Tsogzolmaa
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990183
Name: Tsogzolmaa
Parent's name: Lomoi
Ovog: Aamaa
Sex: f
Year of Birth: 1952
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: higher
Notes on education:
Work: retired, biology teacher
Belief: Buddhist
Born in: Biger sum, Govi-Altai aimag
Lives in: [None Given] sum (or part of UB), Ulaanbaatar aimag
Mother's profession: büren bus dund
Father's profession: nurse
Themes for this interview are:
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work
education / cultural production
family
childhood
cultural campaigns
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Summary of Interview 090412A with Tsogzolmaa
Tsogzolmaa guai was born in 1945 when the cattle gave birth to young animals. Her mother delivered her while she was tending the cattle, so manure was stuck on Tsogzolmaa guai’s back. At the age of five their family went to the sum center to live there. Her mother worked there in the women’s council. When Tsogzolmaa was a child she followed her older sister and at the age of six she went to school. She remembers well how she wrote with a dip pen and used to solve math in the sand. In 1968 she was trained to participate in the second Spartakiad of the Pioneers as a gymnast.
After completing school her father wanted her to enter the secondary medical school but she met with the printing house manager Byambajav and was employed there instead. But her school director called her and she started to work in secondary school Number One as a lab assistant. In 1976 she attended a biology teacher’s training course and, having finished it, she started teaching. Due to a lack of teachers the women had 45 days of maternity leave before giving birth and and 56 days after and then they returned to work. She had a lot of work and it was tough to manage the children’s school and kindergarten hours. When studying extramurally in Ulaanbaatar, she left her children in her mother’s care. When there was lack of school materials, she bought them from Ulaanbaatar. There were no computers then and she used to write on a typewriter.
Most of Tsogzolmaa guai’s first pupils have become teachers. In 1984 she went to Darhan to teach. The difference between Gobi-Altai and Darhan was that in Gobi-Altai the teacher on duty came early in the morning and had to prepare everything for the classes while in Darhan you just came to school and let the children in to the classrooms. In Darhan there were schoolchildren whom she couldn't give bad marks to because they had documents that forbid doing that. If a schoolchild had to study in the 12th grade, they said that he lagged behind because of the autumn work mobilization.
In her childhood they used to make their own black laundry soap in the aimag center. The children mostly walked barefoot. During the cultural campaign inspection their family was already accustomed (to what was expected) therefore they didn’t particularly prepare for it. But at the teachers’ meeting they talked about whether they had taken a bath or not and they had bath records. In Darhan she checked a lot the schoolchildren’s hygiene. In 1989, while she taught in Darhan, she accidentally saw a louse on a schoolchild’s head. She let the child see it, magnifying it and later she felt embarrassed by her action and she apologized to him and asked the children of the class to keep that incident secret.
