‘There’s a yak on the sidewalk’: SLO County native working for Peace Corps in Mongolia

Each day on her morning walk to the school where she works, San Luis Obispo County native Claire Bodger is met with a relatively familiar landscape of arid mountains, valleys, plains, farmland — and yaks.

That’s because Bodger’s school — the name of which was not provided for privacy reasons — is located in the Arkhangai Province of Mongolia more than 6,000 miles from home, and is the focus of Bodger’s work with the Peace Corps.

“You can walk down the street and there’s a yak on the sidewalk,” Bodger told The Tribune. “It’s a totally different experience. Growing up around animals made me more used to running into animals here, but the socialization is so different that my interactions with them are on a whole nother level.”

For the past eight months, Bodger has lived a life of service that involves teaching K-8 students English and about the environment that surrounds their relatively remote part of the province, she said.

The former Nipomo resident said service has always been a significant part of her life, and when her studies at Oberlin College were finished, she took a leap of faith, trusting her adviser’s advice to join the Peace Corps as a way to use her talents to help people in need.

“It’s truly an incredible experience,” Bodger said. “Seeing (the students) and their confidence improve in the last eight months has brought me so much joy, and it’s made me feel like I’m doing something in my community.”

Mongolian life presents unique challenges, opportunities

Ahead of her service in Mongolia, Bodger said she spent around two years preparing for the journey, which was partially delayed by COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions.

Prior to leaving in the summer of 2023, Bodger completed Peace Corps training and learned the basics of Mongolian, which she said is one of the most difficult languages to pick up.

At her current speaking level, she said she can keep up with her younger students, but mastering the grammatical structure and sounds that make up fluent Mongolian speech may take some time.

“Oftentimes the little kids aren’t that shy, and they’ll try to speak to me in Mongolian,” Bodger said. “The 4- or 5-year-old level is maybe where I am right now, so we can have a little bit of a conversation.”

Unlike U.S. schools, Bodger’s school works in two shifts, with high school students attending in the morning and middle-schoolers attending in the afternoon.

Bodger, however, is there all day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., followed by the clubs, extracurriculars and other after-school duties she runs.

Each day, Bodger said she splits her time roughly 50-50 between English language classes and running the environmental program she and other Peace Corps volunteers are implementing.

“A lot of kids, especially older kids, want to study abroad, and they will have me look at their college applications and their essays and give my feedback,” Bodger said.

Nipomo native educates community on environmental dangers

Over the next year and change, Bodger and other Peace Corps volunteers stationed in the area will work with community partners to establish an educational program for children that teaches them about the environmental impact of pollution and benefits of safe recycling, she said.

Much of Mongolia is made up of a rural environment that is among the least densely populated places in the world, Bodger said.

Because of the lack of separation between people and their environment and limited infrastructure, trash burning and dumping in the environment is relatively common, Bodger said.

Her program seeks to educate Mongolian youth about the environment so they can be better prepared to deal with the environmental challenges posed by climate change, which can hit underdeveloped areas harder than other places.

“We hope to use this project — through the clubs that we’re implementing and through the field trips into the countryside — to really give these children a well-rounded perspective of how vital environmental action can be, and that they are empowered to do something about it as kids,” Bodger said. “You don’t need to be a 40-year-old business person to do something for the environment.”

Bodger said her work in Mongolia with the Peace Corps will run through the summer of 2025.

She said she was unsure what her next step would look like after completing her work but said she was interested in getting a graduate degree before continuing with some kind of public service career, either inside or outside of the Peace Corps.

“My long-term dream, which is a little bit crazy, has been Doctors Without Borders, not for the medical side but on the support side,” Bodger said. “I would love to work with them both abroad and in their New York office, but I also could consider going into some sort of other public service — the UN is always is always there waiting for you.”