Bad Tuesday

By Charlie

Readers of The Five Snout Daily will recall that Tuesdays are never good. And this Tuesday is no exception.

Any Mongolian will tell you that Tuesday is “not a good day.” There’s no real explanation that is given or needed. It’s just not a good day.

So far, nothing especially bad has happened. Then again, nothing especially good has happened either. For me, it is one of those days when I’ve asked myself why I spent six month of my life applying for the privilege of spending another 10 months of my life living in an impossible third world country.

We are at the end of nine months in Mongolia. There have been a few good times and a few that were absolutely horrible. On balance, everything is just hard and today has been a good example of that.

As Rachel has reported, we have been blessed with rain. It rained or snowed for most of the past 24 hours. In the dryness of the past few months, I could not have imagined any downside to rain. But now I have realized that UB has no drainage system. There are tremendous rivers running in the streets. Parking lots and unpaved surfaces are in especially bad shape. It is a muddy fucking mess.

The new Mongolian elite in their Land Cruisers think nothing of speeding by pedestrians and spraying them with the muddy water that is collected in the street. Rachel and I were hit this morning with a wave of muddy water kicked up by an SUV. Rachel took more of the spray than I did.

Traffic in general is totally gridlocked. It doesn’t help that a major traffic light that broke a week ago has still not been fixed.

That’s all small stuff compared to the larger problems of a country with a horrible government and no real infrastructure to speak of. When I look around at the urban bleakness, I curse the Soviets. I blame them for the crumbling disaster of so many horrendous apartment buildings. But the Soviets are 16 years in the past and the badness of everyday life can increasingly be blamed on the corruptness and astonishing ineptitude of Mongolia’s current leaders – the politicians, the businessmen, the robber barons.

With everyone out for himself, there is no time for the people’s business. There is no time for building roads or figuring out how best to spend all the money paid to the government in the form of rich mining royalties. In fact, the government has recently approved a “windfall tax” that will increase the already astronomically high taxes on mineral exports. In typical Mongolian fashion, the promise of short-term gains has outweighed the long-term health of the economy and the prospect of future international investment.

This is one of those days when I’d like to shake the entire country – or save myself the trouble and just go back to the good life in America.