16 août 2006
Mongolie...
Je vous embête encore une fois avec la Mongolie, d'abord parce que je trouve ça marrant de parler de la Mongolie alors que je suis sensé parler de la Colombie, et puis parce Togtoh a reçu un mail d'une amie chinoise qu'il avait rencontrée en Equateur, et qui lui raconte son voyage en Mongolie. J'ai été invité à le lire et il est vachement interessant, enfin on apprend quelques trucs sur la Mongolie, pour ceux que ça intéresse... Parcontre faut être motivé, c'est écrit en anglais par un esprit chinois...
Subject: Trip to
Mongolia
July ' 05 I joined the first HK Chinese group
ever to trek the Altai
Nuruu,in the Western Province of
Bayan-Olgii , Mongolia .
Altai is Mongolia's highest mountain
range, interposed between Mongolia ,
Russia and China .
We were met in Ulaan Baatar ( Red Hero ) by the local Canat Tour
guide, Arkhangar ( Arki for short ), a young guy who teaches
English in an elementary school 6 months of the year, and
moonlights in the short summer months as a tour guide .
While the rest of Mongolia is dominated by the Khalkh Mongols, 90% of
the population in Bayan-Olgii are Kazakh Muslims. Physically very
different from the Mongols, they generally have fair skin,
high nose, and brown hair and eye . The word Kazakh means "free
warrior" or "steppe roamer", befitting name as
their nomadic ancestors had climbed the Nuruu to settle in Mongolia a century ago from Kazsakhtan and the Xinjiang Province
of China . I joked with Arki that if his ancestors had stayed put
in Xinjiang 2 generations
ago he'd be Chinese today !
My first impression of Olgii is of an archetypal ghost town out of an
old Western movie, remote, wind swept, desolate . Olgii-Kazakh culture and language is very different from Mongolian,
and in the nineties when Kazsakhtan broke away from the Soviet
Union they wanted to increase the proportion of Kazakh
population to the Russians', so they offered Mongolian-Kazakh
free passport and state welfare, resulting in a
mass exudus which
near half emptied Bayan-Olgii .These past few years the emigration rush's slowed down a bit, and some of the people who left
earlier had returned, realising the grass' not always
greener the other side of the fence.
Arki lived in
Kazsakhtan for 9 years, taken advantage of the free college education for Kazakh of all origins, but opted to return because he
had great faith in the new economic reform, a faith surprisingly
prevalent in
all the younger Mongolians I talked to. Kazsakhtan is heavily Russianized and Arki speaks Russian better
than English , but nonetheless scornful about the Russians . He
told me in the last World War the Russians actually won the war
on the back of the Kazakh, but neglected to mention to the
world they put all the dark haired Kazakh to the front-line
as canon fodders, and kept the blue-eyed blonde Russians to the
back ; the Kazakh lost more than half of their male population as a result .
Canat Tour is part of the Blue Wolf Expeditions .
The Blue Wolf is much revered in Mongolia for a reason , as I
found out. The Mongolians believe they were descendants of a
union between a Blue Wolf and a fallow Deer. The only
surviving account of this ancestral myth ," The Secret
History of The Mongols" dated from 1200 , is in the form of a Chinese transcription by Yuan Ch'ao Pi Shin, at present kept in
Beijing .
The deep symbolism inherent in the union of the
predator and prey goes some way in explaining the "Mongol
Phenomena" of how a small people suceeded in building the
largest empire in all of human history . To the uninitiated this
is a union between the masculine attributes : strength, courage
and outgoing power, and feminine attributes : softness, sensitivity and intuition, represented by the wolf and the deer respectively . But the wolf does not come from the steppe, its
true home is the dark, cold Northern forest where Mongols have
their principal origins and is the source of their primodial
spiritual forces .In Siberian and inner Asian Shamanistic belief,
the wolf is an intrinsically feminine animal sharing many
qualities with the deer .The wolf is immensely sensitive, furtive, perceptive and shy. For all its physical prowess it hunts by using cleverness and stratagem ; it has great powers of discrimination , unfailing intuition to sense any weakness in its prey, and
unbelievable ability to endure pain and adapt to any circumstance
. On the other hand it is refined with a high degree of
togetherness, compassion and solidarity in its social behavior. The intrinsic symbolic meaning of the wolf can only be
awesome excellence.
