Countryside trip Part 2

So I stayed for  few days and pretended to be a herder and help with the baby animals. (and by helping, I really mean taking countless selfies with baby goats). I had went hoping to see an animal being born, but it was a little late in the birthing season, and most had already been born already.

The kids-

There were I think around 300 new baby goats born this year.  I forgot the actual number they told me, all I know is that there were plenty of them jumping around and yelling out all cute like for the momma goats.  Momma goats are not so great at looking after their kids, so in the morning, when the goats go out, the kids get herded separately so as to not get lost.  Each morning, we took the herds out too the well, and then separated them there.  I would roughly estimate the well to be about a mile from the house.  Well, one morning, we were separating them, and a group of kids got scared and took off running towards the house.  I was the closest to them, so I took off running after them.  Let's just say that they were fast, and I was not.

 Once we all reached the house, the kids calmed down from their frenzy, and I got them running back in the correct direction towards the well.  They were still a little freaked, and were running fast.  About halfway through our running journey, they saw the herd of momma goats going further into the countryside to graze.  The kids then proceeded to run EVEN FASTER towards them.  In a herders perspective, this was a horrible thing...so I took off sprinting to catch them and change their direction, but I was not fast enough.  FC's dad eventually saw what was happening, and raced over with his motorcycle before the two groups combined.  The group of kids went now in the correct direction towards the well, and the momma goats walked out of sight for the day.  As FC's parents had a hearty chuckle, I smiled in shamed, just glad that I was done running.

* Side note, when I got back to BX and told this story to FC, she did not stop laughing for 12 minutes...not just a chuckle laugh either, a literal rolling on the floor laugh.

Goats in the house.

I was outside with Enkhjin and her sister tending to the animals.  When we had finished our task, we went back inside for some warm milk tea.  First to enter the house was Chimee, then me...assuming that Enkhjin was right behind me, I left the door open for her.  She however, did not enter right behind me.  As I sat inside sipping some milk tea, FC's Mom went out to get something from the other room.  What she soon discovered, though, were about 10 goats that had come into the house! Oops.

the kids climb on everything

my favorite lamb...all black with a bit of a white tail.

The well

Animals drink alot of water.  So much of the time was spent down by the well.  If you are wondering what happens if you accidentally drop the stick down the well....well, here are some photos.  

The birth

Where's Enkhjin?  1 point for identifying the goat in labor,
 2 points for finding Enkhjin.

On the last day that I was in the countryside, I was lucky enough to see a birth. As I walked out of the house, I heard the poor goat screaming in pain.  The sheep and goats had to stay in the corral until they were milked a little, So this poor goat in labor was being tramped upon and squished by the others.

There were some real jerk goats who would come up to her and start head butting the soon to be mom.  I like to think that they were other mother goats trying to give advice to the preggo goat, and with their head butts were trying to say encouraging things, like 'dont lay down, get up and walk honey!'  'you can do it!' or 'better out than in!'  but in reality, I think they were just being jerks.

After about an hour, FC's dad, just stuck his hand in, and pulled that kid right out.  I was expecting it to be messy process, but turns out, it was way more messy than I thought.

I thought the goat would lick the grossness off the kid, but that never happened.  Instead, Enkhjin wiped it all off with her hand and smeared it on the momma goat to make her remember the smell of her kid.  Then she rubbed dirt all over the kid to fully clean him off.  

SO FLUFFY.

Overall, it was a great trip, and I had a lot of fun.  Here are some things that I learned:

1.       Goats don’t look after their babies very well, which is why the kids don’t get to go out with their mothers to graze.  Sheep look after their babies quite well, which is why lambs can go out and graze with their mothers.  In other words, don’t pick up a lamb and assume that the mother will not head butt you and knock you over.

2.  If you lay anything on the ground, goats will eat it. 

3. If you have a fake knit flower on your hat, goats will eat it.

4.   If you are wearing clothes, goats will try to eat those too.

5.  Baby goats jump…a lot.

6.  Stars in the countryside, are limitless.

Countryside trip. Part one: getting there.

