Meditations: Nomadism and Us

I don’t know why I have always been fascinated by nomads. As someone who shudders at the thought of packing for anything, and who looks forward to finally never having to move again, nomads shouldn’t necessarily be on my radar. But for whatever reasons, the concept intrigues me, and nomads were what first sparked my interest in Mongolia.

In Ulaanbaatar, I hadn’t gotten to experience nomad culture, and I was still really pretty fuzzy about how the whole thing worked. Even driving up to Darkhad, stopping by gers and checking out the setup, I was confused about the social intricacies of the community, (is there a community?), as well as the practical aspects of moving, staying, etc. But after living with nomads for a few days, I’ve gotten a much better idea of the lifestyle, and I can’t help but compare (or contrast) it to the increasingly mobile lifestyle of the modern American.

In case you’re as clueless as I was, here’s a rundown of how Mongolian nomadism works (as I’ve seen it): The nomads live mostly in gers, huge, warm tents made of a sort of lattice (for the walls), and stakes (holding up the roof), then covered in thick felt or tarp. The gers have a stove and basic furniture, like beds, stools, and trunks (the trunks in beautiful bright colors with painted patterns). The entire ger, including most of the furniture, can be easily disassembled and loaded onto oxcarts or jeeps. In areas with taiga (thick pine forest), there are also quite a few log cabins, though the furniture is still ger-style furniture. Ger or cabin, the homes generally only have one room (or sometimes an additional kitchen/food storage room), and people sleep on the beds that double as couches or on the ground. Families live all together in the single room, sometimes including grandparents, which means as many as six or seven people may live in one space. The gers/cabins seemed to come mostly in groups of two to four, in a large extended family unit. The family I lived with had two cabins and three gers, along with a storage shed.  I think most of the family was descended from the patriarch, a medicine man who shared his cabin with his daughter and her children (and for the week, with me and Prof C). Nomads move one to four times a year; they pack up their entire ger and carry it all to a different location. I can’t say “new location,” because they sometimes have established spots for each season, from a mile to ten miles away. A winter home by the mountains (as protection from the wind), a summer home on the steppe (fewer flies), etc. This way the herds get fresh grass, and people live as comfortably as they can in the extreme conditions. Though people live in extended family units, they are also part of a much larger community, including all the families in the area. To find someone’s ger, you can stop by another ger in the area and ask; they know where it is and can point you in the right direction. People often ride (or perhaps drive) to other gers in the area to have tea with their friends or help with big projects (building a new cabin would be an example). They enjoy stopping by and spending time with their friends as much as we do, and in the evenings a whole family may play volleyball or frisbee, often with friends from other families. I’m not sure if the whole community moves to the same new area for each season, or if one’s winter friends tend to differ from one’s summer friends. In any case, it seems like if you know most people in your area, and you’re only moving a few miles away, you’ll know most people in that area, too. So that is Mongolian nomadism in a nutshell.

I did not expect the nomadic lifestyle to feel so settled. Their gers are very homelike, very lived in, and are decorated not only with orange furniture, but also with photos of themselves and family members; many nomads also have shrines of some sort, with heirlooms (snuff boxes and precious bowls), religious pictures, offerings, and other religious paraphernalia, like scarves or fake flowers. Most gers have solar panels (or occasionally miniature windmills) that provide electricity, as well a satellite dish and a TV inside. They are warm when it’s cold outside, and there is almost always someone inside, usually stirring up something delicious. Nomads don’t have a lot of stuff, but this means they use all their stuff. No boxes of clothes they never wore or shoes they forgot they had or books they will eventually someday maybe read.

So I’m already starting to compare it to the American life. As Americans, we value the acquisition of stuff, and acquisition is part of what makes a house a home. At weddings and housewarmings and baby showers, people receive bundles of gifts from Ikea or Pottery Barn, as if these things might all add up to feeling settled and complete. Having vases and martini glasses and blenders is supposed to make one feel at home. But how does stuff that one doesn’t use and is generally unfamiliar with make a home? How do two sets of china and a big screen TV increase the utility and familiarity of a house? It seems these things just take up space, and although champagne flutes might be useful, honestly, what should matter is with whom you’re drinking the fizz and how you feel about them, not that you might have to use plastic cups. Part of this, I’m sure, is the commercial, material culture we live in, in which somehow we are convinced we need all this stuff that we simply do not need. Period. Or worse, we’re convinced we need stuff that we don’t even really want. And I think I’ll probably return to that concept in another post.

