Mr. Mongolia
Kent Madin named honorary consul in Montana for Mongolia
By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer
Kent Madin has a new title. As of last month, he is honorary consul in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming for the nation of Mongolia. It sounds pretty cool, but he’s still trying to figure out just what it means. “If a Mongolian gets thrown in jail in one of those three states, he can call me up, if he even knows I exist,” Madin quipped. “And I can say, ‘Bummer, dude.’” Actually, it’s a little more important than that. About a half-dozen people hold such positions in Montana, representing various countries. Honorary consul is a diplomatic position that, according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, calls on a person appointed by a government to live in a certain city and serve that country’s citizens and business interests there. In Madin’s case, that city is Bozeman, which makes more sense than one would think at first glance. A handful of Mongolians live here, and visitors from that distant republic are fairly common. A group of Montana State University faculty and students, along with community members, spend four to six weeks every year in Mongolia. U.S. Department of Agriculture specialists in Bozeman also make frequent trips there, studying sustainable agriculture. Sweetwater Travel, based in Livingston, outfits anglers to Mongolia in quest of Taimen, a giant salmonid. And Bozeman’s Betsy Quammen runs Tributary, a nonprofit foundation that is rebuilding a Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. Bozeman even has a sister city in Mongolia, a town with the unfortunate name of Moron, though it’s pronounced Moo-ruhn. Madin, 56, is a good choice for the honorary consul position, according to Cliff Montagne, a professor in MSU’s department of land resources and environmental sciences. Madin introduced Montagne to Mongolia in 1996 on a trip offered by his company, Boojum Expeditions. Montagne now returns to that country every year. Madin has the skills to bring people together, Montagne said, plus he gives Mongolians opportunities to improve their lives. Boojum, which specializes in horseback trips, has been taking travelers to Mongolia since 1994, and organizes 50 to 60 trips a year. Madin has helped build that country’s tourism infrastructure, while crafting a type of tourism that interacts with the native culture. His company has an office in the capital of Ulaan Baatar, lodges in the countryside, a Mongolian office manager in Bozeman, and Madin speaks enough Mongolian to get by. Besides the business, Madin is active in sustainable development and conservation issues in Mongolia.
Mongolia reached the peak of its fame in the 13th century, under Ghengis Khan, a man Madin said has been given a bad rap by history. The world knows him mostly as a fierce warrior, but Khan also gave the world things like passports, paper money and diplomatic immunity. While quick with a sword, he also was a skilled politician, Madin said. Today, Mongolia doesn’t get much attention on the global scene. About four times the size of Montana, it has only 2.2 million people, and a third of them are in the nation’s two largest cities. Rural life is still dominated by migratory herdsmen and hunters, and it’s possible to ride horseback for 1,200 miles in one direction and only open one gate, Madin said. All in all, it’s a lot like Montana was 100 years ago, with vast prairies, huge mountains and not a lot of people. And, like Montana, hungry neighbors are eying its natural resources. “If you were dropped in here,” he said, pointing to a map of the country, “you’d think you were in Montana.” Now Madin is looking forward to using his new position as a bully pulpit to advance more projects. He hopes to organize a program to bring American English teachers to the country’s largest boarding school, bring better medical care to the countryside, and bring Mongolians here to learn and to share their knowledge about issues like grazing management, wildlife control, education and the environment. Madin also is promoting a program that offers qualifying K-12 teachers a free five-week trip to Mongolia and China this summer sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Since being appointed, he has also found that the consular position has an extra benefit: fender bling. “I get to fly the Mongolian flag on my car,” Madin said. Scott McMillion is at scottm@dailychronicle.com
