American Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia, Brett Campbell who wrote about his experiences in Mongolia for Chronicle Times newspaper of Cherokee, Iowa, USA quits Peace Corps halfway. According to Chronice Times, Brett is saying goodbye to Mongolia due to health reason. He cites " loss of weight by more than 20 pounds, stomach, throat and sinus irritations and infections " which overwhelmed him.His writings were fun and hillarious.As a foreigner, he was able to observe things that we, Mongols don't observe.
Check out http://www.chronicletimes.com/story/1553315.html for the story.
Best wishes to you Brett. I hope that Mongolia will be in your thoughts...
Somebody I knew went to Russia in the early 90's and almost died after drinking the local water. Most places in the world including Mongolia don't do much to filter out any trace of human waste or factory pollutants from the drinking water. If only one person pee-d in the Tuul River upstream if will get completely dilluted in the big river. Most places in the U.S. either use purified water in big cities, or people use well water in rural places, which has most of the bacteria removed. Most of the people I know in UB don't drink tap water here unless it's boiled, because there is bacteria. If you don't get sick from the water, you've built up resistance to Mongolian water, but did you drink the Russian water? the Nigerian water which had toxic waste dumped in it?
ReplyDeleteIf you think it's better to drink the bacteria-laden water, because you now have no effect. Well, consider the cumulative life-time effects of the toxic winter air from coal burning, toxic air from car pollution, bacteria in water, swine flu, and so on. The body must spend a lot of energy to cleanse out the toxic substance. In children this means stunted growth, stunted mental growth. The fact that he was more than uncomfortable, but actually had medical symptoms should be a red flag that there are in fact toxins in your own environment, which perhaps could cause your own stunted growth, which perhaps you just tolerated on a daily basis without realizing the long term damage. Instead the author of the article only laughed at him.