This Passage Is About A Visit To A Remote Part of Mongolia, Where The Writer, Donovan Webster, Meets A Woman Who Still Farms in The Old Style

Grade IGCSE I – Interview Writing

This passage is about a visit to a remote part of Mongolia, where the writer, Donovan Webster, meets
a woman who still farms in the old style.

Visiting Diudiu

We reach the top of a pass through giant sand dunes, and below us is a bowl-shaped valley. At the
valley’s northern end, fringed in rich green grasses and reeds, there’s a small lake so saturated with
salt-loving bacteria that its colour is glittering vermilion. Sheep and goats drift across the dune hillsides,
eating the sagebrush-like artemisia that grows on them. Camels and a few horses graze near the
shore. At the far end of the lake, all alone, sit two small, square blockhouses.
We trudge down the dune, surprising the lady who lives in the valley. Her name is Diudiu, and she’s
seventy-two. She was born to a semi-nomadic Mongolian family near here. She never had children, and
her husband died in 1974, leaving her as the last of her family.
With the same hospitality we’ll find in the whole area, Diudiu sets up for visitors. She goes inside her
house and fills a tea-kettle from a small container, then walks outside to a mirrored solar collector the
size of a TV satellite dish. At the dish’s centre, where the rays of the sun will be focused, Diudiu snaps
the kettle into an iron fitting, and then pivots the dish to face the afternoon sun. Within three minutes,
the water is boiling furiously. ‘I sold hair from my camels and sheep to buy this,’ she says, turning the
mirrored face of the dish from the sun so that she can retrieve the kettle. ‘It keeps me from having a fire
going all day.’
Diudiu invites me inside. A wide earthen platform for sleeping and sitting occupies the back wall. The
other walls are lined with wooden cupboards and lockers; the boxes hold bags of rice and dried meat, a
few potatoes and wild onions in baskets, and some extra clothes. In the corner, a stack of folded
blankets waits for winter. There’s a small hole in the roof for the chimney of Diudiu’s potbellied
Mongolian stove, which is now outdoors for summer cooking.
She sprinkles dried tea into the kettle’s hot water, then pulls out drinking bowls and some rock sugar.
‘Come and drink,’ she says, motioning me to sit.
Diudiu is a metre and a quarter tall and dressed in Modern China’s standard outfit: loose trousers and a
button-front jacket, both of blue cotton. Her black hair is covered with a bandanna, her dark eyes sharp
and quick. She has a wide face – broad planes of cheekbones – which has weathered into a map of
wrinkles.
I gesture towards a swallow’s nest that clings to the interior front wall, above the door. Diudiu smiles. ‘I
like birds in the house,’ she says. ‘They’re good company.’
Spending the next few days with Diudiu, I will see that she possesses everything she needs. Though
winter can get very cold, she is prepared and experienced against it. Outside the house there’s a sheep
and goat pen with walls made of camel-dung, wetted and pressed into bricks. In winter, she burns
these bricks to warm her house and provide cooking fire. She also eats four or five sheep each winter,
deep-freezing what she doesn’t need by hanging the carcass in a shady spot outdoors.
After an hour or so, Diudiu goes outside. She fires up her stove and boils a pot of rice. In a wok she stir-
fries potatoes and wild onions. Then she walks into her house, opens one of two large ceramic
containers, and dips a plastic water bottle inside. ‘Rice drink,’ she says. ‘Have some. I drink one of
these bottles a day. There’s always a good supply of it. It’s my recreation.’
Slipping back outside, Diudiu checks the rice and lifts the food, carrying it to her small table. ‘See? I
have everything,’ she says. ‘I don’t understand the outside world. I know only eating, drinking, tending
animals. This is what my parents did. The young people today, once they leave, never return. I don’t
blame them. The old life of herding is coming to an end. Work in cities is the future. But for me, I will live
in this place until I die.’
Imagine that you are Donovan Webster. You are being interviewed for a television programme about
your visit to Diudiu in Mongolia.
Your interviewer asks the following questions:
• Could you start by telling the viewers a little about Diudiu’s lifestyle?
• What did you admire most about Diudiu?
• How has your meeting with her made you consider your own life-style and values?
Write the words of the interview.
Begin as follows:
Interviewer: Could you start by telling the viewers a little about Diudiu’s lifestyle?
Donovan Webster: Yes, of course. I think the first thing I noticed was…

This Passage Is About A Visit To A Remote Part of Mongolia, Where The Writer, Donovan Webster, Meets A Woman Who Still Farms in The Old Style

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This Passage Is About A Visit To A Remote Part of Mongolia, Where The Writer, Donovan Webster, Meets A Woman Who Still Farms in The Old Style

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

This Passage Is About A Visit To A Remote Part of Mongolia, Where The Writer, Donovan Webster, Meets A Woman Who Still Farms in The Old Style

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Grade IGCSE I – Interview Writing

Write the words of the interview.

You might also like