Recorded in Bhutan two years ago.... 

The Bumba Chronicles

Photos and translations by B. Solongo

Published April 9 in the UB Post

 

I now lay in Ulaanbaatar on a bed at the Setgeshgui Clinic, a traditional medical center nestled in the center of a bustling apartment complex near Strings, the infamous Mongolian nightclub. The flesh on my back is being sucked up into glass bulbs like inverted droplets of rain onto the surface of a shallow puddle. Next to me is an older Mongolian man, his face ripe with age and his skin leathery with wisdom. Two weeks ago I began getting a traditional Mongolian medical treatment called bumba, and am proud to say that it is working.

I close my eyes and tuck my hands under the blanket that is partially covering my back. The smell of seared newspaper enters my nostrils with every inhale. Exhales are met with a tightness stemming from the glass bulbs on my back. The sound from a boxy television nearby playing a Mongolian opera fills my skull with the low hum of euphonious grandiosity and jittery static. 

A note on my condition: one year ago, I arrived in Delhi, India late at night with an unexpected passenger. My sciatic nerve, the longest single nerve in the human body running from the lower back through the buttocks and down to each foot, throbbed with every step I took. I arrived an hour later in Majnukatilla, a Tibetan refugee community on the outside of Delhi, and limped to the nearest hotel.

Instead of resting or visiting a hospital in Majnukatilla like any sane person would have done (although this begs the question on who in their right mind would travel through India anyhow, a question answerable only by those who have embarked), I decided to continue my journey to Dharamsala, seat of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Looking back, this was likely the worst choice to be made considering my condition.

Foolishly (or tenegly in Monglish), I boarded a bus aimed at Dharamsala, a 12 hour headache inducing ride atop crumbling Indian roads hastily laid through the rolling hills of the Punjab. Naturally, the bus got in a wreck, which left me hitchhiking across northern Indian for the next day. As one can image, all this activity only worsened my sciatic nerve injury.

A year has passed since the India injury and about once a week, I’ll wake up with my right leg tingling in pain. On these days, I usually gimp around as if I were suffering from a leg length discrepancy. Two weeks ago, on one of the reoccurring leg injury days, I broke down and asked my students if there was a traditional way to fix my nerve problem.

One or my students, let’s call her Sunny because that’s what she likes to be called, suggested I visit the Setgeshgui Clinic, the first private clinic to be established in democratic Mongolia. Two day later, I found myself in a waiting room with Soko, another student who would act as my translator.

After a little confusion on my part (making the tough decision between plastic bags to cover one’s feet and sandals six sizes too small) I met with Dr. Khurelbaatar, who quickly surmised after feeling the pulse on both my wrists that something was wrong with my neck (which was affecting my back, which was in turn affecting my leg). He explained through Soko that I needed bumba treatment (known in the West as fire cupping), and would likely need to visit the clinic between five and ten times.

Opening the Setgeshgui Clinic 21 years ago, Dr. Khurelbaatar has successfully treated countless ailments including but not limited to: migraines, hypertension, head trauma, epilepsy, slipped disks, liver and kidney disease, tachycardia, rheumatism, bronchitis, concussions and bladder disorders.

Dr. Khurelbaatar has published a book in Germany about Mongolian hypnosis, Hypnose in Der Mongolei (he’s currently searching for someone to perform a German to English translation), a book of poetry, is a former member of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and is a recipient of the Chingis Khaan Academy Award for his contributions in developing the Mongolian medical sector. As his clinic practices tradition medicine, he receives no funding whatsoever from the Mongolian government. He believes that Western medicine is too quick to resort to medicine and surgery, a belief I too hold after seeing my father suffer after taking the medicine prescribed to him by Western doctors.

Dr. Khurelbaatar sits behind me before the bumba treatment is set to begin. Each treatment is preceded by a chiropractic massage by either Dr. Khurelbaatar or Dr. Davaahuu, a lively man who claims to speak sixteen languages and is instantly recognizable by his crimson nurse’s smock.

As Dr. Khurelbaatar massages the back of my neck, I begin to cringe. He presses his fingers into the apex where my neck meets my back and holds them there, pushing deeper and slightly curving his fingers inward.

“Yooooooooi…” I lament, trying to sound as Mongolian as possible.

