Ulteri
Life and Development in Remote World Regions
1 Spring 2012
THIS ISSUE: A Nomadic Education The Khumbu Climbing School Inulluataarneq Passing It Down
Ulteri
Life and Development in Remote World Regions
Derived from the Latin word meaning further, more advanced or more remote, Ulteri is a magazine dedicated to telling the stories of community based and sustainable development projects from the remote regions of the world and the people behind them. While these regions can provide endless adversity, we hope to share lessons of initiative, innovation and self-determination that arise from those challenges. MY INTEREST IN community based development and media stems from an unwavering interest in the human experience amidst an age of intense urbanization. Through participant observation I seek to encounter the variability and latitude of these experiences, both beautiful and challenging, and to make known the extraordinary within ordinary contexts. For me, remote and developing places have provided many opportunities for tremendous personal growth and new perspective. Through the images and stories in Ulteri I hope to communicate some of these experiences and to inspire connections across cultures and regions.
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—Christopher J. Carter
F E AT U R E C O N T E N T S 4 A Nomadic Education
While herding with their families in the spring and summer, nomadic children in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia can go for months without opportunities for education. A passionate group of locals is working to change that.
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Translating to “having a good life�, this community based participatory research in the remote villages of Greenland aims to address health disparities through participatory media making as an integrated interventions in community health.
10 The Khumbu Climbing School The KCS, founded in memory of world class alpinist Alex Lowe, seeks to increase the safety margin of Nepali climbers and high altitude workers in a supportive, community-based and directed program.
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Generational sheep ranches in Sweet Grass county Montana today face challenges as they strive to compete in a global sheep ranching industry. This is one family’s story.
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A NOMADIC EDUCATION
NOMADIC CHILDREN in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia go for months without opportunities for education while herding with their families,a passionate group of locals is working to address regional disparities in educational access through community based mobile school houses . 5 Ulteri
Intergenerational collaboration Preparing to move their belongings from the sheltered winter paddocks and permanent structures of the Saqsai valley, three generations of the Bugabay family rest before the two day trek with their animals and belongings to summer pastures. For some of the children who live in larger regional cities, the summer time is an opportunity to spend exclusive time with their grandparents connecting with a traditional Kazakh and nomadic way of life.
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Mobility and efficiency When packing the belongings and gers(felt homes) of three familes not to mention a schoolhouse, every nook and cranny counts. This retired russian military truck will carry the belongings but men on motorcycles and horses will herd a collection of yaks, goats, sheep, bactrian camels and cows . Children often take turns walking with the animals assisting the herding in especially difficult sections. The trip will cover a mere 100km but will pass three major mountain passes.
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Giving Thanks Once constructed, the nomadic schools are given a community blessing, honoring organizers like Bekbolat who have brought the opportunity of education out of town and into the nomadic society of the Altai.
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A Villages Work
Every herding season, the locations of the schoolrooms for nomadic children must be decided amongst the people and governor of each valley. Once in place children will come from as far as 20km daily to attend summer school sessions.
Bekbolat Bugabay, ecologist and mountain guide, has partnered with an Austrian NGO to purchase gers and operate school rooms for nomadic children. He hopes to provide ,�equal educational opportunities for children in the countryside, so their families do not have to move to the city�.
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The Khumbu Climbing School
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FOR DECADES altitude workers working for western clients in the Himalayas experienced the highest mortality rates in the mountains. Through a community based vocational school, headed by these same workers, this program aims to increase the safety margin of work.
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Mountain Vocations High in the Khumbu region of Nepal the opportunities to earn a living can be ethnically stratified. While Sherpas fill the role of lodge owners altitude porters and guides; ethnic Rai find work hauling lumber, equipment and goods up and down the steep roatdless valleys of the Khumbu. Here a Khumbu Climbing School student practices setting and ascending a fixed line, a system they will use often on the mountain for clients. Opportunities outside of the service industry are slim, but earning a graduation certificate from the school can mean higher paying positions for any ethnicity
of worker within the commercial
mountaineering industry.
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Nuru Gyalzen Sherpa belays the school’s climbing director and professional alpinist Conrad Anker up the steep ice flows of Machherma valley during advanced class sessions. While Sherpas have proven themselves at high altitudes only through programs like the climbing schools have they learned technical climbing skills.
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Handing it Over When the climbing school began in 2002 almost all instructors were from the United States and Europe. However, at the core of the program is a transition mechanism to hand over the direction and instruction of the program into the hands of altitude workers of the region. Today only a few western guides attend the yearly school as facilitators.
Panuru Sherpa, mountain guide and instructor, has emerged as a major stakeholder in the success of the Khumbu Climbing School contributing his land for the construction a new climbing center. As a professional altitude guide in the spring and fall s, winters are spent organizing the school, training and spending time with family at their guesthouse in Phortse.
