“There Won’t Be A Cake Here, Will There?”
by the Mama
Orkhon, Mongolia
Birthday Breakfast
Under the orange-painted rafters you awoke, the glow form the firebox casting colour on your cheeks. Five years old in Mongolia.
Fortuitously for you, yesterday there had been cause for a contingent to make a trip to Dharkan, where a cake had been purchased, and it was produced by a beaming Martin and long-suffering Minja at BREAKFAST-time.
Birthday Bath
Being such an auspicious occasion we made use of a tin bath spied behind a shed. While the fire was heating up, we pumped bore water across the corral. This was then heated basinful by basinful until there was enough for Birthday Girl and Co to enjoy their one-and-only bath in over two weeks. The effort involved could be reason why it takes such an occasion to bother!
Birthday Bash
But there was yet another treat in store. Dinner by candlelight. And not because it was your birthday! A storm blew up and took the powerlines down *somewhere*, leaving us in darkness, complete darkness. (Side track: the night is black here, truly black, the stars shining down seem so far away, deep in the darkness).
our two gers
Tomorrow everyone would be saying, “Oh that wasn’t really a storm,” but at the time they were racing around tying down gers, pulling protective covers across the roofs, and in the case of our “big ger” (the one with five beds as opposed to the one that houses three beds), hanging a jar of water from the ceiling rafters. Why? Water is heavier than wind and so that 700ml was going to ground our ger no matter what size gale blew.
“Unscientific!” you say?
“Superstitious!” you chide?
But you know what? It worked! <wink> Our relatively new (only three years old) ger did not blow away. Mind you, neither did the small one, even without a pickled chilli jar of water to stabilise it. But then, I guess that ger has seen many a strong wind in its over-sixty year lifespan. Having been built for our hostess’s grandmother by her father when she got married, there was no concern expressed that it might not survive a little sand-and-sleet flurry.
So with dreams of “maybe some snow in the morning”, your fifth birthday drew to a close, once again the fire roaring, with you snuggled under the covers, listening to the straps flap against the side of the tent.
Tags: children, food, health, housing, parenting, postcard: Mongolia, tradition, weather
rayres
happy (belated) birthday T*5*!!! 😀 that’s a pretty unique birthday for a little kiwi girl, especially hoping your house didn’t blow away in the night 😉
Wow, a birthday to never forget………we thought and spoke of you on your special day, T5. Can’t really believe you are FIVE now;-) Belated Happy Birthday from all the Edsxxxxxx
Some gorgeous photos in this post. I especially love the one of the two gers under the starlit sky.