But here’s something else I find interesting. I have my own perspective on this, influenced by the school-a-year plan I seem to have fallen into. As Americans, and especially as young Americans, we move a lot. I might be an excessive case, but even so, kids move to go to college, then move for their summer jobs, move into a different space (if not community) each year, then move when they graduate, and then probably move a couple more times before they’re thirty (especially with the new trend of travel and post-college gap years in the form of Teach for America, WorldTeach, etc.) Yet because we live in nice sturdy apartment blocks or houses with yards, somehow this doesn’t qualify us as nomadic. I’m going to point something out: We are sort of nomads. Moving is often seen as a sign of success; people who choose to stay in their hometowns are often looked down upon by those who leave. (A friend of mine who left her Midwestern city to go to Vandy lamented that most people from her high school stayed home after graduation and went to state schools. She insisted that they just weren’t trying to make something of themselves, and though I pointed out that maybe they preferred familiarity and family to society’s definition of “success,” she didn’t buy it.) It’s not just individuals, it’s the whole community who moves, but unlike Mongolian nomads who still remain as a single community, we split up into separate sections and establish “homes” with entirely new communities, practically every couple of years.

Apart from just the physical packing and storing and unpacking and repacking that accompanies moving every year into new housing, young adults in America also have to pack and unpack something much more significant: a community. This might not happen every year (unless you’re crazy and switch schools all the time………) but it still happens sort of frequently. Kids go to a college and find a new social network. Then they graduate and find another social network, based on a few existing friendships, but also on new co-workers, new neighborhoods, new haunts, etc. A few times a year, they might go home to visit their families and old friends, but generally, they stick with their newly established networks. Then they get married, maybe have children, move a couple new times, and though they retain some old friends, the scene of their social interactions completely changes. And this is still seen as part of a non-nomadic, “stationary” sort of lifestyle. Hm.

So here’s the thing: Mongolian nomads have communities, they stick with their families, and over the course of their lifetime, though life changes in natural ways (growing up, getting married and getting their own ger, having children, having grandchildren, etc), they get to stay with mostly the same people, utilize mostly the same skills, and live on the same areas of land. They understand their community and land in a way that many Americans don’t get to. (Hey, where does your water come from? Which direction is north from your house? Which plants are naturally endemic to your area? Which nations settled your land, and in what order?) It seems to me that nomadic lifestyles, in which people move locations frequently but retain the same (few) possessions and the same (many) relationships, are actually a lot more settled than the socially mobile modern America. Nomads move their location, but they keep the things that are really supposed to add value to life: People, a job, a lifestyle, and a home.

Am I way off-base here? Am I overestimating American mobility? (Probably based on my own experiences.) Am I glorifying a traditional culture that has its own hardships and ought to progress in our direction? Is the American method of finding new locations and, consequently, social circles really that bad, or is it a great way to experience different environments, encounter new worldviews, and adjust one’s network to one’s (ever changing) personality? Is the American system actually an advancement over either nomadic cultures or completely sedentary cultures in which people never traveled farther than one’s village? Or have we lost something precious in our quest for better-more-faster-greener?

Regarding just American mobility, do new inventions like Skype and email, as well as the ease of air travel, facilitate people moving while not feeling like they are losing their old communities? Or are Skype and email and air travel increasingly important because we are moving more often? Is either the mobile lifestyle (looking for financial/career success and new experiences, and trying to change or improve the world) or the sedentary lifestyle (like the Midwesterners who never left) superior? Or are they just different lifestyles for different people? If so, does our culture really view them as such? Should we be making more of an effort to preserve our communities and social networks, rather than go where the best career prospects are? Or does success take precedence over relationships? Does moving even really interfere with relationships at all, now that we have all the modern conveniences of instant communication across distances? I could go on and on… And I might return to this later, having thought about these questions and probably a bunch of others I haven’t even gotten to.