The deer is of no less importance than
the wolf and stands for the principles of Mother Earth, without
which no fertilization, birth and growth of new things can
take place. This belief stems from the second main Mongol tribe , the pastoral nomads of the grassland , and corresponds to
the Southern, Turkic steppe element of aggressive masculine
energies and principles . The offspring of the wolf and the
deer is thus indicative of a strong predisposition towards high
endeavor and great achievement .
The Mongol mythology
illustrates the complexity of the relations of the Universe and
how their meanings are much greater than what is visible on the surface , and demonstrates an astonishing wisdom and knowledge of
the guiding principles behind the Spiritual Universe itself . The Mongols are certainly not the crude barbaric tribesmen most
people think they are !
The treking started from the
bottom of the Altai , at the base camp of Tavan Bogd Peaks,
where the glaciers begin . On the first day of the treking Maggie
sprained her ankle . We were dismayed to find the group
leader had left the First Aid box in Ulaan Baatar as there's a
restriction on the weight one can carry on the small domestic plane , over-weight lugguge are fined one US dollar per Kg ; yet he
saw it fit to bring aboard tins of fishes and baked beans, even
his personal folding chair , for which we all had to pitch in to
pay the fine ! So there we were, 16 people in the middle of
nowhere without so much as a crepe bandage !
Lucky for
Maggie we met a group of New Zealand trekers. One of whom , a friendly red head, Lydia, offered to tape and bandage her ankle as
she 's a trained physiotherapist and has a good supply of
bandages . This charming unassuming lady turned out to be the
first woman to summit Everest without oxygen and she's in the
Guniness Book of records ! ( Check out her website :
http://www.brassmonkeybivouac.com/
)
We swapped treking itineraries and it seemed the New Zealanders
knew more about our schedule than our leaders. The first day kind
of set the tone for the rest of the journey.
Maggie
could hardly walk so a horse was arranged for her , which meant Arki, our only guide , had to stay with her to lead the horse. In
all the days of treking there was no briefing and no
debriefing from our leader and co-leader ; 16 people wandering
all over the mountain at different paces, none of us had any idea
where we were going . There was a set of walkie-talkie and a
small solar pad to recharge the battery, except it was used to
recharge the leader's camera instead, so the walkie-talkie was dead and useless after the first day .
The flatness of
the steppe is an illusion, the landscape is in fact widely undulating, and you can walk in any direction for 3 minutes and be
totally hidden from view from everyone else . When we compared
notes later we found a lot of us had experienced being
temporarily lost in the wild , and there were several occasions
when some female of the species among us werestricken with
extreme panic !
The stronger trekers raced ahead but often
picked the wrong route and had to double back , but
occasionally this led to more dangerous situations. There was an incident when 4-5 of them climbed up a pass and ended half-way
on the face of a slope completely covered with small loose
rocks which cascaded
and rained down onto the people below.
Terrified, they scrambled madly to climb higher still,
hoping they would miraculously find a path that's not there .
The leader who was at the bottom of the hill with the rest of us was
duly concerned , as he had personal experience of a treker
sustaining head injury and lapsed into a coma in a similar
situation in another trip he organised, but all the
instructions he shouted up to them was, bless his heart : " Be careful ! I'm so worried about you lot !" when he could have
taken charge and ordered the people on the higher position to
keep still, as the 5 people were on different levels, let
the people lower down move sideways and out of the way onto
the correct path, before moving out the people on higher ground, level by level until all of them's safely off the slope .
Treking was hard on account of the non-existent treks, the grounds
were boggy, covered with tufts of grass and over-run with water :
you think you're stepping on solid ground and might suddenly find
yourself calf deep in water ! At times the slopes were too steep
even for the horse , and all the girls AHhhh...ed with clasped
hands when Fung Sir spread his broad shoulders and carried Maggie
up on his back . I had big problem with the springy uneven
grounds and slopes and developed right hip pain fairly early on ; as the days went on bilateral Achilles Tendonitis were added to
my injury score, and by the end of the trip I'd managed to lose
the nail on my left 4th toe All these serve to make me think
maybe my treking days are
numbered .
