|
Polo described the Mongolians at the pinnacle of their power. Since then, this proud people have often been at the mercy of its two giant neighbors, China and Russia. The Ming chased Kublai's hapless descendants out of China less than 80 years after his death, and the once subject Chinese later came to dominate their former overlords. Mongolia eventually became part of the Soviet bloc when it installed the first communist government outside Russia, in 1924. The country only became truly independent when the communist regime failed in 1990 and a democratic government took its place. But the heavy influence of its neighbors endures. Just about everything the Mongolians buy, from fruit to refrigerators, is imported from China. The country still uses the Cyrillic alphabet imposed by the communists, and a statue of Lenin has survived off the main square in Ulan Bator. (Another of Stalin suddenly vanished from the capital, only to resurface a few years later as the centerpiece of a new disco.) The bitter experiences of the past have left Mongolians with a visceral distrust of foreigners and a determination to carve out their own place in the world.
The fortune underground could be the key to Mongolia's independence, development, everything. There is a buzz of excitement sweeping across this country that something historic is about to happen, and nowhere is that more evident than at Oyu Tolgoi. At the site's exploration shaft, manager André Zeelie looks on proudly as six Mongolian miners clamber into a giant steel bucket, drills at the ready and headlamps switched on, and descend into the darkness. It's a heart-numbing 220 meters to the bottom, but they'll spend eight hours a day in this narrow crevice, chipping samples from the ocean of ore that could be the foundation of Mongolia's resurrection. I mutter to Zeelie, a South African, that I doubted I could stomach the depths. He cracks a crusty Popeye grin. "Once you go down, you always want to go down," he says. "It gets into your blood." As the miners vanish from sight, he waves his hand over the shaft. "This is a bright future for Mongolia," he says. "The wealth can develop the country. They are good and hardworking people. They deserve it."
Enter the "Ninjas"
During a lunch of fried noodles with camel meat in the dusty outpost of Tsogt-Ovoo in the Gobi Desert, four men rush into the restaurant, their hair so encrusted with sand that it is frozen into fairy-tale peaks and swirls. A traveling companion, Munkhuu, chats with one of them and he reveals their identity—"ninjas!" No, not the mysterious men in black made famous by martial-arts movies. In Mongolia, ninjas are gold prospectors. Their nickname, the tale goes, comes from the green plastic pans they use to sift for gold. When the prospectors carry them strapped to their backs, the locals think they resemble Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Thousands of ninjas are scattered around the country, hoping to find their own private chunk of the new El Dorado. But when we press one of the ninjas for more information, he becomes suspicious and his eyes shift nervously. "No, I'm not a ninja," he lies. But it's too late. He has already coughed up the location of their camp. We jump into our Land Cruiser and dash across the desert in search of it.
Some 20 km later, we come upon a motley collection of 10 gers dotting a rocky hillside. A half-dozen ninjas, some with their heads wrapped in scarves to protect them from the swirling sand, bend over a narrow shaft and lift a plastic bucket of ore to the surface with a red cord. The shaft, 18 meters deep and carved out of the rock with a generator-powered drill, is no place for the faint-hearted. One of their group recently lost a leg after tumbling to the bottom. But the lure of gold—and a dearth of other opportunities—keeps them digging. Usukhbayar, 36, has been searching for gold in these dry hills for two years. He's uncovered petrified wood, turtle fossils, human skeletons—the remains, he believes, of victims of communist purges—and just enough gold to support his family. Sometimes, he says, he gets lucky and finds $1,000 worth of gold in one day, but most of the time, he earns little or nothing. "I don't want to be here. It's hard work and my health is suffering," he says. "But I'm trapped. There aren't any jobs." He looks at me, pushes his blue floppy hat back from his forehead, and smiles. "You know, the Americans started this way, digging for gold in the ground. We have it better than they did, though. We have mobile phones, and cars to take us back to town."
In the grassy valley of Zaamar west of Ulan Bator, the spirit of the 1849 California Gold Rush is indeed alive. Here the rolling hills are covered with gers and abandoned mining shafts. Dozens of prospectors crowd a narrow stream, bent over their water- and mud-filled pans searching for tiny crumbs of gold. About 7,000 ninjas live in Zaamar, many of them unemployed with no place else to go, others highly trained professionals fed up with low salaries. An entire community has developed here, with ger bars, cafés and shops selling everything from hiking boots to cans of tuna to German wine (a bargain at $4 a bottle). Most shopkeepers also collect gold from the prospectors. "We Sell Ice Cream and Buy Gold," one ger advertises. They wrap the pinhead-sized granules in scraps of paper and store them in simple wooden boxes. Merchants called "pushers" then make the rounds among the local shops each day to buy up the gold. Where they take it, nobody knows. The price is a hefty $500 an ounce—a lot of dough in a country where the average government job, if you can find one, pays $100 a month.
The rewards enticed Bolor-Erdene, 23, to take a year off from his studies at an Ulan Bator university to seek his fortune. He digs in sunglasses and a black leather jacket surrounded by about 50 other ninjas, all furiously shoveling holes into the muddy hillside. Exhausting 10-hour days are the norm here, but Bolor-Erdene sometimes slaves much longer if he's lucky enough to stumble onto a rich find. He once went three nights without sleep excavating one shaft that netted him $400. Despite the hardships, Bolor-Erdene believes the life of a ninja is his only choice. With tuition of $350 and few well-paying jobs available, Zaamar's gold is his only hope of finishing his degree. "When you go home, you feel like a totally different person because you have some money," he says. "But you have to be tough. This isn't the life you want to pursue for very long."
|
