By Tsering Yanzo | Director of the NGO The Lamp of the Path
The spring and the summer has been a very busy period of fixing all external fixtures of windows, walls, gates and the face lift of painting these areas as well to further preserve them. The extreme winters of Mongolia, with Ulaanbaatar earmarked as one of the coldest city of this world is very hard on any property.
Before we can take a break from these activities, the season is upon us to make the yearly preparations of the heating system for this winter. It is my hope and prayer that it will not be as extreme as the last one, which many of us have come to identiy as one of the coldest winters.
The central heating system of the city of Ulaanbaatar is already on but our soup kitchen located on the outskirts of the city and in the much poorer districts, lacks the access to the central heating system. We have to make provisions for our own heating and so we are abiding a time for it to get colder before we incur the costs of heating.
The spring time labour of planting our own vegetable garden with some of the more expensive varieties of vegetables has saved us from purchasing a huge amount of vegetables and also to relish in the taste of a variety of vegetables that are usually beyond our budget. The planting of the traditional medicinal tree of Sea Buckthorn on the property has been a source of great satisfaction and pride. It will be a few years before we get to pick any berries because of the very short growing season that prevails Mongolia.
By the end of August, 2013 we have served over 12,250 hot meals. The meals served during the spring and the summer have been all vegetarian, except on those occassions when people have donated meat specially for the soup kitchen.
The month of August 2013 also oversaw a huge preventive medical check-up for the homeless beneficiaries of the Soup Kitchen. This was done by the Enerel Hospital.
The check-up revealed the following:
Of these people 15 were prescribed hospitalization, 9 of them have been hospitalized, 6 are waiting due to Enerel Hospital's carrying capacity.
In the month of August the Soup Kitchen was blessed by the visit of Lama Zopa Rinpoche who is not only our major donar but also instrumental for the inception and inspiration of the soup kitchen in Mongolia. Rinpoche has left us with instructions for further improvements in the way we do things at the soup kitchen, which we hope to implement in the near future.
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