Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Home, Home on the Khovu (range/steppe)


So, we promised you some pictures of our time out at the ranch where we've been staying for the past week or so, and here they are.  I'm actually only in town for a few hours; we ran out of water so I came in to get some and to attend to some business things.  I'm leaving in, like, 20 minutes, so I'm going to make this really fast.

Again, I apologize for the quality of the photos - our camera broke a few weeks ago.  We dug out the old one that we were given as a wedding present (thank you, Gabriel!) which miraculously still works.  The height of 2002 technology, I guess, but it's only 2 MP so a lot of these are kind of blurry.  Anyway, enjoy:


We wanted to be relatively close to town as I'm doing some legal work with the registration of our organization, and we found some acquaintances (well, relatives of acquaintances) with a ranch only 9 km from our city!  It's been really good culture study, especially for Bobbie as she hasn't been out of the city as much, and she's loving the time "in the bush," except there aren't any bushes.  And you can actually see the city from where we are, as you can see in the distance in the photo below.  Maybe.  If you squint (you can maybe see the big dome of the sportscenter, at least).



Below is what the inside of the yurt looks like.  Our original plan was to set up our tent, but the family's younger son had just moved back to town and left this yurt empty, and they said we could stay in it.  

You can't see it too well, but right behind Bobbie and the boys there's the stove which dominates the floorspace.  Then around it there is a gas stove (which doesn't work) and some cabinets, and two twin beds.  Bobbie's sleeping in the one on the women's side of the yurt, I'm in the one on the men's side, and the boys are on the floor in sleeping bags, which they think is the greatest thing ever.


 It's also the time of year to plant potatoes, so we went out and helped them with their little (maybe 2-3 acre) plot.  They actually had a tractor come and disc it, which made the planting way easier.  We just had to dig it up some to aerate some more and dig out all the grass that had grown over it, and then dig the holes.  I found it interesting to compare the process with what I remembered from growing up in Bolivia.


 These gloves are definitely much too big! 

Bobbie has loved her time out there, more than me as she has more time with the ladies.  The men are out with the animals during the day, and don't have a horse big enough for me to come with them, so the only time I've been with them is during the morning and evening working around the ranch getting things cleaned up, etc.

Bobbie, on the other hand, has been with the babushka learning how to make sour cream, churning butter, and even learning to milk a cow!  She's surprisingly good at it for only having done it 3 days now.  I'll let her tell you about it next blog (but the main thing is that it makes her fingers hurt, I'll go ahead and tell you).


The boys have turned into quite the little farm helpers, especially Steven.  At first I thought they were just in the way and playing more than working, but then I came back from taking a load of dung down to the pile and they had actually put the next pile in the wheelbarrow already all by themselves!


Not to be outdone, Matthew cranks up the knife-sharpener whetstone.  Too bad we didn't have any knives to sharpen (or any water to actually make it work).


So that's about it.  I'm expecting a call to get going and head back in a few minutes, so I'll leave it at that.  Hope you enjoyed it, and again, thanks for thinking of us.  Culture and language study continues to be a long slog, but hopefully this time in a really good native environment will be good for us.

See you next week with more pictures and descriptions of our time out there!