We were way off the
scheduled treking time of 5-6 hours a day, some days we were
on the road 10-12 hours and it had taken its toll on some of the girls. After a particularly gruelling long day we were told by
the leaders the group'd go to a pass near-by the next morning ,
but as there's nothing much there, those in need of more
rest could wait in the camp . Those of us who stayed back found
out later the " nothing much there " were petroglyphs dating back thousands of years and was in fact one of the high lights
of the
tour ! To do the leaders justice it's propable even
they didn't know what was in store, they were as much at sea as
the rest of us most of the time !
The weather up on the
mountain was unpredictable and treacherous, so sunny and hot
one minute you sweat even in a short- sleeved T-shirt, then suddenly the clouds and the wind take over and it's winter again
. We were caught in a gale storm minutes after we set up
camp one day, it was so bad it took the
whole weight and
strength of me and my tent-buddy just to stop our tent from being blown away, but 20 minutes later it was all over, the sun came
out and we were rewarded with the most spectacular and
perfect double rainbow we'd ever seen .
In the short
summer the glaciers melt and life returns to the land. The lower
we went the more lush the grazingland , and the steppe was carpeted with billions of flowers of all colours, beautiful beyond belief . Unfortunately the mosquitoes were also beyond belief ! Bigger than my
palm and with proboscis tough enough to pierce through clothing ,
they too came in the billions and made pin-cushions of all of us
! Tragically none of us came prepared, not having been told of
the menace. I found out the mosquitoes normally feed on the yaks
and horses, so 16 soft city-dwellers must have been a real treat
for them . I was sad to note the warm house effect has receded
the glaciers, and it is possible in less than 100 years
Mongolia
would be no more as it would have lost totally its only source of water.
I loved Kazakh food but the meat could be a little
chewy . Our lunch boxes were generally made up of 1/3 meat, 1/3
vegetable and 1/3 carbohydrate, but the meat's a bit
difficult to negotiate in the middle of the day, so me and a
couple of girls decided we want our lunch boxes to be of less meat
and more vegetable, which means we wanted it half proportion made
up of vegetable and the other half of meat and carb . I was
instantly alarmed when the co-leader turned and told Arki
the 3 of us wanted half-portion of lunch ! Unlike some
females who put themselves on permanent diet , I need my full portion of food, so I accosted Arki immediately and put him right.
The co-leader was furious and accused me of being disrespectful
to her for correcting her orders, and I was told I'd not be
welcome to join any of their future tours. So I've been banned
from the most inept tour company ever to come out of HK because
the co-leader, a HKU graduate, mixed up the English words
"proportion" and "portion". Hallelujah !
Wildlife flourishes in Mongolia despite an extreme climate . Keith ,
a HK building contractor hired to renovate a Mormon church in
Ulaan Baatar , swore he saw an ibex on top of a far mountain.
Though it is possible to
sight gazelle, antelope, wolf, lynx,
reindeer, elk , fox, ermine, hare, etc, which are all native
to the area, all that I ever saw were marmot holes, and that's only because I nearly twisted my ankle stepping into one . I
was surprised to know marmots are vegetarians, and Arki, a
confirmed meat- eater like the rest of the Mongolians, told
me a joke . He said a very famous Mongolian author was on a book
tour in New York and was pestered by a very loud American woman,
who tried to convert him to vegetarianism . The great man looked
the woman in the eye and said " Madam, cows eat grass, we eat cows, we're further up than you in the food chain !" and
effectively shut the cow up. One wonders what Arki really thinks
of the few vegetarians in our group, all incidentally frustrated,
limited, middle aged women ?
Zud is a particularly Mongolian
phenomenon - a long dry summer followed by extremely cold winter
.1999/2000 was a really bad year for Zud and 3 million animals were lost , about 10% of the herds , leaving the people
destitute and the country's agricultural sector in a state of
collapse . Many nomads had no choice but to pick up their gers,
move into town, set up tents where-ever they could find a bit of
land , and sunk into urban squalor . There were a lot of talks
about the end of the traditional nomadic way of life . I was
happy to see a few years on there're signs of recovery . The gers we passed on the trek were well stocked, most families would have a TV
set, a satellai disc, solar panel and a jeep or motor bike, which
is rapidly replacing the trusted horse as a form of transport. It
was just after the lambing season and the baby lambs and foals
ran amok all over the steppe . This is all good , because as one
nomad commented : " We don't make good city dwellers, we're
used to the steppe - out here your nearest neighbour is miles away. But put us close together, put walls around us and we
start to go crazy. We drink, beat the wife, throw the rubbish
into the neighbour's yard, it's terrible ." Let's pray that
never happens again .
