I Grew My Boobs in China (43 page)

“Well, yah, but we’re not out of danger yet,” Ammon warned. I knew exactly what he meant. If our diesel ran out and left the tank dry and the van kaput, we’d become the four-Canadians-plus-one, itinerant, vagabond cabal. The recent image of the thirty hungry, dirty people spilling out of the van haunted me. I did not want us to be passengers number thirty-one through thirty-five bumping down the road on someone’s lap for twenty hours. The town was surrounded by desert, and probably had no transportation or even Internet or a telephone to communicate with the outside world.

I was really missing Bimba and Baagii by this point. Our predicament made me appreciate how professional and comfortable the last tour had been. This time, we were not booked in or expected anywhere, and there was no tour operator sitting safely in
Ulaanbaatar
with the means to send out a search party if we didn’t return. The only person who would notice we were missing was Baagii, so maybe we were lucky he couldn’t get time off his radio job. On the other hand, if Baagii’d been in charge, I doubt we’d be in this predicament, but then again, I asked myself,
What do I know about travelling across a desert anyway?

We could not judge exactly when the car’s fuel would give out and were contemplating bringing diesel to it instead when Mom pointed at a couple of men who were making their way over. “Oh look! I think they’re coming to help.” All at once the ghost town came alive. Heads poked out of a tipped-over, metal shipping container and a few other unique forms of housing. Before we knew it, there were half-a-dozen men pushing the back of our car. Mom steered as the car popped out of the sand’s grip, and we leapt aboard through the sliding door. The helpful local men cheered in our wake as we drove directly to the fuel pumps just ahead of us.

“Yah, is closed,” Future said after a quick look around. “We have to find owner to fuelling pump.” It was not good news, yet we were relieved to know that “closed” didn’t necessarily mean a dead end here. Our tentative plan was to search through the concrete neighbourhood, but Future began shouting something repeatedly from the car.

“What is he yelling?! ‘Gas station guy, we need fuel! Gas station guy! ’?? Seriously,” Bree laughed.

“Pretty much,” Ammon replied. “The guy probably decided to close down early because it was slow.”

“I can’t imagine it ever gets busy. I’d go home, too,” Mom said. “I bet only four people in this whole village own a car.”

“And no doubt they all know where each other lives,” Ammon added. With so few clients and no competition, the owner might as well sit at home and wait for work to come to him. We certainly needed him a lot more than he needed us.

It soon became apparent that Future’s stationary shouting was not getting results, so we reverted to plan B. It was not too hard to locate the owner’s low-rise apartment building by asking people in the small town where he lived, at which point, Future shouted some more, this time over a wooden fence towards the indicated building. A few minutes after a head poked from a window, the owner was roused from his bed, night cap and all, and came shuffling down the outer concrete stairs. Future threw him in our van and off we went, our headlights catching the wings of dancing bugs. This time, he was extra careful to avoid more sand traps.

The man went to work with no complaints. His eyes were dark, his skin a pale brown, and he sported a pronounced five o’clock shadow. Once we were refuelled and in the clear for another day’s adventure, we drove the owner home and he waved us off. It wouldn’t be the last time we’d have to do this. I wasn’t quite sure where the week would lead, but I knew we had an interesting new friend along for the ride, posing as our guide.

Chapter 36

I Know You

“We’ve got to get going,” Ammon was urging. “Where is Future? Doesn’t he realize if we don’t leave now, we’re never going to make it? And you can’t get anywhere in the dark. Like the ranger said, it’s hard enough in the day. This guy is just fiddle-fartin’ around like he’s on a holiday or something.”

“Well, that is kind of the mentality here, I think,” Mom piped in. “Are you as tired as I am? I couldn’t sleep through those dogs howling all night long!”

“We haven’t even ordered breakfast yet!” Ammon growled and threw up his hands in exasperation. He must not have slept well, either. When Future strolled in a few minutes later, it was obvious that he was enjoying himself and didn’t see any point in rushing.

“There has to be something to eat!” I demanded, not meaning to be heard.

