Oyeg is a small white mouse/weaselesque stuffed toy which is hurled across the teepee by a spritely rosy cheeked six year old girl called Nomin. She laughs hysterically yelling ‘bam’ as it hits her younger grubby faced brother on the head. They are two of three siblings who live under the canvas of a four meter diameter teepee with their mum and dad. The father lounges nonchalantly on a piece of ground sheet and smokes a cigarette. This crude accommodation is all they have to protect them from the freezing winters out here. Their woolen clothes are old and holey but their owners seem to exude a freedom of being and ease which would cause the fashion conscious among us to question the nature of pleasure.
The teepee is kitted out thus - a central stove, a few sheets and personal effects. Open the flap and you are in the teepee and there is not alot in there. Where no ground sheets have been thrown down the grass is visible. The canvas is held up by pines cut from the nearby wood. The family have been camped in this location for four days and will migrate again in the next few days as the snows begin to fall and cover high altitude grasses, forcing their migration to a more protected elusive spot under cover of trees further south.
It is so warm in the teepee having spent the last two nights sleeping outside in the mountains with ice forming on our blankets. With the added warmth of a three-nipper family this is a real blessing. To actually sleep alongside a Tsataan family in the remote forest is a rare treat afforded to few outsiders. We are lucky that our guide knows these families well having taken care of them with food supplies in hard winters. They reciprocate the favour now.
Unrolling a silver reflective sheet transported from the East coast of Korea the kiddies stare wide-eyed as if it is a giant candy wrapper. Nomin is a real character. I gave her a pen and some paper and she started to draw me in stickman form, before moving on to drawing a kindergarten which she had seen in Tsagannur, the nearest steppe town. In recent years, many Tsataan families have begun to migrate to the steppe for winter. This is a transition only seen in recent years and threatening the traditional ways of the Tsataan who have always existed in the forest. But progress brings benefits of modernity to these people and who can deny them that.
Nomin’s future is uncertain. Wearing torn orange over trousers, with a cute fringe and deep dark eyes, maybe she will be one of the last generation of true Tsataan nomads – time will tell. She is very bright and curious and displays an openness and willingness to learn. She is studying Russian and interested in English too. Nomin’s brother is areal scamp. Quite the rascal, he comes at me with a stick raised above his head as though I were a wild animal. The little perisher.
Nomin cracked her head on a power charger for the solar powered wireless radio the family use in the teepee. Instead of crying as a softer western child may, she starts kicking it.
Children’s clothing hangs to dry on a cord, along with a classic style alarm clock and a pair of Russian army issue binoculars. The feeling is intimate and warm and as night approaches, the father of the family prepares a space for us to sleep alongside them. This is a way of life that has changed little in centuries and I feel like part of the furniture.