Towards the end of the trek we camped
by an army out-post at the border between Mongolia and China. We
were cautioned not to take pictures , unfortunately this was
precisely the bait to excite the sneaky among us . There was some
confusion as to the legitimacy of our camping site , and Arki was summoned to the army headquarters to soothe the officials with
yet more US dollars, only to find on return the leaders were
barbecuing some fishes they caught in a river near-by , totally
ignoring the rule that one needed a permit to fish in
Mongolia !
Mongolia's completely landlocked and Arki's never
seen the sea in his life. An American tourist he befriended
sent him a small bottle of sea water from New York, and he
gathered his whole family around and dipped their finger in the sea water to taste it. I told him I could sent him sea water from
HK but I wouldn't recommend anybody tasting it ! Come to
think of it it probably wasn't such a good idea to taste water
from the Hudson Bay either.
Back in Olgii we attended the
Nadaam Festival which is held every year on the National Day (
11-13 July ) and has its origin in the ancient Ovoo-worship
Festival . During the 3 days there're horse riding, wrestling
and
archery competitions all over town ; everybody put on their Sunday best and hang out in the bazaars chocked-full of Russian and
Chinese imports, and generally have a good time .
The boss of the Canat Tour invited Kerepwih Inurcynbi , a well known
local singer/composer to give us an evening of Kazakh songs and
dance . I was mildly surprised to find him in the restaurant
kitchen the next day preparing the meat , and totally startled
when his daughter, who's studying German in the Ulaan Baatar
University, told me he's in fact the chief O&G doctor in the
regional hospital in town and is still in practice ! A lot of the people we met there under the age of 30 were delievered by him.
The move from socialism to free market economy and the
withdrawal of Soviet cash has dealt a hard blow on the
middle class, and multiple-jobs seem to be the order of the day.
Arki, the teacher and tour guide, had also opened a small shop by the aimag museum selling hand-embroidered ger wall hangings (
tush ) and bags, with the typical Kazakh stylised animal and
flower motifs, as images are banned by the Muslim faith .
I visited a small village hospital and was appalled by the primitive facilities . Although the town hospitals probably provide better care
the advise we gathered from most guide books was in case of
illness it's prudent to get in a plane and fly to Beijing
for treatment, which is just an hour away from Ulaan Baatar .Joyce and I said goodbye to the rest of the group , picked up Delna
at Ulaan Baatar and started the second half of our journey,
heading towards the Gobi Desert. The Gobi covers 1/3 of
Mongolia but to call it desert is a misnomer as it's
actually a stony scrubby wasteland, only 3% of the Gobi is sandy dunes . The weather's not as hot as we feared on account of the
strong wind, which produced a chanting musical note as it
blew over the sand dunes, thus they're dubbed the Singing
Dunes . The wind also picked up grains of sand which stabbed like
needles when they hit the bare skin . Naraa, our guide, cried out
in pain in her sleeve-less shirt and paper thin pants, so I suggested we head back to the jeep , but unfortunately one among us insisted on more " walking the dune" experience and
poor Naraa , as a good guide, had to tag along . As advised
we took with us a large supply of water , augmented by Genghis
Khan beer whenever we made it to a ger hotel .
Mongolian tourism
still has a long way to go, often times we found we were the only
guests in a hotel of 30 gers . We picked up a hitch-hiker one day, a local furniture maker on his way to visit his parents but
missed his normal ride . Hitch-hiking's risky as passing vehicles
are few and far between, and one can get dehydrated very quickly
in the hot sun .
Naraa is typical of her generation of young
Mongolian women . Mongolia is unique among developing countries
in having more girls than boys in school .
The end of
communism and the consequent unemployment have forced Mongolian men back to the land, while girls in cities gain that all-important schooling and eventually the better jobs ; women now make up half of
the work force .
Naraa's a final year law student,
moonlighting as a tour guide while awaiting her exam results. She
came from a middle-class family, her father's a professor in
Economics and her mother's a pharmacist, she also had an older
brother who's in I.T. . Her parents divorced when she was 11, but they remained on civil terms and Naraa's in constant contact with
her father .
