Mongolian Diary

Final Meetings

Tuesday morning and we have just had a breakfast meeting with UNIFEM. They have a small operation here in Mongolia and projects include education and gender mainstreaming. It was good to meet with them to alert them to our work and what we want to achieve in the future. They may be able to point us towards appropriate funders.

We are now in a small lull before embarking in our last meetings in Mongolia and there will be no time to update this blog further before our return to the UK.

Shani has tried to contact the British Embassy and we are currently waiting to hear if there is anyone available to see us. It is not imperative that we do this but it would be useful to have a brief conversation just to alert them to our presence!

Later this afternoon we hope to visit the University and meet with a law professor to assess the level of academic participation within political and civil life here in Mongolia, as our impression at the moment is that it is completely different to that in the UK.

The agreement of intent will be brought to the hotel at 5.30pm for signing and this will be our last meeting with MWLA. Meeting them has been a very fruitful part of the research trip and we very much look forward to future collaboration with them and also the National Centre Against Violence.

This evening we have a dinner planned with Echo and she may be bringing another academic to meet with us, so this gives us another chance to make academic links.

And then it is an early evening (and not too much vodka hopefully!), as we have an early flight back to the UK via Moscow. We are being accompanied to Ulaanbaatar airport by the UB police - an act of hospitality on their behalf - nothing sinister! The flight to Moscow is 6 hours, we have a 5 hour wait at Moscow airport and then just under 4 hours back to Heathrow.

Whilst we will be glad to get back home, this trip to Mongolia has been an amazing, unforgettable experience and one which we are so pleased to have had. Our concerns at the outset - of being cold, maybe not liking the food and having translation problems - were not realised. The cold here is very easy to deal with - we went trekking in -25degrees on Sunday but it was not as cold as the miserable drizzly winters we have at home. The sky is always a perfect blue and the sunshine can almost feel warm. The brightness is very welcome, having had too much of the grey winter months at home. The food has been very meaty - not ideal for vegetarians at all - but fine for us. We have not encountered anything that we absolutely could not eat - although my own personal wish is for a toaster at breakfast - I miss my toast! The Mongolian people have been very hospitable and I will certainly miss the key contacts we have made here. Thank goodness for email so that we can stay in touch. And translation has not presented a problem. A combination of good English speakers within most organisations that we have met with and some imaginative sign language has meant that communication has not been a problem. Yes, it can be extremely exhausting to converse in careful, simple language when trying to discuss complex issues but we have used a mixture of media to convey our key points - including using a biscuit as a demonstration tool at one point - and with a great deal of success even if I say so myself. We have been imaginative in our presentations and tailored them 'on the hoof' depending on our audience and I have to do a little self-congratulation here because Shani and I actually make a really good double act! I think this is due to our respect of each other's specific skills and talents which have been very complementary to the job in hand.

I hope the blog has helped to give a flavour of what we have been up to. I think its been an excellent way of staying in touch and I hope that others use it to log their research activities in the future.

For now, we will finish our meetings today and look forward to being back with you all very soon.

Helen and Shani
Ulaanbaatar (minus 28 degrees!)

posted by Helen J @ 11:00 AM