“Yes, Little Savannah,” Future said, walking over to translate the chalkboard menu on the wall. “There is mutton with rice, mutton soup, mutton---”

“I swear to the lords I am not eating another stinking bowl of that yucky, horrible – Argh!”

He laughed in response and simply said, “Little Savannah, this is good for you.”
In comparison to what?Sand?
The thought of another soggy white dumpling stuffed with woolly old sheep made me sick. At dinner the night before, I’d lost track of how many hairs I’d pulled from my bowl and teeth.

Most of the ten-seat restaurants we stopped in at little towns along the way had menus hanging on the wall. Each apparently offered a wide variety of choices, but they were invariably out of every item we ordered except for those based on mutton. All we ever got in response to Future’s queries was head-shaking and an endless series of “noes,” though every once in a while they’d have goulash, a delightful dish made with beef, noodles, and potatoes. Sometimes we had the added luxury of the local version of carrot salad, which was, quite literally, just shreds of carrot with a bit of vinegar and pepper for dressing.

“Oh dear, I guess there was no imagination put into that one,” Mom had initially laughed at the small orange pile on her plate, but we ended up shovelling the salad down happily. It was delicious!

Just as in China, we never knew what we were going to get when we ordered. We were repeatedly surprised by Chinese versions of club sandwiches, French toast, and spaghetti bolognese. Ammon always shook his head at the strange versions of western food we were served as he enjoyed a fabulous Chinese dish for a quarter of the price. I found it hard to accept the fact that, as often as I might order a pizza, I wasn’t going to get anything that came close to the favourite food I so dearly missed from home.

“Well, you’re going to have to eat the mutton unless you want to walk back to Ulaanbaatar, ’cause it’s not getting any better from here,” Ammon impatiently hurried our discussion of our limited choices. "And you have six days left! So suck it up and get used to it!”

Nearer to Mongolia’s capital city, meals often included at least a few standard vegetables, mainly carrots, onions, potatoes, and very occasionally, beets. Ammon was just telling me what I already knew; the further we ventured away from Ulaanbaatar, the fewer options there’d be.

Mom yawned and tried the gentle approach. “Savannah, these people have eaten it all their lives. It’s not the end of the world if you have to eat it for a month,” she said, trying to preserve her children’s small remaining bits of sanity.

“Mom, dogs eat dog food their whole lives, too. It’s hard to force them to go back to it once they get a taste of what human food is like. It’s too late for me! I’ve already tasted real food. These guys don’t have anything to compare it to, so how can they complain?” I objected, remembering Khongorzul and her satisfied smile as she enjoyed that horrible soup in the tiny border town before we took the sixteen-hour train ride to
Ulaanbaatar
.

“Okay fine. There’s some chocolate in the car. Go eat that while it’s still hard,” Mom said. The days were scorching hot and they somehow got even hotter the further south we travelled, but the desert climate’s relatively chilly nights gave the melted chocolate a chance to harden again.

All Bree had to say was a subdued, resigned, “This is lame.” Nobody knew exactly which unfortunate circumstance she was referring to, but she was beginning to look like one of those sand kids we’d seen in the desert. I’m sure I was, too, had there been a mirror anywhere that I could check. Luckily there wasn’t. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen myself in a mirror, and I was pretty sure I’d rather pass on that, anyway. We’d spent weeks and weeks living in baggy clothes with no make-up. I was even forced to wear my geeky glasses ’cause there was too much dust for my contact lenses. When I’d found out only two years earlier that I had to wear them, I was in complete disbelief. I was the only person in my immediate family so afflicted.
A four-eyes. Me?! How did that happen?

Cleaning facilities were generally non-existent in the countryside. Luckily, I had used the free laundry in our Beijing hotel before entering Mongolia. Ammon was already happily into hand washing when we were in the city, but outside the capital, there wasn’t a bucket or enough water to fill one to be found anywhere. After nearly a month out in the country, rolling around in dusty vehicles and practically sleeping with farm animals, I knew I, too, would have to hand wash my clothes. They stank. I stank.
Everything
stank.