A Mongolian woman wearing a threadbare pink deel adorned with bright yellow flowers looks up at me curiously. Next to her, a teenager wearing a New York Yankees hat texts rapidly on his cell phone. Beside the teenager is a man in a white tank top, his eyes caramel and his right shoulder showing the outline of a faded tattoo.

“Pain?” the doctor asks, pressing harder into my neck.

“yes…tii…yoooiii…” I answer.

“Sain (good). Pain sain…” the doctor replies, smiling at the group of now laughing Mongolians flanking the massage area. I laugh with them while wincing.

After the massage, I’m instructed to take off my shirt and lie down on one of the beds. Sometimes I’m assigned to a single bed and others, a double bed which puts me elbow to elbow with another patient. A nurse comes around with something that looks like a deodorant stick but is actually filled with oil. All around me, candles slowly flicker and clients in the adjoined waiting room chat with Dr. Davaahuu, as he gives massages to patients waiting in what strikingly resembles an assembly line.

The nurse applies the oil to my back in two long strips that run parallel. She swiftly lights a piece of newspaper, stuffs it into a glass bulb, screwing it onto my back like a bottle cap. I can feel the skin on my back quickly suck into the bulb as the smoke whittles away, consuming all the oxygen in the glass bulb. The end result feels similar to suction cups, and while it might look painful, it’s absolutely painless.

Bumba, or fire cupping, is a form of traditional medicine practiced that has been practiced from the steppe of Asia to the Pyramids of Egypt. The first record of cupping can be found in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical document that dates to 1550 BC.  The ancient document contains information on everything from contraception to dentistry, and is considered one of the earliest medical texts. Cupping is thought to circulate blood flow to ultimately foster healing in the location in which the cups are placed.

There are three methods of cupping, including dry cupping, in which a glass bulb is used to suction the skin through various methods to create low pressure, fire cupping, which I’ve previous described, and wet cupping or hijama, a Middle Eastern practice in which a laceration is made with a scalpel on the skin before the cup is sunk into place. With the New Age movements of the West, cupping has featured somewhat of a resurgence in people seeking alternative treatments and new silicon cupping has become available.

My bumba session finishes with the hissing sound of the glass bulbs beings pried off my back. The nurse twists one cup at a time, wiping up any excess oil with a tissue as she makes her way down my spine. I am instructed to lie under a red heat lamp for four minutes to facilitate an even distribution of heat. Afterwards I dress and head to Dr. Khurelbaatar’s office, where he does a short hypnosis to finish the practice.

In the two weeks since I began treatment, I have noticed an astounding change in my condition and have felt new energy levels when after leaving the clinic. Bumba is definitely an unconventional treatment, yet so is having a team of doctors slice into my spine to fix the problem manually. Sometimes, there is a reason people have continued to do something for thousands of years, bumba falls into this category.

The Setgeshgui Clinic is located in Byanagol District, 4^th micro region, building no 37. The clinic can also be reached by e-mail, setgeshgui@yahoo.com or by phone, 361491, 91912599.

The Goose is Loose

Published March 15, 2012 in the UB Post 

Ornithologists and birdwatchers rejoice: Bar-headed Geese will be making their way back to the Mongolian mainland soon.

Yet another tie between the icy Buddhist peaks of the Tibet Plateau and Mongolia, the Bar-headed Geese migratory pattern sees the geese flying all the way from the furrowed brow of Russia to the lush tea gardens of India.

One of the highest flying birds in the world, Bar-headed Geese routinely fly over parts of the Himalayas during its migration. The northward migration from India is especially difficult and is carried out in stages. The geese wait until nightfall to begin the climb that lasts for hours. The Bar-headed Geese are aided in their mighty ascent by a larger than average wing area. Scientific studies have also revealed that the geese works more efficiently under low oxygen conditions, giving the geese the power to scale colossal heights and maintain equilibrium while in the air.

Not one to fly clear of controversy, Bar-headed Geese were accused of being early carriers of the H5N1 avian flu after an unexplainable outbreak in the Darkhan Valley of northern Mongolia. With no poultry farms in the area, the geese were immediately suspect and eventually proven guilty.

