Grants

Amy Bartle - Young Leader

Life in the Tsataan community is very different to in England. For them, childhood is brief and filled with dangers. During my expedition to Mongolia in the summer of 2008 I briefly experienced what life is like for these people and how they cope with the extreme way of life that they experience on the outermost border of Mongolia. In this project I am going to look at daily life for the people of the Tsataan community, particularly for the children.

The extreme cold that I experienced in this region was unlike anything else I have ever felt. The thought that these people endured this unpredictable weather everyday of their life and young children as well. They seemed to not feel the cold as we did and wanted to play for hours.

The children of the community have a very difficult life and appear to have to grow up very quickly. Having the opportunity to teach and in turn learn from these wonderful children was quite amazing. Although we did not have very much time with the children I truly felt that we had spent a fantastic afternoon with both sides having learnt a lot about the other.

It was made apparent right from the very beginning of our work in the community that even though the children were young they had many responsibilities to consider. These children were frowned upon for playing with us in the snow as the community was far too busy for playing. This came as a bit of a culture shock for me. I found it quite difficult to accept that children as young as my sisters at home had to work hard so that t heir community could continue to live. Only allowing children off of their duties for educational purposes was difficult to understand as it seemed like a hard life for a child to follow. However, whilst living with the families it was obvious that they were all very happy together and treated the children with nothing but love, care and affection. For me this experience has really proven to me that in England we allow our children to behave as children for a great deal of time and often do not give them any responsibilities until they are quite old. It occurs to me that it is no bad thing to encourage children to have a role in the running of the household and community as this in turn leads to a closer knit family. Which brings me onto my next point, One of the most wonderful things to see in the families was the closeness they had and the amount of time they spent together. This was probably only due to the living arrangements but it was so nice to see a family together, as it should be. It is rare to see such families in Western Countries as there are far too many distractions, the silence and the isolation gave the families the time together that so many westerners crave.

In this picture you can just see the remainder of the snow we experienced during our trip, unfortunately my camera was struggling in this region because of the extreme cold.

This picture shows how pleased the children were to have us to teach them and we were ecstatic at having the chance to make a difference to their community.

A Particular favourite of mine. This shows our team members and some young members of the community teaching one another new dance moves.

One of the Tsataan Ortz we stayed in during our community work.

The ortz we stayed in and our host family for the duration of the stay.

Our drivers, wrangler and translator.