A few weeks ago, my friend Zoe Liston invited me to a storytelling event, at University College Dublin Volunteers Overseas (UCDVO), where she works as the programme and education officer.
Together, with five other story tellers, and musician Seamus Hyland, we told tales about volunteering at home, and further away and I was delighted to be involved in such a beautiful event. The other storytellers were Safia Hassan, Bulelani Mfaco, Kelvyn Fields, Jo Kennedy and Oein DeBhairduin, and I was so happy to be involved in such a caring afternoon. The stories were recorded alongside some of the music Seamus played, and you can listen to all six here.
Or you can read my story, “Under blue skies”, below.
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Under blue skies
People don’t always remember how beautiful Mongolia is.
There are snow-capped mountains that dip down into wide valleys with freshwater lakes. Camels roam and wolves hunt under midnight moons, and the air changes shape when the seasons move.
In those days, the city was growing as many people moved away from the countryside, towards the opportunities in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Young students rushed over the half-built pavements, chatting as they walked from their dormitories on the east of the city, to the universities on Sukhbaatar Square. They studied subjects that would bring them work in the future like translation, business and computer studies. Dreams of travelling come with price tags.
Other people came to the city to find work.
One couple, an older herder couple from the Gobi, couldn’t afford to stay in the countryside anymore as it was too harsh, too unpredictable. A cousin told them they could earn money as a taxi, so they packed up everything and moved. They drove students over Lion’s Bridge to the dormitories near the Wrestling Palace, and they drove tourists from the hotels to the train station, that would take them to Beijing or Moscow.
The older couple, this herder couple from the Gobi, carried all their possessions with them. They kept bags of clothes and wooden stools and framed photographs in the boot, and on the back seat of the car, and they waited to find a new home. He was too old to herd animals on his own. Their children, big now and living in America, couldn’t help keep the fire burning, and so the nomads moved.
Except he wasn’t a very good driver, and she liked to sing songs.
His herder boots were too heavy for the silver-grey pedals of the car. She sang songs about roaming camels and the wolves that hunted under the midnight moonlight. She sang songs about riding horses at dawn and of making food for her children, who were now, too far away to eat it. She sang songs about the everlasting blue skies over the steppe in Mongolia, and she sang songs about remembering. He liked the songs about archery best of all.
The sky was blue.
The sky was almost always blue, when an international Volunteer waved down the car and asked the older couple to drive her to the dormitories on the east of the city, where she was renting a room. She too, had come to the city for her work, and she directed them over the Lion’s Bridge, near the Wrestling Palace and right at the dormitories. Volunteer hardly ever took a taxi, on her allowance of 200 dollars a month, but the river under the bridge was frozen, and conditions were treacherous.
The woman offered Volunteer tea, from the flask, but Volunteer shook her head. The woman ignored this and poured some lukewarm tea into a plastic cup and placed it on Volunteer’s lap. This made Volunteer even more annoyed than she was before she got into the car, so she looked out of the window, to avoid more conversation.
There was ice inside the windows and the car smelled of petrol. The man’s skills at herding yaks and horses did not transfer to driving. The man couldn’t see out of his window and had trouble changing gears. The car lurched forward and skidded slowly into the oncoming traffic, on the opposite side of the road.
Volunteer screamed out loud.
She reached for a safety belt, that wasn’t there, and as she did so the plastic cup of tea spilt over her lap and legs. She shouted at the couple.
The car stopped in the middle of the road, while other cars carefully drove around it. The man corrected the car’s position and got it facing the right way again. The tea wasn’t very hot and hadn’t made its way through Volunteer’s heavy winter coat. All three of them were safe again, and there was no need to worry.
The older couple, this married couple from the Gobi, were embarrassed and when they pulled up outside the dormitories, they refused to take payment for the ride. They gave Volunteer a packet of biscuits from the supermarket and thanked her for coming to Mongolia. They said they were sorry for scaring her so much on Lion’s Bridge, and it was true, they were very sorry.
They were sorry they no longer lived near the freshwater lake, where the camels roamed and the wolves hunted under the midnight moonlight. They were sorry their children had to move so far away to other lands, and they were sorry that the songs about remembering, always made them sad.
Shorter than me 
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