Operation Coat Giveaway (Scott)

It's Friday afternoon and we just got back from a two-day roller coaster of an excursion to the countryside with World Vision. Quoting from it's website, "World Vision is a Christian humanitarian charity organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice." A worldwide organization, they have a branch here in Olgii that was tasked with distributing 5,000 winter jackets to underprivileged children. They asked the four of us Olgii PCVs to help with that distribution.

In Olgii city they have about 1,500 children registered with their organization and another 1,500 or so living in small communities in the countryside. The excursion we tagged along with was a trip to Tsengel soum, a community 75km from Olgii. We were joined by two local World Vision workers (one of which speaks English) and our driver. For the trip we got to ride in style: a beefed-up Toyota Land Cruiser.

From the get-go, we knew it was going to be a pretty bumpy ride. When we signed up for the trip, we were told it would be a one-day job: leave in the morning, pass out jackets all day, and then return at night. When we got loaded up in the car, however, Marjan (the English-speaking World Vision worker) asked where are sleeping bags were. Awesome, we thought. Luckily we turned around to pick them up, along with a few toiletries and our shower-in-a-bag: baby wipes.

So yeah, Tsengel is 75km from Olgii, but the road is definitely no interstate highway. It's not even a Route 66. It's not even paved. It's a twisting beaten path that climbs up and over mountains. To be honest, I think our driver must have been navigating with an internal compass or something because there were no landmarks I could discern that indicated we were going in the right direction. All in all, the drive took about 2 hours. Ashlee was thankful that she sat in middle of the backseat -- that way she could keep her eye on the road so as not to catch her stomach off-guard with all the nice little dips we passed over.

Even though World Vision is an international NGO, the actual people we were working with are locals -- which means that we had to play the entire project by Mongolian rules. Without too much exaggeration, I can assure you that there is nothing more frustrating than being an American in a Mongolian professional situation, or a social situation for that matter. It is just a whole different game here.

If Ashlee and I could have planned the schedule, we would have been on the road by 7am, in Tsengel by 9am, and passing out jackets by 10am. Instead, we met at the World Vision office at 10am, got in the car at 11:30, spent thirty minutes driving around Olgii, and didn't get on the road until well past noon. Then we we got to Tsengel around 2pm we spent almost 45 minutes drinking tea and eating borzag before we even got to the office. We didn't even start distributing coats until 3:30pm.

We set up shop in a room in the government building. The World Vision workers did a pretty good job with crowd control. They made everyone wait in the hallway and they only allowed a handful of people in at a time. Basically each family came in and met with the World Vision workers first. The kids all decorated Christmas cards and wrote simple letters to their international sponsors. When they finished with the cards, the kids came to our station where we were responsible for handing out the jackets.

We tried to organize the distribution as best we could. We separated the coats into their four different sizes and we planned to give the darker colors to the boys and the lighter colors to the girls. For the most part things went smoothly. Ashlee checked the kids in and I picked out the coats. Most of the families were very appreciative and the kids were stoked with their new jackets. The easiest people to deal with were the fathers -- they took whatever coat we gave them with a big smile and a handshake. Some of the mothers, on the other hand, gave me flashbacks of some of the bridezillas I dealt with during my Friar Tux Shop days. They didn't like the colors I picked out, they argued over the size, or they thought we were holding out on them. A few ladies even pushed me aside and started rifling through the coats on their own. I did my best to maintain a positive demeanor, but my patience was really put to the test a few times.

By 7pm we had passed out almost 100 coats, meaning we would be coming back the following day to finish the process. One of the reasons why Ashlee and I didn't mind staying overnight in Tsengel was because it is the only soum in the province that has a hotel. Thus after closing down shop we were looking forward to a quick dinner and a quiet night to ourselves. Don't get me wrong, we weren't looking for the Four Seasons or anything. A simple room with a locking door would have been perfect, but when we pulled up to the hotel all the lights were out and it looked pretty closed. Marjan asked us if we would mind staying with the family of our driver's younger brother. Did we really have a choice?

Throughout the rest of the night we were reminded of everything that we were frustrated with during our two-month training. We were with a family whose language we did not speak, whose food we were pretty much forced to eat, and from whom we had no privacy. The major difference this time around, however, were that it was only one night and we were together.

Now I hope that this doesn't come across as too negative. The family was extremely nice and we were still glad that we came to Tsengel. It's just that our three months in Olgii has softened us a bit. We have our own place now where we can almost forget that we are thousands of miles from home -- except, of course, when we are trudging to the outhouse at midnight. No matter how taxing our days are, we know that we can come home, close the door, and switch ourselves off for a bit to recharge our batteries. This was why we weren't too keen on staying with a family of eight in their one-room house. But, as they say, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. With that said, while it didn't kill me it certainly didn't thrill me that I had to sleep five feet away from an 8-month-old infant that alternated between crying and breast-feeding all night long.

Needless to say, we survived the night and I was surprised that we were back in the office and distributing coats by 10am. Word must have spread overnight because we managed to pass out another hundred coats by noon. Things had slowed down a bit by this point so the World Vision team decided to close the office, pack up the car, and head out into the countryside to take coats to those families who weren't able to make the trip into town.

I mentioned earlier that during this trip we were riding in style. The World Vision vehicle we were using was a fairly new Toyota Land Cruiser that was outfitted for some serious countryside driving. Our driver certainly put the car through its paces. We must have forded ten icy rivers and we were constantly climbing up and down rocky hills. Indiana Jones, eat your heart out!


Visiting these families out in the countryside was a pretty powerful experience. In a sense, it was almost like traveling back in time. Except for a very few modern conveniences -- including being visited by a Land Cruiser loaded down with new winter jackets -- these people still live like their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. They have very simple homes, huge families, , and their lives revolve around their herds. I've never felt so far away from Disneyland in my life...well except for the Indiana Jones ride.

As a quick sidenote, we were a bit surprised when we stepped into the entryway of one house and we found the entire family slaughtering a cow in their kitchen. Slabs of meat hung from the ceiling, innards were spread all over the floor, and everyone was covered in blood to their elbows. As we were getting back into the car to leave, Ashlee and I noticed that one of the World Vision workers had blood dripping down the back of his coat. It's OK, I didn't like him much anyway.

I think every single family we visited on our little trip was extremely grateful to see us. I think it meant a lot to the children to know that even though they live these difficult lives way out here in the heart of central Asia, there is someone out there in the world that cares about them enough to buy them a new jacket.

Throughout this entire experience Ashlee and I kept thinking of all those times we were sitting comfortably in our Newport Beach apartment watching TV when some sort of "save the children" commercial came on. I remember being very skeptical of these types of organizations. How can you be sure where your money is going? Well now that we got to experience the other side of those commercials, we can assure you that as long as you donate to the right charity, you can help kids living on the other side of the world from you.

All in all, despite the anticipated (and unanticipated) frustrations, helping World Vision distribute jackets to underprivileged children was an incredibly worthwhile experience. It certainly helped us to put things in perspective and it reminded us of why we came here to Mongolia. It's a good thing we found it so worthwhile, actually, because we're doing it again next week!

While we were visiting one family, this little guy came poking his head into the front door. I think he heard we were passing out free coats.