Board Shorts

Monday, July 20, 2009

Look at all the little white dots on the green land. Do you know what they are? These are the traditional homes of the Mongolian people. They are called "gers". Here is a picture of one being assembled close to my apartment. A ger can be quickly put together in only 30 minutes.
Here is what a ger looks like when completed. Many people in both the city and country still live in these types of homes. Imagine the inside of the ger... 2 beds along the sides, a cooking fire in the center with a table behind, and a large storage box for important family valuables at the back of the ger.

These gers remind me of the Native American teepees. Both the Mongolian people and many of the Native Americans needed to be able to frequently move to follow the herds of animals, and so they needed homes that could be easily taken down to move to another place. Do you see the sheep and goats in front of these gers?
They will move the gers when the sheep and goats need to move to another place for more food to eat. In the past the people would move all their belongings on the backs of camels or horses. Today the usually use trucks. The funny thing is that many of these rustic gers have today's technology with gers having anything from refrigerators to satellite dishes for watching TV!

Here is a fancy ger from long ago that shows how a very wealthy person's ger would have been decorated.

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