There were never any showers at our rural accommodations, but on one rare occasion, we did find a very large metal pipe gushing with icy water from the earth. The six-inch-diameter hose located near a few gers and buildings in the open desert was used as the small community’s water supply and wash site. Locals filled big plastic jugs and tin milk containers for cooking and drinking. These were then transported using a small wooden plank that was drawn by a rope and supported by two wheels on either side. When we arrived, a few teenage girls and children were doing laundry, and a very short but nonetheless well-toned man in tight underwear was taking a “shower.” Freshly washed and still wet, he proceeded to clean his small motorcycle with a soapy rag. I could tell from the way the two girls were avidly watching him that he was the hot shot of the neighbourhood. I didn’t think they were happy about our drawing his attention away from them, since they’d probably planned to do the laundry when they knew he would be there.

We all jumped at the opportunity to wash the twenty-eight layers of Mongolian grime off the limbs we could expose without stripping down. Then out came the shampoo; washing our hair never felt so glorious. Future ran around in his orange-and-grey-striped undies and white plastic sandals rinsing himself. Then he washed the van so it, too, could enjoy five minutes of cleanliness.

“Don’t you love a country where you can run around in your underwear in the wild?!” Ammon said, smiling and accidentally catching Future’s attention.

“Ammon! Help me, you must,” Future laughed, waving his wet shirt around before stuffing it in Ammon’s hand.

“You dirty guy!” he joked, as he scrubbed Future’s back with the soapy shirt.

Though we were sopping wet when we jumped back in the van, we were completely dry only minutes later. Soon we were again sitting in puddles of sweat as we drove further into this strange country. There were still many herds of goats, sheep, horses, and even camels roaming free.

“Five sheep and ten horses to every person in the year 2000,” Ammon reported, turning around in the passenger seat on the car’s left-hand side.

“But I never owned a sheep!” Future said, perhaps surprised by Ammon’s statement. We all laughed because we knew he’d never owned animals of any kind.

“Well Future, I guess your five went to those who have hundreds,” Bree told him.

“Yah, I think so! They stole my sheep!” He pretended to be aggrieved.

“There are roughly three million people in Mongolia; forty-five percent of them live in the capital and thirty percent are nomadic. Most of the nomads sell raw wool to travelling traders or transport it to towns themselves,” Ammon explained.

Future was among that forty-five percent. He relied on his intellect and personality to make a living; he was not meant for hands-on tasks like herding, mechanics, or other skills related to outback living. As I tried to understand how he fit into Mongolian culture, I figured that a big part of surviving has to do with your general outlook on life and not letting hard times get the better of you. With all the near catastrophes we’d encountered at every turn – running out of fuel, flat tires, broken parts, sand traps, and so on – it would have been futile for Future to react angrily. His positive persona and accepting attitude encouraged us to rely on him.

“This bumpy road is killing me. I’m going to have a broken back by the end of the trip!” Mom complained as we all climbed out of the van, still feeling a bit raw from the previous excursion. We were stopping at the desolate ruins of Ongiin Khiid, an old Buddhist monastery. It was constructed in the late eighteenth century to honour the Dalai Lama’s first-ever visit to Mongolia. Once home to hundreds of monks, it was now the crumbling essence of what had once been a major spiritual spot.

We had only seen one or two cars the whole day, so we weren’t surprised to have the place completely to ourselves. The few monks who came every morning had long since completed their rituals of worship. By the time we arrived, the blazing red sun was hovering low in the west.

“Here’s an interesting fact. Mongolia has only a little under 2,000km (1,243mi) of paved road!” Ammon announced to our groaning, aching bodies.

“Meaning?” Bree prompted him for more.

“That is NOT a lot! To put it in context, Hong Kong – you remember that place? You’ve been there---”

“Yah, I knooow!” Bree said sassily.

“Well, you never know. You did forget your tooth, eh?”

“HEY!” she barked, as she laughed and waved the retainer, to which her fake left eyetooth was attached, around on her tongue at him.

 “Now you’re being nasty!” Ammon protested.

I giggled, remembering how our waiter from a lunch break days before had run after us, frantically waving his hand over his head. He caught up to us, opened his hand, and said the equivalent of, “For you? For you?”