The mysterious outbreak in Darkhad Valley brought the attention of Ornithologists, who converged upon the region and began tagging the geese. Some of the geese tagged by the scientists were later seen in Somnathpur, India, a distance of nearly 4,780 kilometers.

The geese are now routinely collared, and sightings have continued to increase in India. The geese are a cause for celebration in India as they eat heaps of insects and other pests that can damage crops. Their droppings are an excellent fertilizer and farmer’s are known to protect the birds from hunters.

 Last year, the geese were seen in Chikmalgur, the first time the geese have been seen in the region. In February it was reported that three of the tagged geese were spotted in Nagpur, a distance of over 3,850 kilometers.

India, Mongolia, Russia and China aren’t the only place the geese like to travel. Bar-headed Geese used an ulterior pair of wings to migrate to Great Britain. Originally held in captivity, a few of the geese escaped and formed a band of feral geese. Naturally, the feral geese bred and Bar-headed Geese have been stumbling out of British pubs ever since.

While the geese are far from endangered, they have experienced a drop in numbers from over-hunting, egg collecting and habitat damage. A few conservation measures appear to be working, including the Gharana Wetland Conservation in Jammu, India. While the conservation has been in existence for some time, gun shelling and discharges from across the border usually kept the geese away. With the ceasefire of 2003, the geese immediately took to the wetlands for a little R&R.

As the Mongolian black ice melts, dust storms drift in and the spring yawns awake onto the steppe, the Bar-headed Geese will once again return to land of Chingis to breed, feed and take a breather until migration season comes. 

Trying on a new pair of shoes at Narantuul

Narantuul

Ready for winter

Terej

Terej

Before

after

Favorite graffiti

Outside my window before pollution

Outside my window after

MYIS students and me

Tsargaan Tsar

A picture of me from the Mongolian Lunar New Year celebration taken on the 24 of February 2012

Dust in the wind

Published Friday March 2nd in the UB Post

Cheap and easiest way to get to America? Grab an umbrella and wait for a Mongolian dust storm.

In the spring 2001, a particularly cantankerous dust storm hitchhiked its way from the dunes of of Sainshand, drifted across the Pacific, plummeted down the icy British Columbia coast, scaled the Colorado Plateau and finally landed in Arizona, where many believed the sun had set precipitately.

The dust storm had traveled over 11,000 km, originating from a severe drought in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and northwestern China.

Severe dust storms are nothing new to the world. From the Sahara to the Middle East, dust storms have routinely upset the daily commerce and goings of humanity, killings hundreds and confusing thousands.

The United Nations newsletter reported in June 2009 that 52 people were killed and 320,000 animals lost their lives in a particularly severe two day dust storm in Mongolia in the spring of 2008.  Just last year, Australia suffered from the worst dust storm the country has seen in 70 years. This year, a dust storm in Riyadh, the largest city in Saudi Arabia, completely blackened the sky during the afternoon.

With the growing power of Asian dust storms over the last century, researchers have been pointing climate change as the root cause. Powerful and enduring, dust storms from Mongolia frequently travel as far away as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

Climate change worldwide is making Mongolia hotter and more arid. Since the 1940s, the mean temperature in Mongolia has increased 3.4° Fahrenheit, this when compared to the global mean of 1° represents a dramatic increase in the given the time frame. Further, with strange rain patterns over the last few decades, soil erosion has become rampant on fragile pasture lands.

The combination of the increase in temperature and erosion of the soil are large factors in the potency of spring dust storms. Another player is the reduction of rivers in Mongolia due to glacial drop offs, which is speeding the process of desertification.

Called ‘yellow dust’ by the locals, the dust blowing from Mongolia and Northwestern China creates environmental and health problems for the inhabitants across Asia. Studying the contents of the dust, toxicologists have discovered that yellow dust has 16 times the metallic substances of normal dust.

Yellow dust can cause problems with human skin by activating the cellular detoxification system, essentially changing the arrangement of proteins present in ordinary cellular demarcation. In effect, yellow dust can modify the way human cells divide. It can also negatively affect human respiratory systems and produce bothersome lacrimations.

To combat desertification, the Ministry of Nature and Environment of Mongolia has partnered with other countries to set up a monitoring system for dust storms, arrange plans of action in case of a severe storm and developing forecasting methods. Other ways to combat desertification, as established by the UN, ask countries to prevent the over-cultivation of the soil, limit overgrazing and impart legislative action to prevent desertification.

