Saturday, May 21, 2011

Solving math problems with Nasa

Every day I am doing homework with Nasa. I try to enlist Baaskaa every so often, but without much luck.

I can’t blame him. He spent one long evening trying to explain and solve her math problems. Nasa was all over the place and tried to wiggle her way out of homework by being funny and entertaining, but Baaskaa never gave up or lost his patience. Steadily and firmly he brought her attention back to her notebook and no matter how many times she came to a wrong conclusion, he went back to the beginning, until she got it right.

They started her homework after we ate dinner. By 11:30pm they successfully had all math problems solved.

I learned from watching; now we start before dinner.☺

Reading and writing went smoothly and math became easier with time. I developed a system of demonstrating addition by using sugar cubes and I bought a colorful counting book for preschoolers, which visualized numbers through images of fruit. When I ripped the book apart to hang the single pages on the wall, Nasa got incredible excited. I think this was the most excited I have ever seen her; something was added to the house that was just for her.


Things were groovy and moved along. And then the teacher introduced her to subtraction.

Nasa couldn’t comprehend why you would take something away, in theory, when it was obviously physically still there. We had x amount of sugar cubes and I pretended I would take them away, when they clearly were in my hand. It just didn’t make sense to her.

And I found no way of explaining it. These are the moments when it really becomes frustrating that we don’t have a common language. But it wasn’t just a language issue, Baaskaa tried too (half heartedly, I admit), and couldn’t explain it to her either. Pointing a camera at her wasn’t really helping the cause. At some point I had to put the film maker in me on the back burner and asked Blake to stop shooting, in the hope that it would make her feel less pressured. But it was too late, by now I had lost my patience and Nasa was muttering complains while shooting the sugar cubes from one end of the table to the other.

I felt awful and helpless. There was something about subtraction, that she couldn’t comprehend and I couldn’t figure out how to break that barrier. What do you do in a situation like that?

The next morning I apologized to the teacher for not having completed the homework (yes, I gave up!) and asked her to explain subtraction again.

That evening Nasa and I started all over again, without camera. Sadly it turned into a repetition of the previous evening. Except that this time no one dared to enter the kitchen anymore.

What do you do, if you can’t explain something as simple as 5 – 3 = 2?

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Nasa discovers the power of images

Nasa is getting quite adventurous during this trip.

While staying with Baaskaa, Bennie and me, Nasa developed a natural curiosity. At first she stuck to the script, telling us what she thought we expected to hear. But when she got to listen to Baaska and Bennie mapping out their future and complaining about their situation, she went silent. It was a curious silence. When I asked her what her dream was she looked quite startled, “No one ever asked me what I wanted!”

Because she started to learn how to read and write, she began looking at her environment differently.

Tired of Baaskaa’s and my cooking, she wanted to cook for herself. It took me a moment to realize that she didn’t understand the meaning of the numbers on the knobs of our electrical cooking plate. She just switched it on and off randomly, because she had seen us doing it. The concept that the temperature would increase with the corresponding number, 0-off and 4-the hottest, was foreign to her. It sounds silly, but when you think about it, someone must have explained to me how to use numerology in my daily life. Just because she could count from 1 to 10 didn’t mean she understands the larger concept of numbers.

From the very beginning Nasa experienced me with a camera permanently attached to my hand. This shiny expensive looking black object was so out of her realm that she just ignored it throughout the years. Out of the blue, she picked up my ‘point & shoot’ Lumix and fired away. At first she went crazy with it, but then she actually started to look at the pictures and adjusted her angles and compositions. (She ignored the exposure time, which makes her pictures more beautiful to me).

I loved it and tried to pose for her, but she wouldn’t have it. She had learnt from me, as I always asked the kids to be themselves and ignore the camera. Tough concept in Mongolia, people only take pictures when dressed up and on special occasions. The idea of candid photography is still a foreign one.

I was so proud of her running around the apartment and snapping pictures of everything that she deemed important. At first she was shy, taking pictures of objects only, but then she became brave and photographed us – well, mainly Baaskaa and his friends.









I adore Nasa's self portrait, of all her images it's my favorite.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Leaving Bennie behind

The day has come; Bennie has to return to the country, while Baaskaa stays the city.

Most of the time Bennie was a quiet by-stander while in UB. He participated somewhat, but mostly from the sidelines. In his defense, we were so busy with schooling Nasa and finding a job for Baaskaa that there wasn’t much room left. Often we had to leave him waiting in the apartment, while we were out and about, getting things done.

At the moment he isn’t all that happy in the countryside even so he loves the live and handling animals. Like Baaskaa, he feels that while in the country he has no choices. To avoid feeling trapped and expand his skills he decided to start vocational training in the fall of 2011. But due to new regulations he needs an eight-grade diploma in order to enroll in Naleikh.