Naraa loved fashion, make-up and Western music and
was offended when in my ignorance asked if she ever goes to the
discos and bars. " Of course, all the time !" she said
curtly , then added " We dance and hang out with friends, no
different from anywhere else ! " She's not decided if she'd be a lawyer or make it full time as a tour guide, but the world's
her oyster and she's in no hurry .
The entrepreneur
spirit abounds in women of the new society ; the receptionist in
our hotel in Ulaan Baatar told me she's quitting her job to open her own B& B in a few weeks, and would I like a copy of the
address ?
Miga, our driver, did not have the same advantage
of high education . With 2 children and a wife to support he
smuggled into Korea as an illegal worker twice, was twice
deported , but was still awaiting a chance to sneak over a third time . Mongolians are patriotic to a fault . I was told they
would go abroad to make money, but however long they stay
away they always return .Naraa's certainly very sensitive and
defensive over any remark that she thinks has even the slightest
hint that might disparage Mongolia . Miga's a good driver
but the roads were bumpy as hell . I sat at the back of the Japanese jeep and was thrown about like the inside of a washing
machine ; there were many a times I truly missed the Russian jeep
which carried us all over Olgii , solid and steady, it was
built like a tank .
We stopped at the Hustai National Park
Resort where the one and only species of wild horse in
Mongolia , the Takhi, were raised. The Takhi was discovered at the end of the 19th century, but had become extinct in its native
land since . Fortunately some Takhi were given to Germany and
Holland as gifts a hundred year ago, so the species were
preserved in the world . The Mongolian Association For
Conservation of Nature and the Environment, along with Foundation
Reserves Przewalski's Horses have brought a total number of 84 Takhi back to Mongolia during the last 10 years, mainly from Holland,
and now the number of Takhi has reached to more than 200. Miss
Julia Roberts is one of the patrons behind the preservation
movement and took a picture with all the staff when she
visited the National Park a few years ago, which is hung proudly
in the museum. .
Mongolia used to be the second, after Tibet,
stronghold of Buddhist religion. However, with the arrival of the
Communists in the 1920's, the religion was severely repressed,
and all but one monastery were destroyed .
More than 30,000
monks and priests were executed and another 70,000 exiled or
imprisioned . The liberalization of 1990 allowed a revival, now more
than 140 Buddish monasteries have been set up anew . We
visited a monastery built in the style of the Potala in
Tibet, where Dalai Lama stayed in when he visited Mongolia .
Under the new freedom of belief, other religions flocked in. I had a
long chat with a Union Presbyterian Church pastor from Canada and
his Korean wife, an award winning writer and " Lifeline
"counselor , who told me they've been to Mongolia 5 times to
spread their faith . Apparently in Ulaan Baatar there are
more than 30 different churches and cults, all imported from the
West .
Mongolia is a country rich in symbolisms .The Hammer
Pattern and the Nose and Horn Patterns which I've borrowed for my
painting are the most widely used. The unending Hammer Pattern
represents continuous movement, symbolising the wish that a
person's life should be in permanent and continuous motion. The
Pattern is known to have been in use at least 4 thousand years
since the bronze age . According to Mongolian legend the form of the pattern is derived either from the shape of the hammer, or
from the cross-shaped ropes used for tethering horses. The Nose
and Horn Patterns are derived from the shape of the animal's
noses and horns, and are the oldest traditional patterns specific
to the prehistoric nomads of central Asia.
I've put the eight
auspicious symbols on the tree of life , together with the
Mongolian and the HK flag , but integrated them with the specific Kazakh stylised pattern of wallhanging , flanked on both sides by
offerings to the Buddha .