It's 'spring' here now.  I really cant believe it.  Mostly because it just keeps snowing...

But with spring, comes NEW BABY ANIMALS.  lambs, kids, calves...it's exciting.  It is interesting to actually see a reason for spring break instead of just a break from school.  Those children have to go help their parents with all of these babies being born!

So, on the first chance I got, I went to the countryside to visit Firecracker's family, and pretend to be a herder...  FC still had to work, so I went with her young niece to fully test my mongolian skills.

Her parents live in the middle of nowhere, about 6 hours away from where we live, in the distance from a small village call buutsagaan.  When we went to the market to find a car, there was only a small car going.  The driver said that they were only taking one other small child, and that taking me would be no problem.    FC, however, called his bluff, and convinced him to let me have the front passenger seat.  We all agreed, and he said that he would be by to pick me up about 3 hours later.  A suprising 20 minutes later, I was in the car with Enkhjin (FC's niece) and the drivers adult friend.  The first stop was to pick up the "1 small child."  Turns out 1 small child in Mongolian really means 6 medium sized children and a teenager.  So total for the tiny sedan was 3 adults, 2 teenagers, and 6 children.  I sat so comfortably in that passenger seat as everyone else, quite literally, crammed into the back.

So we set out on our journey driving on the open field (there are no roads in the countryside) towards our destination.  We were driving pretty fast, so I was hoping it would be on the 'faster than 6 hours' side.  About 2 hours in however, we hit a ditch going a little too fast, and we broke the front axel.  Now what this means is that we were stuck, in the middle of vast unpopulated mongolia- about 2 hours away from the next small village, with no cell phone reception in the cold ass weather.

So here is a how to, on fixing an axel.

step 1. light a cigarette

step 2.  assess the damage

step 3. crawl under the car, and try fixing it by hitting it with a nearby rock.

step 4.  get back in, turn the car on, and see if the car can move.

step 5. repeat step 3 and 4, roughly 4 times.

step 6.  use the car jack, cut out a seat belt, remove the tire and tie the axel up.

step 7. start the car up, see that it works, and pile all the kids back in the backseat while the foreigner relaxes comfortably in the front.

so this fix to our situation only would only work if we drove going 1 mile per hour, stopping every 5 minutes to repeat the process.  Needlessly to say, we were well past the time we were supposed to arrive at our destination, and we wereonly about halfway there.  we eventually had to cut out another seat belt after hitting another ditch.  However that second seat belt only lasted us until dusk, and about a mile from a small village.  The driver just went ahead and told us all to walk to the village at dusk aka wolf time (aka actually a pretty scary time) while he figured out the  situation.  The kids darted out all scattered like towards the village, and my motherly instincts were yelling after them to stay in a group...but they seemed quite intent on their scatter pattern...so what i realized is that there is probably a good reason that I am not a mother yet.

DISCLAIMER: no one was eaten by a wolf

Since we were close enough to the village, that there was someone that drove by us and picked up all these random kids running.  The kids were excited to tell him of our car situation, and he asked if we knew anyone in this small village.  Once he figured out we didnt, he just kind of let us sit in his car for a while.  Since we were at a village, we had cell reception, and I called FC to let her know where we were.  She called actually a former teacher from my school who now lives in this village, who invited me and Enkhjin over and fed us.

Naraa teacher and her family

They eventually got the car to the village, and fixed it up in the dark with a welding tool, in about an hours time.  The now fixed car picked us up, and once again we were on our way at a faster speed.  Now however, the drivers friend took the front, leaving me snuggling with the kids in the back.  They all fell asleep on me.  While I didn't fall asleep, my legs surely did.

We arrived in the middle of the night to our destination.  I was very surprised that the driver just found the correct house, in the huge landscape, without actually any directions from me or Enkhjin.
We stumbled wearily out of the car, and stood tiresome under a blanket of the brightest stars and waited for FC's mom to answer the door.