I get home.