The auspicious symbols
represent faith , teaching and protection in Buddhism:
The fish is the Indian emblem of the universial monarch ( zagas )
Parasol is the symbol of royal dignity and protection from harm ( shukher )
Conch shell symbolises victory in battle ( dun )
The lotus blossom symbolises purity amidst dirty surroundings
(liankhua )
Banner of victory symbolises the victory of
spirituality (tug)
The vase of sacred water, filled with the
nectar of immortality (rashaan )
The wheel symbolises teaching
and wisdom ( khorol )
The knot symbolises eternity (ulzu )
The Soyombo is the national symbol of Mongolia , used on the flag and
the state seal . The 3 flames at the top represent prosperity in
the past, present and the future;.fire is also a Mongolian symbol
for growth and
progress. Under the flames there are a circle and
crescent representing the sun and moon . The 2 triangles
pointing downwards represent spears, symbolising death to the
enemies of the Mongolian people. The 2 horizontal rectangles
symbolises honesty and fairness. The round yin-yang symbol in the centre is known to Mongolians as the 2 fishes, which
symbolise eternity as their eyes are always open. The 2 fishes
also represent male and female, reason and wisdom. The 2 vertical
rectangles on either side of the Soyombo represent walls,
symbolising strength of friendship.
THe Mongolian philosophy
is built on the 5 elements of earth, water, fire, wood and metal,
like the Chinese . Recent archaeological discoveries have thrown
light on the many-sided and complex interation and interconnectedness between the Inner Asian nomads, the Huns ( the
forerunners of the Mongols), and the great state(s) of China
, and has established that the economic, political and spiritual
contact between the 2 people is much more extended and deep than
previously thought. In fact one cannot arrive at an dequate understanding of the Mongol culture without delving into the Chinese
culture as well . Long a province of China, Outer Mongolia
only declared independence in 1911 when the Qing dynasty fell,
and a communist regime installed with Soviet backing in 1924 .
One must also not forget the Mongols ruled over China for
over 100 years during the Ming Dynasty .
As a very young
child I lived in Inner Mongolia for a year when my family was
sent into exile by the Chinese Communist Party . Though my memory of that time is hazy, I've always had a soft spot for the Mongols . Not withstanding their harsh life , they are some of the warmest, most truthful and generous people you could ever meet .
15 years
ago I went back to Inner Mongolia but not a trace was left of the place where we were stationed, it's as though our time there had
never been. Overcoming the initial disappointment , I realize
this is in effect the essence of Buddhist teaching : everything
is transient and Emptiness is the permanent truth. I
wish the Mongolians the best of luck in their quest of new economic
and democratic reform , and I hope to return for another visit
soon.
15 août 2006
Togtoh...
Ceux qui ont lu mes mails savent déjà, j'ai rencontré un Mongol qui est coincé en Colombie... J'en parle ici, parce qu'il est inclassable...
Je l'ai rencontré fin juillet là où les étrangers doivent aller chercher leur visa, je comprenais rien de ce qu'il disait mais en persévérant j'ai compris qu'il était dans la merde... On lui a volé sa tune, son passeport, son visa... et ça fait 5 mois qu'il est coincé en Colombie sans parler espagnol, et qu'il arrive pas à se faire comprendre par les autorités. Du coup on a envoyé des mails en Mongolie et à l'ambassade mongole aux Etats-Unis, et maintenant il lui manque plus que l'argent...
J'ai pas énormément de temps à lui consacrer, on se voit à peu près tous les jours mais vite fait, mais le si peu qu'on a causé c'était bien intéressant. L'autre jour je disais à Claudie que j'étais éventuellement un peu déçu de découvrir un pays avec une mentalité finalement assez proche de la nôtre, et ben avec Togtoh, je suis pas déçu !
En Mongolie il habite dans le désert de Gobi (un désert mais y a quand même des plantes et des chameaux), où, d'après ce que j'ai compris, il a passé pas mal de temps à méditer. Il y vit loin de tous. Enfin, il est pas complètement isolé, mais ça le change de la ville (il aime pas trop la ville). Il y boit du lait de chamelle...
Il y a huit ans, il est parti aux Etats-Unis parce que Dieu lui a dit d'aller mieux se connaître. Il y est resté six ans, et il est rentré en Mongolie.
