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Aussie watches over the orphans of Ulaanbaatar www.afr.com
Australian woman Gabrielle “Didi” Dowling knows better than most just how harsh and unforgiving life can be in Mongolia.
For the past 28 years, she has cared for the orphaned, unwanted and neglected children of a developing nation now struggling with how to stamp out corruption and come up with the best way to make the most of mining wealth that comes from a partnership with Rio Tinto in the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine.
The Lotus Children’s Centre she runs on 10 hectares of land at the foot of a rock-strewn mountain is steadily being engulfed by the urban sprawl of the capital Ulaanbaatar.
The Mongolian government allowed her to build on the land behind a rubbish dump about a decade ago after the number of children in her care hit 150 and her first centre became too small.
Mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland, who played a significant role in the early years of Oyu Tolgoi, visited the centre a few times in its first incarnation.
Friedland talked about funding a new centre – the old one was an overcrowded collection of traditional round tents known as ger– but the talk came to nothing.
As well as caring for orphans, babies abandoned in the freezing streets and those whose parents can’t cope, Dowling has run soup kitchens and women’s shelters.
For a while the women made money sewing copper sample bags when Rio Tinto became involved in Oyu Tolgoi, but that work dried up.
Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, the former owner of Harrods department store, helped feed, clothe and educate the children for many years after he gained a foothold in mineral assets in Mongolia, but that funding was abruptly cut off in 2019.
Dowling has lost count of how many children have passed through the centre – probably about a thousand – with some arriving as babies and leaving in their late teens.
One young woman has just celebrated turning 18, although no one is really sure of her exact birth date.
Police called Dowling after the child was left outside an apartment building at about two months of age. A medical check showed the baby might have neurological disabilities but she thrived at the centre, which produced seven university entrants last year.
Unprompted by Dowling, some of her teenage brigade at Lotus took part in multi-day protests in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar in December over corruption in mining centred on a state-owned coal producer.
Some of the protesters, many of them young in a country where about a third of the population is under 18 and two thirds under the age of 35, stripped to near naked in temperatures of -30C as the peaceful protest turned up the heat on the government to clean up corruption, amid allegations that have embroiled two former prime ministers and rich and powerful families.
Despite the problems, Dowling says there is more opportunity in Mongolia now than there was when she started working with children.
“There still is a lot of poverty and at the moment it is very hard with the price rises on everything. A lot of people are living off not much,” she says.
“You don’t have all the social benefits that are in Australia. If you are unemployed, there are no unemployment benefits.
“Here a lot of work is very seasonal with the weather; the building industry doesn’t run much for months, tourism, agriculture are also seasonal. There are long winters and coal and heating is getting very expensive.”
When Dowling, 63, first arrived in Mongolia as an Ananda Marga nun, the country was still trying to shed the weight of nearly 70 years of Soviet influence.
Her first centre had no running water and the most basic of facilities as she tried to care for children suffering from complaints like rickets, syphilis, meningitis and malnourishment. Even today her own little house has no flushing toilet and no electricity until she can afford repairs. The centre’s children and its school are the priority, and she sleeps there to stay warm.
Dowling, who severed ties with Ananda Marga about five years ago, grew up on the family farm at Mulwala in the Riverina before devoting her life to Mongolia’s least fortunate children.
She says it is the children that keep her going through the cold winters and the heartbreak of cases where they do not survive.
“I think when you enjoy what you are doing you can live with it,” she says. “I enjoy being with the kids. I came to Mongolia and met up with these kids and decided this is my life.”
BY:
Brad Thompson writes across business and politics from Western Australia for The Australian Financial Review. Brad is based in our Perth bureau. Connect with Brad on Twitter. Email Brad at brad.thompson@afr.com
Published Date:2023-03-19
