Outer Mongolia

A quarter of a century ago, I made friends from what was then known as the People’s Republic of Mongolia. Each year the government sent students to do post graduate courses in English at my university. Through a post grad friend I met a number of these government officials and their “minder”.

We took them out on trips to the cold windy beaches of our county, invited them for meals (on a miniscule student grant, I dread to think what I cooked for them) and generally had a fine old time sharing late nights, fun, poetry and the traumas of the English language.

Fast forward twenty five years. Today, I sat on our sunny deck with a young Mongolian, feeding him brunch and catching up on mutual friends. He had come to NZ for delicate ear surgery, and I had the honour of collecting him from the airport, before sending him on his way north to the place where he would receive treatment.

I could never have imagined that the Mongolian thread of my life would follow me down to latitude 41, stretching through into to my middle age. What a pleasure. I can’t help wondering how different life would have been if I’d taken up that scholarship at the University of Ulan Baator.