‘Gobi Women’s Song’—

A Film With International Connections

Will Bring Its Maker Home Next Weekend

Gobi Women’s Song will be shown at Bethel Cinema on Saturday, February 10, at 10:30 am. Tickets are $10, and proceeds will benefit Mongolian Medicine Project.

During next weekend’s program, filmmaker Sas Carey will talk about how, at the age of 61, she has been inspired to interview Mongolians, create the film and screen it around the country. Questions will be answered after the film.

The film is an independent project by Sas (née Sally Ann) Carey of Middlebury, Vt., who grew up in Newtown. She and her brothers and sisters went through Newtown’s public schools during the 1950s and early 1960s. Ms Carey is a 1963 graduate of Newtown High School.

Her parents are still living in Newtown. After residing in Sandy Hook from 1947 to 1990, and then moving to Heritage Village in Southbury for 17 years, the Careys have returned to Newtown. Ms Carey is looking forward to seeing them, she said from her Vermont home recently, and catching up with some of her high school friends who still live in Newtown or Bethel and other surrounding towns.

Set against the background of barren expanses, Gobi Women’s Song immerses the viewer in a different world. It is a world in a transitional moment, one that has occurred in all cultures, which decides the future lives, environment, and lifestyle of its people.

Five 21st Century nomadic women share the rhythm of their harsh daily lives. They hum the song of the soul passed down from their grandmothers and at the same time deal with the pressing issues of today’s world.

Through interviews that span four years, the film captures the rhythms of the harsh daily life of Gobi women and their families. Life there depends on connection — connection with the environment, community, and family.

The ground Gobi women live on is fragile, incapable of supporting agriculture. They need to move four to five times a year to feed their animals and rest the pastures. In this way, they maintain a balance between themselves and their land.

Viewers also watch as Gobi women make everything they need: felt from fleece sheared from their sheep, cheese, yogurt, butter, dried curds from their animal’s milk. Their staple — milk tea — comes from well water hand drawn up, carried by metal pail, and then heated by burning the dung collected from livestock. They milk their goats, horses, and camels. The tea itself, a brick of leaves and stems, comes from trading cashmere combed from their goats.

“Like our grandmothers before us, life asks everything of these women,” says Ms Carey. “There is no downtime. Nomadic life today is only possible because of hardworking women. In this desolate and barren land, as beautiful as any on earth, we find that the dreams of Gobi women are like our own — they want their children to grow up and have a good life.

“They wish for good health. The women, true to their custom of hospitality, open their lives to us. They honor us with invitations to go to their land, go inside their homes, and their hospital.”

In Ms Carey’s sensitive documentary, doctors, bone healers, and single women share their homes and fears, their joy and laughter, their children, animals, and even their births.

“As we get to know them, we hold them in our hearts,” said Ms Carey. “We relate to them. Yet we learn that many factors are changing and we wonder what the future will bring them.

“While at Newtown High School, I had my first taste of connecting with people around the world as an American Field Service foreign exchange student to Denmark,” Ms Carey said recently. “The motto of AFS is ‘Walk together, talk together, oh, ye people of the world, then and only then will there be peace.’ The experience was life changing.”

Ms Carey met the women who are featured in her film over a period of five years.

“Ever since being an AFS student, I have never been much of a tourist,” she said. “Trying to understand the culture and ways of the people has become much more important. I have had a very exciting life.”

Sas Carey, RN, MEd, is a holistic nurse and educator who evolved into a filmmaker and lecturer. From her work in medical-surgical nursing, counseling, drug and alcohol prevention, teen programs, women’s health, and book author, she came upon her mission in life to integrate Eastern and Western health care. This took her to China and Mongolia in 1994.

In 1995 she began her research in traditional Mongolian medicine with a three-month intensive course, which she documented in her 18-minute film, Steppe Herbs, Mare’s Milk and Jelly Jars: A Journey to Mongolian Medicine.

Two years later, she worked as a health education consultant for the United Nations Development Program. Since then, Ms Carey has traveled frequently to Mongolia, set up five laboratories in rural Gobi desert hospitals, taken vitamins to Dukha reindeer herders, and shot Gobi Women’s Song.

She is director of Life Energy Healing School in Middlebury, Vt., where she uses Mongolian medicine as a model for holistic health care. A mother and grandmother, Ms Carey is dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding of Mongolian nomads’ life and health.

February Screening

A few months ago fate stepped into Ms Carey’s life when she met Khurlee, a student from Mongolia who had arrived in the United States a few weeks earlier. Khurlee and his host mother were visiting Bridgewater, Vt., and found themselves in the shop of Ms Carey’s son, Kai Mayberger.

Mr Mayberger makes drums and flutes and sells them in his shop. Ms Carey was visiting Bridgewater, taking care of her grandsons, that day.

“My son came into the house and said ‘Mom, someone is here from Mongolia,’” she said. “It was amazing because he had arrived a couple of weeks before and was excited to speak Mongolian to someone. Then as his host mother and I began to talk about showing my film somewhere near them, I discovered that they live in Brookfield.”

The proximity to Newtown was enough for Ms Carey, who began looking into a Newtown location to screen Gobi Women’s Song.

As mentioned earlier, proceeds from next weekend’s screening will benefit Mongolian Medicine Project by providing funding for medical supplies, training and advocacy for improved health care for rural and nomadic Mongolians.

(Bethel Cinema is at 269 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel. Call 778-2100 for details about the February 10 screening of Gobi Women’s Song. Tickets will be available at the door.)