Terrible hygiene and thieves

Day: 281-282

Sunrise:
05:55/05:53

Sunset:
20:44/20:46

Total kilometers:
1361

Soil condition:
Ice, snow

Temperature – Day (maximum):
3°C

Temperature – day (minimum):
minus 6°C

Temperature – Night:
minus 8°C

Latitude:
51°39’155”

Longitude:
099°21’977”

Maximum height:
1858 m above sea level

After a pleasant night, I am greeted by another cold, windy day with light snowfall. I make hot water for tea with my little stove. My breakfast consists of the remaining white bread and half a bar of chocolate. Then I tighten the storm bracing of the tent that the strong wind has loosened overnight and improve the wooden floor of the awning.

The morning flies by. Tsaya comes by and invites me to dinner. “Ultsan shot a gazelle when he was looking for some lost reindeer. Come over, warm up and eat your fill,” she says.

Before I leave, I check the tent and place a few stones and wooden poles on the fabric that curves outwards as a snow guard to be on the safe side. I make my way to Tsaya and Ultsan’s tipi with a clear conscience. Take a piece of the tongue,” the hunter offers me. It doesn’t take long for Saintsetseg, Suren and Tso to step into the tepee and settle down on the ground. Tsaya immediately hands them the large bowl filled to the brim with cooked meat and bones. Everyone grabs it. The hygienic conditions are a real disaster, but I don’t mind any more. However, the dry climate also contributes to the fact that bacteria cannot multiply well. Everyone uses the same knife to cut meat from their bones. Everyone reaches into the bowl with their unwashed hands and digs for the right bone. Some pieces of bone go back into the bowl. Of course, not before they have been vigorously worked over with knives and hands. The meat falls to the floor, is picked up again and put in the mouth or thrown back into the bowl. It seems to taste particularly good the louder you smack your lips and sip your tea. The tea bowls are often cleaned with a newspaper or magazine page lying somewhere in the corner or stuck between the tipi sticks. Usually an old cloth is used that would like to be washed. The dishes, consisting of spoons and small bowls, are cleaned in a bowl of dirty water. Jaundice has a perfect breeding ground here. Gnawed bones are thrown to the dogs or on the ground. Tar residue is also tipped onto the floor and it is no shame to spit on it. It is natural soil where this is possible. Food of any kind is distributed with the hands even if dogs are stroked and patted beforehand. Dough is kneaded with the same hands. I have rarely seen anyone wash their hands before preparing food. Everyone here should be sick, but that’s not the case. It is remarkable what a fantastic defense the human body has.

Physical hygiene is also neglected in the constant freezing temperatures. I have to make sure I don’t get any more dirty myself. The last time I washed my head was four weeks ago. Since moving out of the yurt, we have been living in a tent and tipi. Washing was soon impossible because of the cold. Until then, Tanja and I even made a point of slipping into the sleeping bag in our sleeping clothes. But since then, we have only taken off our pants and crawled into our sleeping bags soiled. It’s too cold to get dressed and undressed at minus 25 °C. Yesterday I looked at my feet for the first time since then and I was downright shocked. “These are supposed to be my dear feet. Impossible. These horrors belong to someone else, but not to the otherwise so clean Denis,” I thought to myself. “They look like the hairy, callused feet of a hobbit from the Lord of the Rings fairy tale,” I muttered, trying to turn the dirty kicks into something that belonged to my body. The people here have always worn the same clothes since we stayed in the camp for six months. Of course, some of them wash them from time to time. The period is likely to be between six weeks and two months. It is impossible to tell exactly because they are stuck in their deel day and night, which does not allow any odors to escape. I think it’s a miracle that the Tuwa don’t suffer from skin diseases. When we traveled from China to Tibet during our big trip and spent a few months there, we also experienced similar hygienic conditions. Of course, if everything is frozen and you don’t have a washing machine, comforters, pillows and the like can’t be cleaned. The cold and dry air seems to preserve everything.

