It's 9:30 at night. Marc just got finished delivering a lecture and Q&A on environmental issues to a group of primary/secondary teachers at a training conference. After the lecture, we handed out illustrated textbooks in the local language on a range of subjects from basic science, to health, to history. It's amazing that these simple texts we gave them are the best materials available and rather than one copy per student- there may be only one to three copies for entire schools.
I joined Marc for the trip to discuss our work for the coming weeks. Tomorrow we'll be returning to Zhiduo and then going on to Suojia Township (another 7 hour drive on gravel roads to the west) to monitor wildlife with a Nature Reserve manager. Following that trip, I'll be building prototypes of predator-proof corrals and bear-proof storage containers while Marc finishes up an article he's writing for Mountain Research and Development Journal. We'll also be planning for our meeting later this month with the Nature Reserve, Academy of Science, another NGO and the community. At the meeting, we'll be working on issues like human-wildlife conflict and community co-management of the environment, as well as planning for the next three years of joint work in the area. During all of this, we're also conducting village doctor training, continuing with the grazing study, monitoring clinics, and working on school funding.
To backtrack a little, I just got back on Monday afternoon from a trip to two villages, Jiongqu and Muqu, where we completed the clippings for this year's portion of the grazing study. It was a beautiful trip- 6.5 hours out on gravel roads to Wild Ass Valley (named for the Tibetan Wild Ass or Equus kiang). We arrived at dusk and were invited into the village leader's home for a supper of beef (yak) and noodle stew. This is a great dish- it tastes just like grandma's chicken and dumplings except the noodles are a little less fluffy. After dinner, we sat by the stove and talked about the bear situation and what could be done to protect people's winter food supplies. Towards the end of the conversation, the dogs outside started going wild. A few seconds later one of the girls rushed into the house talking excitedly. Everybody jumped up and ran out, so I followed them to see what was going on. Out under the moonlight on the grassland, a large dark shape with rounded shoulders was shuffling away from the house. Everyone in the household insisted that it was a bear- but I didn't get a good look at it. We eventually went back into the house and made our beds around the stove and went to sleep. That night I dreamt that grizzlies were breaking into the house- but the old lady ran them off with a pocket knife!
The next day we ate our breakfast of tsampa (roasted barley flour, yak butter, and milk tea mixed into a paste) and headed out to take our grass clippings. During the day we saw a wolf following one of the sheep herds and a couple of wild ass, but no bear. In the afternoon, I found the remains of a wild ass that had been killed next to a nearby stream. The bones were scattered over a large area and three of the thigh bones had been broken completely in half. Something must have liked the marrow. We worked for about 9 hours on the clippings and endured four separate thunderstorms, two with hail the size of marbles. We trudged back through the rain at about 6:30 and helped herd the yak in as we went. It was a great relief to sit steaming by the stove drinking tea as we dried out. I asked the village leader about the remains, and he said it was killed last year by wolves, but we couldn't figure out what would have broken the thigh bones. We had another dinner of yak and noodles and bedded down for an uneventful night.
The second day in Jiongqu was basically the same. We finished up by early afternoon, packed the truck and hit the road for Muqu. On the way out, our driver informed us that the neighbor had indeed been visited by a bear on the night that we saw the black shape shuffling towards his house- so I guess we were lucky!
The drive from Jiongqu to Muqu was another spectacular one. We saw over 400 blue sheep grazing along the rocky outcrops as well as many more wild ass and a couple of gazelle. The roads out there have improved drastically in the past three years. Last time I was here, the drive to Jiongqu took a couple of days and the so-called road was often just barely an outline of tire tracks across sand, and other times just straight grassland with no indication of a trail. Now it's a clearly visible gravel track. The Muqu road has improved a lot, too, though there's still an hour and a half or so where we drive directly down the riverbed.
At Muqu we stayed in the village school. We cooked ramen noodles for dinner. Afterwards, one of the teachers and our driver and translator played cards till midnight. I eventually joined in and had a great time singing, doing pushups, and carrying my translator around the schoolyard since the loser of each round had to take punishments as assigned by the winner. The next morning, we headed out early to do the grass clippings while the teacher slept in!
Since the plots for the study were close to the school, we ducked inside to wait out yet another thunderstorm. While we were sitting in the classroom (where we also slept) a couple of the children came in to sing to us. Pretty soon a crowd of the kids and a few visiting parents were crammed in and one after another were singing the nomad songs. It was a beautiful moment.
The storm eventually passed and we headed back out, this time followed by a gang of kids. They watched us for a while, but a couple of foreigners clipping grass with scissors out of a 2'x2' plot can only be interesting for so long, so the spectators dissolved into the afternoon. We finished up with a bit of daylight left, so Fiona headed up one of the ridges to look for more blue sheep and some rare bird, but I decided to stay with my friends (the driver, translator, and teacher). I've never played a game of basketball in my life- but that was what was going down- so that's what I did. At 15,000 feet above sea level. In boots and jeans. With three "town-ified" and two wild Tibetans. It was awesome! The court was dirt and gravel and sloped down a few feet from side to side. The backboards were plywood with NBA painted in blue and there weren't any nets.
In a letter to my brother, I described it like this (sorry if redundant, I was too tried to re-type the story):
"It's so much like the res it's crazy- the barren, barely productive
land, the wild dark people with long black hair, the basketball goals
in the middle of nowhere with no nets and a couple of adobe buildings
around. I played my first game of basketball ever a couple of days ago
with 5 nomads. They were crazy, one little guy shoots the ball from
half court by cocking his arm way behind his back and popping it over
his head. The other guy, a tall wild man, would lean back and hold the ball in front
of him in one hand eyeing it up with the hoop before whipping it
behind his head and firing it at the goal. They were all in long pants
and dress shoes with sweaters and blazers. After that, we played the
"hit-the-bottle" soccer game til dark. After dinner, the old man that
oversees the village school joined me and our driver and translator
and one of the teachers for a game of cards. He was great. The
teacher would lay down some crazy move and get ready to rack up his
points and the quiet old man would just slide one card on top and
totally steal it all! We played awhile and the other two guys from the
basketball game joined us and then it was over- those guys went wild
and I hardly ever even made a play. They take great joy in slamming
the cards down on the table as loudly as possible. The winner got to
punish the loser- so we did a lot of pushups, singing, carrying people
around the schoolyard, eating hot-pepperr paste, etc. I was a litttle
nervous at first because I was just learning the complex set of rules
and was prone to miss-play and the tall wild man next to me had a 10
inch dagger in his belt! But they were pretty forgiving with me and I
got away with just singing a few songs, doing some pushups, and
carrying my translator to the basketball goal and back,"
After four days driving over punishing gravel roads and river beds, cutting grass with scissors bent over through thunder and hail storms, playing soccer and basketball at altitudes devoid of oxygen, and doing card games till the wee hours- I was filthy, exhausted, and starving. When I got home I headed straight for the shower house, soaked and scrubbed for nearly an hour, walked home, ate dinner, built a roaring fire in my stove, and went sound to sleep.
Now, after three day's recovery doing office work, I guess I'm ready to hit the grassland again tomorrow afternoon. I'll try to send an update more promptly when I get back from the next trip.
Day 35. In Transit.
Just got back to Zhiduo a few minutes ago. Going to eat a quick bite of lunch and then head out to Suojia for wildlife monitoring.