Et puis ensuite il est reparti, d'abord en Russie, ensuite à Cuba, en Equateur (à marcher toute la journée sur la plage déserte, et à bouffer les coquillages), au Pérou, en Equateur encore, puis en Colombie. Et là il est bloqué en Colombie, il se galère et il est pas super heureux, il a bien envie de rentrer chez lui. Depuis qu'il a assez de papiers pour prendre l'avion, il a rien a faire de ses journées, il ne peut qu'attendre et espérer que son pays lui envoie de l'argent. Il reste dans mon quartier, je l'avais rencontré le jour de son arrivée à Bogota (avant il était à Carthagène) et je lui avait donné mon adresse et depuis il reste dans le quartier. Je peux pas l'héberger mais il a trouvé une fille dans une pizzeria qui lui a trouvé de quoi dormir, enfin je lui ai payé une ou deux nuit à l'hôtel quand vraiment il pouvait plus, parce que là bas c'est un peu un repère de drogués et ça lui plait pas trop. Et depuis peu il peut dormir dans le bar qui est juste en face chez moi (qui est en photo) les jours (enfin nuits) d'ouverture. Les personnes commencent à le connaître dans le quartier, l'autre jour je me suis arrêté devant chez moi, au bar avec lui et d'autres colombiens... Des fois plusieurs personnes viennent lui donner quelque chose à manger le même midi... il refuse pas... Bref il a beau croire s'être vu confiée une mission par Dieu, il a beau me prendre pour un ange, il est sociable et c'est pas un mafioso papa et maman (on a dû mal se comprendre, j'avais dit qu'il s'était fait prendre en stop par des mafiosos pour faire carthagènes-bogota, nuance...) ! Bon ok vous avez raison il a réussi à m'extorquer des fonds... Non sérieusement je veux bien admettre que je suis moins prudent que la moyenne, mes potes étrangers ici m'avaient fait part de leurs craintes, comme vous et d'autres Français, mais maintenant plus personne ne me les ressortirait. Et je plus le seul à l'aider maintenant. Avant j'avais des scrupules à le faire entrer dans la résidence (c'est pas qu'ils ont spécialement l'habitude de voir des vagabonds dans une résidence où une chambre vaut un smic colombien...), mais l'autre jour je rentrais ils lui avaient carrément offert le repas.
Togtoh c'est un gars super intéressant. Il a 39 ans maintenant, il se pose encore plein de questions, il est certes un peu illuminé du point de vue d'un occidental, mais c'est super intéressant de discuter avec lui. Il est super cultivé. Il a sûrement lu plus de livres français que moi. Il a lu les grands livres monothéistes, et pleins de classiques qu'on connaît mais qu'on lit jamais. Il me parle un peu de la Mongolie, et ça a l'air chouette. Là-bas aussi des gens sont obnubilés par le modèle occidental, mais moins qu'en Colombie apparemment. Ils ont un super système d'éducation, là-bas tout le monde parle trois langues au moins. Et pas aves le même alphabet (anglais, japonais, russe, mongol, chinois...)... La culture mongole a l'air intéressante. Il me dit que si les mongols passent pour des barbares, c'est que, contrairement aux colonisateurs européens, qui partagaient leur culture dans un souci chrétien et pédagogique, les mongols, eux, gardaient leur culture pour eux et pour eux seuls : les conquis n'étaient pas nobles de la connaître. L'empire mongol est le plus grand qui a jamais existé (de la Turquie au Japon). Dans un autre ordre d'idée, l'autre jour je m'énervais sur mon briquet tout neuf mais qui voulait pas marcher, alors il m'a dit en souriant : c'est un produit chinois ça, tu doit te mettre dans la tête d'un chinois quand tu l'utilise, et t'en servie tout délicatement. Du coup j'ai plus de problèmes avec mon briquet...
Voilà Togtoh avec sa crête ! Maintenant il l'a plus parce que les gens le prenaient pour un punk, et la nuit ça lui posait des problèmes... (ça lui arrive de dormir dans la rue... mais ses affaires son chez moi)
Et là il a plus sa crête. D'après ce que j'ai compris, s'il a pas de cils et de sourcils, c'est qu'il s'est épilé intégralement pour être plus proche de Dieu, où un truc dans le genre.
Il a voulu me montrer les régions qu'il me montrerait si je vais le voir en Mongolie (en tout cas si j'y vais je serai pas perdu, le mec il a tout son temps et il fait plus que m'inviter il insiste !). Et ben c'est super joli !
Le Hovsgol au nord du pays :
Et le Dundgovi au sud :
Bon je sais c'est pas super logique de vous montrer des photos de Mongolie, mais j'y peux rien je suis pas encore sorti de Bogota ! La semaine prochaine je vais à Cali en bus, je devrais pouvoir prendre de jolies photos.