I will have to figure out a whole new set of issues. We need to properly evaluate Bennie’s level of education and hire a private tutor to bring him up to speed to eight’ grade. While in school in UB he needs to live somewhere with supervision. I am not sure how to organize and finance all that, but thank goodness I have a bit of practice facing these difficulties.

While returning Bennie to the farm, we informed Byambaa about Baaskaa’s job opportunities. Byambaa was happy for Baaskaa, but sad to see him go. Live in the country can become quite lonely and they had spent the last three years together. Over time Baaskaa had become more like a partner then a son.

When it was time to say good-bye to Bennie, everyone tried to keep it light and short. Bennie waved and without much ado he went back to work.


I imagine it has been hard for the boys to separate, they had spent two years together, the last one 24/7. They shared a bed and embraced each other during the night. They leaned on each other, encouraged each other and exchanged their secrets, fears and hopes.

Yet, both of them have encountered so many people come and go throughout their short lives. Some they’ll meet again, others they won’t. They don’t have the luxury to cry about their losses if they want survive them. First I followed Baaskaa’s lead and made a joke while saying good-bye, but then I couldn’t help it, I hugged Bennie and promised I’d be back. Then I turned around and got into the car, without looking back.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Second round of handing out donations.

We went to the care center to distribute the remaining donations Dwight and Leigh, Five Foot Five Prod. organized for us. We still had several North Face jackets and sweaters, more then plenty of sweat pants, underwear and shoes. The shoes were a donation organized by my friend Volker from Worldly Soles, an organization in Australia. He had told his sister in Germany about my work in Mongolia. She spontaneously organized a shoe drive and sent a large box of shoes to NY. I then brought them to Ulaanbaatar. Some of these shoes became Nasa’s favorites, which she wore every day.

I guess we are a good example for a global community!

By now the kids in the care center know me, yet they were suspicious at first, because we were filming them. I think they have been filmed so many times, they are tired to be the show pony. Understandable so. Luckily Baaskaa and Bennie came to help, which put them at ease.

Receiving the clothes finally changed their mood. They were excited and joyful, particular because the clothes we brought were cool, not the usual hand me downs they normally get, practical and useful, yes, but not cool.
It happened to be my birthday, so they sang “Happy Birthday”, to my surprise in English.

The care center is so familiar by now; here's where I met Baaskaa, (after the manhole), where I hang out and "choose" my kids. Every time I return, I recognized and catch up with kids from previous visits. Whenever I enter the door, I hear “…Baaskaa, Baaskaa….”, which makes me aware of how far our story has traveled. But because I know that the expectations are high and I can’t possible meet them, it also makes me slightly uncomfortable to visit the center.


It makes me sad, kids should not have to be overly thankful to get a couple boxers & briefs, they shouldn’t be put into a situation where they want something so badly that they forget their manners and just rip the boxers out of your hands. It should be a given that their basic needs are met. But I guess we all know that.

But when it’s all done they start to enjoy their gifts. They try them on and parade them for each other. You get that big smile from them that makes it all worth it.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The Sun Magazine, Readers Write “Shoes”

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/

Shoes

After twenty-three hours of travel, I peeled off my heavy hiking boots the second I entered my apartment. They were still dusty, with traces of cow dung. Mongolian memories.

I opened my duffle bag and a waft of sour whiff welcomed me. The smell of dirty kids, kids who haven’t washed, nor changed their clothes for a while. I spent my last night in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, participating in a “collection” of street children. I’ve worked closely with one of the local childcare centers and its staff for the last two years, but this was the first time I participated in a raid.

In 2008 I was hired to shoot a documentary about street children in Ulaanbaatar. One boy volunteered to tell his story. That boy is now “my” boy and calls me his “long distance mom”.

While the kids are close, I never really mind the smell. But half way around the globe, in the safety of my Manhattan apartment, I realized that the smell also entailed some traces of fear, fear of the unpredictable lives these kids are leading. I took the entire duffle bag and went to the Laundromat to dump it in the washer. When I returned home, I was relived that my apartment smelled like me again.

But after puttering around for a while I realized that I wasn’t ready to be back. I wasn’t feeling New York yet; my heart was still in Mongolia, with my kids, the five I had “collected” over the last two years and agreed to be responsible for. Just as I had before I wondered how I, a true New Yorker who can’t get enough of this pulsating city, ended up in Mongolia, in the middle of nowhere, living in a yurt, shoveling manure and cooking three meals a day. I asked myself how I ended up leading a life, at least part time, that couldn’t be more opposite from what I had envisioned for myself, or knew off! Yet, out there I feel an ease and contentment that New York has been denying me.

I wanted both worlds, so I put my dirty boots back on. I called a friend and we met for drinks in my favorite bar. He shook his head, smiling, when he saw my country footwear. When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I went home. I laid down, dangling my feet over the edge of the bed. As long as I wore my boots, part of me was still in Mongolia. I could not be fully converted back into my New Yorker self in these unfashionable, practical, dirt-welcoming shoes.



The printed version in the magazine is shorter, edited by the magazine.