dzud (rhymes with "dude")

Imagine living in a place where the local language actually has a word for winters that are harsh enough to kill millions of livestock.

From wiki: A zud or dzud (Mongolian: Зуд) is a Mongolian term for an extremely snowy winter in which livestock are unable to find fodder through the snow cover, and large numbers of animals die due to starvation and the cold. 

One of my friends linked to this brief article in the New York Times about this year's winter. Similar conditions in 1999 and 2000 caused hundreds of thousands of herders to abandon their nomadic lifestyles and move to the city. Since livestock is the only source of income for most of the people living outside of the city, it's likely we'll see another influx from the countryside this summer and fall.

Over half the population of the country is already living in Ulaanbaatar and there aren't really any jobs to be found. I can't help but wonder how much longer Mongolia's fragile economy will last in these conditions. There's a great deal of money to be found in the country's natural resources, but because of corruption in the government, that money never finds its way to the Mongolian people. Likewise, any aid money sent usually ends up in someone's pockets.

It's the same old story, I suppose: The rich get richer; the poor get poorer.