Uransaihan
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990024
Name: Uransaihan
Parent's name: Hundgan
Ovog: Borjigon
Sex: f
Year of Birth: 1961
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: secondary
Notes on education: büren dund
Work: jijüür
Belief: none
Born in: Tsenhermandal sum, Hentii aimag
Lives in: Sühbaatar sum (or part of UB), Ulaanbaatar aimag
Mother's profession: died, seamstress
Father's profession: died, herder
Themes for this interview are:
(Please click on a theme to see more interviews on that topic)
work
illness / health
environment
family
privatization
Alternative keywords suggested by readers for this interview are: (Please click on a keyword to see more interviews, if any, on that topic)
socialism
hospital
single parent
livestock treatment
poverty
privatization
To read a full interview with Uransaihan please click on the Interview ID below.
Summary of Interview 080606A with Uransaihan
Uransaihan was born on 3 May 1961 in Tsenhermandal sum of Hentii aimag. Her father’s name is Shagdar. After divorce, in 1970 Uransaihan’s mother moved to Choibalsan sum in Dornod aimag taking with her all her eight children. Uransaihan completed eight years of secondary education in Choibalsan and later found a job as a cleaner in a local hospital. Having worked in the hospital for eleven years, she quit her job and moved to Ulaanbaatar in 1998. At the time of the interview she was working as a cleaner in a housing co-operative.
In her interview Uransaihan tells about the difficulty of being a single, poorly educated parent with four children. She feels that she has been abandoned by people all her life: when she was small her father left the family for another woman, her first husband passed away, her second husband left her for another woman, her last husband whom she met in Ulaanbaatar openly cheated on her. In Ulaanbaatar she has struggled to make ends meet. In the beginning she worked as a door-keeper, then sold tea in the black market, in 2005 she managed to find a stable, but poorly paid, job in a housing co-operative. She thinks that as a cleaner she has always been looked down on. Uransaihan says that she misses the socialist period, when she lived better. Although she was also a cleaner in the country-side hospital, she was treated better for her skills. She could diagnose and cure not only people but livestock as well. She often found herself doing the job of a trained nurse, which she was not, in the hospital. Local shepherds referred to her as ‘veterinary’. During the privatisation her family, which included Uransaihan, her children and her mother, received twelve sheep, a cow with a calf and a pregnant mare in exchange for their privatisation vouchers.
Uransaihan has had a difficult life since her childhood. She brought up her children under strict control and discipline. Seeing no obvious benefit in education, she sent none of her children to school.