Generally, Ulaanbaatar experiences 15-30 days of extreme winds, a time ripe for dust storms. Experts advice locals to carry masks designed to filter out small particles. They also suggest carrying water, as the high temperatures associated with dust storms can quickly dehydrate.

If a dust storm is visible on the horizon, getting away from the storm as quickly as possible is a good option. However, with winds traveling upwards of 75 mph, getting away can be tricky.  If in a vehicle, it’s a safe bet to pull to the side of the road and let the storm pass through.

Most important, if the dust storm has already landed, it’s safer to stay put and take cover rather than move around, due to issues in visibility and the potential for flying objects. 

Dust storms will be here soon, but a little prevention can go a long way. Through the efforts of the Mongolian government and environmental scientists, dust storm research and prevention might finally get the waft it needs to take effect. Until then, grab a mask or an umbrella. 

Native Americans linked to the Altai Region

Published on Friday Feb 3

Sometimes Jesuit priests just get it right.

In the 1580s, Jesuit priest José de Acosta published an article hypothesizing that that Native Americans reached the North America continent through some type of land bridge in eastern Russia.

Nearly 450 years later, his hypothesis holds and has recently been aided by DNA fingerprinting linking Native Americans to the Altai Region of Siberia.

Native Americans, originally called “Indians” by Columbus, who was a tad confused as to what continent he had landed on, have been linked to the Asiatic region for centuries now. Yet disputes over when they crossed the Bering Strait, which group of Asians they were related to, and which group was the first to cross, continued to battle it out in the footnotes and dry pages of academia.

The theory of the Settlement of the Americas, which postulates that Native Americans crossed from Asia to America 16,500 and 13,000 years ago, has been widely accepted since the 1930s.  The theory revolves around the idea that Siberia was once connected to Alaska by a strip of land called the Bering land bridge.

The Clovis Indians, with their infamous Clovis point arrowheads, were thought to have been the first to migrate from Asia to America at the end of the last glacial period.

 By the 1950s, many anthropologists and archeologists had started citing blood work as evidence of the theory of the Settlement of the Americas. It was discovered that blood type O was predominant in South America, while blood type A was predominant in North America among indigenous peoples. Anthropologists also used skull analysis to link Native American and Asian groups.

In 1973, British scientist and host of the show The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski, speculated that there must have been two different times of migration to the Americas. He claimed the first group to come was the type O blood group, while type A followed in the coming years. This evidence of earlier habitation was quickly supported by sites found in areas across North and South America. The advent of carbon dating further dappled the Settlement theory, revealing that some Native American tools were upwards of 25,000 years old.

While the multiple migration theory has since been accepted, the debate regarding Native American Asiatic origins has waged on into the 21^st century.

A recent publication by a team of University of Pennsylvania anthropologists published in the American Journal of Human Genetics has a good chance to cool the century-long debate.

By looking at genetic variations in Altaian populations, the team discovered a unique mutation in two types of DNA shared by Native Americans and Southern Altaians.

Anchoring a border between Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, the Altai Republic holds a diverse past has been a meeting place between various ethnic groups for thousands of years. The Altai Mountains span from Russia to the Gobi Desert, and it is thought that the region is the original location of the Turkic body of languages.

Working with Ludmilla Osipova, a researcher at the institute of Cytology and Genetics in Russia, the team has discovered similarities between Native America and South Altaians in mitochondrial DNA, passed maternally, and the Y chromosome, which is passed paternally.

The group collected 1,500 DNA samples from Native Americans and 750 samples from people in the Altai region. The findings are highly accurate given the large number of gene markers examined for the study.

While there have been smaller studies conducted since the end of the 1990s showing genetic correlations between people of the southern Siberian regions and Native Americans, this particular study is unique in the amount of samples taken. “We’re using hundreds of markers to find genetic regions [which means] the mutation we get is much larger,” said Theodore Schurr, one of the study’s authors.

The team hopes to conduct further studies in the region using high-resolution methods. By potentially ending a century old debate, further research can now be undertaken in the Altai regions of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China, shedding more light on the relation between this unique region of Asia and the origins of Native Americans.