Frozen world: Louisa Waugh experiences Mongolia's winter.I WAKE up and my world has frozen. Everything, and I mean everything - my water, tomato paste, soap - is encased en·case tr.v. en·cased, en·cas·ing, en·cas·es To enclose in or as if in a case. en·case  ment n. in thick, milky
ice. I light a candle, stand up in my sleeping bag and pull on another
layer of clothing. Shivering shivering /shiv·er·ing/ (shiv´er-ing)1. involuntary shaking of the body, as with cold. 2. a disease of horses, with trembling or quivering of various muscles. shivering see shiver, stringhalt. , I take a knife to the water bucket and hack at the ice until bubbles rise to the surface. Lighting my small stove is tough because the wood, which was damp, is now frozen. By the time my smoky fire is finally crackling crack·ling n. 1. The production of a succession of slight sharp snapping noises. 2. cracklings The crisp bits that remain after rendering fat from meat or frying or roasting the skin, especially of a pig or a goose. and heating the water and ice in the kettle, the outside temperature has risen to -25[degrees] Centigrade centigrade /cen·ti·grade/ (sen´ti-grad) having 100 gradations (steps or degrees); see under scale. cen·ti·grade adj. Celsius. . I've never been so cold in my life. I know the mountains surrounding my village will be drenched in Adj. 1. drenched in - abundantly covered or supplied with; often used in combination; "drenched in moonlight"; "moon-drenched meadows" drenched covered - overlaid or spread or topped with or enclosed within something; sometimes used as a combining form; fresh snow and the sun rising late, but I can't see anything because my window is coated in thick ice. On this dark, freezing winter morning, venturing to the communal outside toilet is quite an endurance test endurance test n → prueba de resistencia endurance test n → test m d'endurance endurance test endurance n . But, after two cups of steaming black coffee I am bundled up and off to work, just as the sky is gradually brightening. My school is a ten-minute walk alongside the Hovd river which flows through the village. The river is now so solid that horses are being ridden and cars driven over it. Everything but my eyes is concealed from the freezing air - my gloved fingers pushed down into my pockets. `Louisa - off to work?' calls my neighbour Sansar-Huu. `Don't worry,' he teases me, `it's quite warm today - just wait till it gets really cold?' Our school has no electricity or running water, but each small classroom is heated by a wood-burning stove. This morning we all wear our coats during lessons. Wind-burnt children from herder's settlements outside the village board at the school 12 to a dormitory. Their parents pay the fees in meat and wood. At break we jostle to be near the staff-room stove and my colleagues pull their fur hats back on. `You sit by the fire, Louisa - you must be freezing,' offers Sansar-Huu's wife Gansukh, my fellow English teacher. I am. After our classes Gansukh and I cross the street to the post office, which is crowded as the weekly post has just arrived. Beaming and clutching two letters I walk home with Gansukh and a couple of our students, passing herders trading camel, sheep, goat and wolf skins. We stop en route for bowls of tea at a friend's house. At home, I need more water. Armed with a bucket I lift the creaking creak intr.v. creaked, creak·ing, creaks 1. To make a grating or squeaking sound. 2. To move with a creaking sound. n. A grating or squeaking sound. lid of the well opposite our yard. But the water is so frozen I can hear the rocks I fling down the shaft ricochet A wireless Internet service from Ricochet Networks, Inc., Denver, CO (www.ricochet.net). Originally developed by Los Gatos, CA-based Metricom, Inc., Ricochet was the first high-speed, wireless Internet service for commuters. off the ice. Taking the axe I set out for the nearby river to forge my own well. That afternoon it snows heavily as Sansar-Huu and I saw logs in the yard. `How long will it be this cold?' I ask him as I stand panting panting rapid, shallow breathing, a characteristic heat-losing reaction in dogs; represents an increase in dead-space ventilation resulting in heat loss without necessarily increasing oxygen uptake or carbon dioxide loss. , my face flushed and numb. `Oh, it gets as low as -48 here,' he tells me, grinning. `But we need this snowy winter. Even by October it's really too cold to live in a felt ger here - so the herders in the mountains move up into their winter log cabins log cabin or log house, style of home typical of the American pioneer on the Western frontier of the United States in the great westward expansion after 1765. It was constructed with few tools, usually an axe or an adz and an auger. . Their livestock live on hay and the herders melt snow for all their water. They slaughter sheep and cows for food at the start of winter, when the animals are still fat, and the ice stores the meat till the end of spring.' `So, if the snow comes late, like it did this year, what then?' I query, resting on a white log. `That's when the steppe steppe (stĕp), temperate grassland of Eurasia, consisting of level, generally treeless plains. It extends over the lower regions of the Danube and in a broad belt over S and SE European and Central Asian Russia, stretching E to the Altai and S to gets overgrazed, which means spring will be very tough. Remember those trucks loaded up with ice driving way into the mountains?' I nod. `The ice was for herders who didn't have enough snow and weren't near the rivers.' Sansar-Huu pauses to wave and call greetings to a local who trots past, his horse crusted in frozen sweat. I look around me at the snow-scape - silent mountains on all four sides, pack camels weighed down with flour and hay, children skating on the river - and the deep, untrodden snow. I pick up the axe and raise it to my shoulder just as Sansar-Huu turns back to me. `You know,' he says, `the herders are fine now - the snow is here for the winter. Oh, we'll be waiting for spring and warmer weather to arrive - but hopefully not too soon.' Louisa Waugh lives and works in Mongolia and is writing a book about Mongolian life. |
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