Emily’s Reporter’s Notebook: Sounds & Silences

Baasankhuu Choijinkhuu lost 70 animals in a 2010 dzud, a severe weather event caused when a dry summer is followed by a harsh winter. Photo Credit: Emily Kwong

By Emily Kwong

I’ve heard, “How’s the weather?” is a boring question to ask someone. But after two months in Mongolia, that notion couldn’t be further from the truth. In a country where two in five people herd livestock, weather commands the clock with the totality of an orchestra conductor. Weather is downright fascinating.

The sun swings around the earth, and the schedules of herders follow like shadows. It’s not a 9-to-5 job. It’s a 24/7 job with jolts of busyness wedged between long periods of waiting. Waiting for the snow to melt. For the goats to move from one pen to another. For the newborn lamb to walk upon his shaky, woolly legs.

The temperament of herding families reminds me of fishing families in Alaska, where I previously reported at KCAW. Both work hard and exercise patience. And both know ultimately that their fate is intertwined with nature. Here, the weather is worth reporting about.

These families don’t exactly have an address. They're nomadic. In the course of many road trips to visit them, I’ve waited out two flat tires, one busted transmission, a car stuck in the snow and another that wouldn’t start in the middle of the desert. A solution was always found. I now consider waiting a small price for the chance to truly meet herders where they are and ask them what they’ve seen. “How’s the weather?” is a gateway question to deeper answers: about dust storms and desertification, pollution and pneumonia, mining and migration. We get into it, sometimes. Other times, we sit in silence and drink milk tea.

I hope that in creating these pieces, we can convey even a small slice of what life is like in Mongolia — the sounds and the silences. All the moments worth waiting for. —EK