A few days in Bayankhongor

After the long and tiring drive to Bayankhongor any aspirations of sleep went out the window as we were taken out to a local restaurant and met some representatives of one of the local partner organisations that ADRA is working closely with on the project. Not the best meal I've ever had - never has a chicken been prayed over so much as we picked our way through a large piece of chicken that was so flat that it appeared it may have been dispatched under the tyre of a truck. But the praying must have worked because our stomachs seemed surprisingly well the next morning.

After our first night in Bayankhongor it was decided that we needed a new hotel. I guess we can’t complain too much as it had a bed (two small single beds), a toilet (a long walk down the corridor – in which I was unsure where a safe surface might be to rest my toothbrush), two windows (one of which had no way of closing until we asked someone to come up with the missing handle and the other which overlooked someone else’s room and we couldn’t close), power sockets (that hung a few inches away from the wall – and required a different adapter to the ones in UB) and it’s very own nightclub downstairs (the music from which could be heard easily above the sound of talking from our neighbours next door). 

Our replacement hotel was certainly an improvement with its own dining room, lounge, bedroom and, of course, ensuite bathroom. There were still a few minor issues but you got the feeling that we had hit lucky and were probably staying in the Ritz of Bayankhongor. We’d just have to turn a blind eye to the similarly hazardous power sockets that hung from the walls and the fact the water heater for the shower/bath was plugged into a socket right over the bath. You were ok as long as you stood to shower at one end of the bath and didn’t splash too much!

We had a fully packed few days visiting local government officials, schools and hospitals meeting various people who are involved in the project. We attended one workshop organised by ADRA where parents of children with cognitive disabilities were able to gain information on some of the services they were entitled to. In the part of the session that we attended, the 20 parents had split into groups and were presenting feedback to the workshop as to some of the problems they face. It was heartbreaking to hear some of the issues they faced in a society where it is of great shame and embarrassment to have a child with a cognitive disability such as autism, downs syndrome or cerebral palsy.  This was a throw-back to the communist defectology model of seeing disability where children such as these were seen and referred to as defective, abnormal or feebleminded. Some of the problems that were common to all groups in the workshop included isolation and the feeling that their child was the only one, unemployment as they have to remain at home to care for their child, embarrassment and shame, divorce because their husbands could not accept their child and a belief that this disability had been caused by sub-standard care during child birth.

All of the officials that we had met seemed to recognise that one of the biggest challenges they faced was the lack of information regarding cognitive disabilities and the ability to recognise this in a child at an early enough age so as to start early intervention treatment for these children when it will bring the greatest benefits not just for the children but also their families and society at large. It was exciting to see so many people eagerly awaiting the development of these early diagnosis tools and the effective referral system that the ADRA project was developing.

The drive back to Ulaanbaatar today proved even longer than the drive out there - just as well we left early at 7:00 as we finally made it to our hotel at 22:00!