Old Suren is chopping a bone into pieces with a knife to get at the tastiest part, the bone marrow. After laboriously hacking it free, she slurps it out. The others also grab the knife one after the other to get at the marrow. “Here’s a piece,” says Ultsan’s brother Hoo, handing me a limp, worm-like piece of bone marrow. “Thanks, but I’m not really into bone marrow,” I say kindly. Knowing that he wanted to do something good for me. After Saintstseg has slurped up one of the bones, she throws the rest to one of the dogs. He grabs the empty bone gratefully and takes it to his sleeping area. “Make sure you get out,” says Hoo in a sharp tone of voice, whereupon the young dog bolts outside. During the spring, some dogs are doing quite well. Depending on how successful their masters are at hunting. Tsaya’s and Ultsan’s three dogs are carrying around real ball bellies. “Would you like some more of the meat broth?” asks Tsaya. “I’d love to,” I reply and hold out my empty bowl to her. Hungry, slurping according to local custom, I empty the contents.

After eating, I lie down on one of the simple, low wooden plank beds. “Get some rest,” Ultsan says caringly and adjusts a wooden stake so that I can put my feet on it. I enjoy the crackling fire in the old, battered tin stove next to me and look out through the opening of the tipi onto the dry grass. After six months, we are no longer strangers here. On the contrary, we are somehow part of it. We are and will always be strangers, but we are accepted. We have achieved a so-called special status. No one is shy towards us. Mutual interaction is relaxed. We are allowed to photograph and film without objection. However, the danger lies in the long stay that we as photographers no longer recognize the extraordinary. Everything seems so normal. At least that’s how it seems to me.

After an hour I say goodbye again as I don’t feel comfortable leaving my tent unattended for so long. “If you’re cold, you can sleep with us tonight,” Tsaya offers me again. “Thanks, but if I put the hot water bottle in my sleeping bag, it’s nice and warm. If I get cold, I’ll be happy to come,” I reply.

Even from a distance, I can make out the dark lines to the left and right of the overhanging tent door. “This can’t be happening!” I shout and start sprinting towards the tent. The lures actually managed to open the zippers of the front and back doors so that my stones and wooden poles were simply bypassed. With my heart pounding, I rush home to see if anything is missing again. “You fucking bait! Uuuaaahhhhh!” I yell, beside myself at having been tricked again. Once again, chaos reigns in the tent. Two of the three food boxes are open. I quickly realize that another bag of cookies is torn and empty. Condensed milk packaged in plastic and other cookies also packaged in odorless packaging are still untouched. The four-legged lawbreakers, on the other hand, have sunk their teeth into a bag of semolina. But they obviously didn’t like the contents. The fine semolina is scattered everywhere. The moist floor and all the food in the box is full of fine semolina grains. A huge mess. But what’s even worse is that the bottom box, which contained two bags weighing around 15 kilograms, was pulled out and completely empty. All our meat supplies, about 12 kilograms, are gone. “Uuuaaahhhhhh!” I roar again with rage and would love to turn this deceitful bastard’s collar around. “What will Tanja and Bilgee say? It was her flesh. Since it was goat meat and I don’t tolerate it well and Tanja, as a former vegetarian, will be able to cope with the loss, it doesn’t affect us that much. But because I wasn’t able to protect our supplies and know how important meat is for our bilgee, I realize what a huge gap this breach in our food logistics has created. Thank goodness I hung the bag of dried meat on a tent pole directly under the tent roof. The cheeky four-legged friends did not achieve this.

After I have tidied up my fabric house, I go outside and reinforce the fabric of the tent edge with more stones and wooden poles. I’m sure there’s really no way of penetrating it now. The zippers of the entrances are fitted with a loop through which I pull a peg and ram it into the ground. “The strongest mutt won’t be able to open that,” I think. Satisfied, I go to my castle, put on my deel because of the cold, sit down in my camp chair and start writing.

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