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Inulluataarneq Having a good life
THROUGH PARTICIPATORY VISUAL METHODOLOGIES community health researchers and organizers in Paamiut Greenland are finding new ways to understand, engage and collaborate with communities to address sexual health disparities.
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Real Implications Sexual Transmitted Infection (STI) transmission rates in Greenland have nearly doubled in the past decade, coinciding with the fallout of fishing industries and the influx of new hydrocarbon exploration. Youth affected by STIs can become infertile, a tangibly dangerous social reality in a remote and small arctic society. This NSF funded project incorporates Greenlandic ways of understanding with a focus on healthy sexual behaviour. The target population for Inuulluataarneq is 15 to 19 year old adolescents and their parents. Inuulluataarneq is an interdisciplinary international, collaborative community based participatory research (CBPR) study. At the heart of the research is the goal to create a socioculturally relevant and participant centric health campaign . Seeking culturally relevant dissemination pathways and participatory health interventions, film vignettes in particular emerged as a way to enhance the visibility of sexual health issues and CBPR . The film vignettes built upon Inuulluataarneq’s existing research which suggests that Greenlanders need more tools, such as participant media making in order to develop their own strategies concerning sexual health.
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Action Participatory media projects like the film vignettes have provided a ways for communities to engage with social issues in a culturally relevant way. The inherent value of these methods has proven to be interpersonal interactions, collaboration and what is learned about the community in the process of creating media. Participatory media has also provided opportunities for youth in communities to engage with social issues in an approachable format. tOver the course of the production of four films in Paamiut, youth like Thomas and his sister(pictured above) stepped forward to create media, envisioning and creating a vox-pop segment that addresses personal health and participant research on the street in the village of Paamiut.
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Arctic Infastructure One major difficulty the project has faced has been connecting Greenlanders with the project’s website, the main source of dissemination. Satellite sourced internet is incredibly expensive in remote communities such as Paamiut. so many of the completed films have been screened in the community and broadcast on the national public television station KNR as well.
Augustine Rosing, community organizer with the Innulluataarneq research project in Paamiut, has built upon an understanding of youth as a teacher to engage youth aged 15-19 y/o in sexual health interventions. Her hopes with the research and media projects is to,” increase the amount of people talking openly about sexual health, especially between parents and youth. When there is open dialogue between them so many misunderstandings about sexuality and sexually transmitted infections can be avoided”.
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Passin
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ng It Down
FOR GENERATIONS sheep ranching operations in south central Montana have been traditionally handed down to sons and daughters. Yet with the onset of global markets for wool and lamb as well as the changing aspirations of younger generations, Montana ranches are experiencing new challenges and are coming up with new adaptations.
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Culling Experience With three generations actively engaged on the Halvorsen ranch rudimentary tasks like sorting sheep in the late summer becomes a family endeavour. Trevor, age 7, helps sort while his father and grandfather tag sheep. Hired help from the Basque highlands of Spain along with his other grandfather give additional support. Outings like this grant many opportunities to learn the nuances of sorting, and processing sheep . While other forms of agricultural production rely on technologically advanced implements, sheep herding and ranching demands individuals with a skill set learned from experience. As younger generations leave the ranch, knowledge of production and lifestyle, leaves with them.
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Markets of Scale While wool cooperatives have been fostered to compete in a global marketplace, the Big Timber wool house stores and ships a mere 38,000 pounds yearly a small fraction of the nearly one million pounds shipped during peak production in the early 20th century. With what is like the only high school in the world with a sheep herder as a mascot, the legacy of sheep ranching runs thick in Big Timber. Yet while everyone knows someone who ranched sheep, the occasion of a younger generation taking over the ranch remains a rarity.
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Shearing With a hired mobile shearing plant nearly 700 head, can be shorn within a day given some highly skilled shearers. In the past decade it has become increasingly difficult to find capable teams of shearers. Working with sheep is a demanding year round and labor intensive endeavour. Beyond a wholesome knowledge of production a motivation to stay in the rural regions and to work more with less free time has proven a stumbling block as families look to keep ranches in the family.
Kevin Halvorsen, is a third generation sheep rancher and active community organizer for wool and lamb cooperatives. He is deeply invested in providing opportunities for future generations to experience a way of life working with sheep.
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Hired Help Filling the positions of once regionally sourced herders, skilled migrants from the Peruvian Andes are hired to tend to the sheep at the summer pastures. Living in a trailer thousands of miles away in the foothills of the Beartooth mountains can take a toll on these new seasonal workers. Montana sheep ranchers like the Halvorsens hope to navigate barriers of language and bureaucracy to keep them around. People who are familiar with the nuances of herding in mountainous terrain and dealing with predation are increasingly difficult to come by.
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