“Are you going to Paraguay?” another asked. “Which places, do you know? Because in Loma Plata there’s a guy that I met here in Canada years ago, he has a big business there now...”
Already, the thousands of kilometres were being stitched together by contacts, stories, relations. Around the fire the conversation skipped between Plautdietsch—for some it was used just for an occasional exclamation or joke, for others it was still a living mother tongue—and English. The younger ones, my nephews and nieces, understood some of the Plautdietsche jokes, the slang and witty responses, but few of them spoke it. In fact, it was kind of uncool to speak it when we grew up. Very few of the people I had grown up with still had a solid grasp of the language. My own Plautdietsch was weak, but I knew it would improve because it was the only language I’d have in common with many of the Mennonites in the south. My uncles spoke it through mouths of sunflower seeds—the Manitoba Mennonite alternative to tobacco—spitting the husks out and chewing the seeds without pausing their stories.
“Our grandparents often told us about Russia, how good it was, and then how terrible it became,” said Menno Kroeker, a local historian who had joined us for the evening. He was named after Menno Simons, the founder of our faith. He spoke English with the flat Germanic accent I’d heard all my life, pausing for emphasis, the fire lighting him in orange from underneath. “Our grandparents and great-grandparents fled, a whole exodus. There were some eight thousand Mennonites in all that came here to central Canada, and even more that went to Kansas and Nebraska. When our families came, the province of Manitoba was just a few years old. This was wild land, most of it.”
Johann was nine years old when he arrived, although he is listed as younger on some ships’ manifests; he must have been short like me and most of the other Duecks that followed him. He was brought to Canada by his thirty-one-year-old father, a labourer, and his twenty-nine-year-old pregnant stepmother—his own mother having died in childbirth. There was also his four-year-old brother Peter and his sickly nine-month-old half-brother, Heinrich. Heinrich died just weeks after they arrived, the first Mennonite to be buried in Manitoba soil. It was one of the few firsts our humble family could claim.
I’d learned about Johann through his diaries, written when he was an adult, then lost in a dusty attic for generations. Eventually they were found, my uncle published them in two volumes, and my father sent me a copies. It sat on my bookshelf, unread, for years. Most of it was grain prices and notes on church meetings—pretty dry reading. Only when I started planning my journey did I read it, searching for threads of myself in his story. My mother’s family came to Canada on the same ship as Johann, but his diaries and my resemblance to him brought his story to life for me. Seeing pictures of Johann as a young man gave me a funny feeling. The feeling you get when you catch a reflection of yourself in a window and you’re surprised by what you see. In one picture, showing him with a cane and white beard standing in front of his general store, he could be mistaken for my aged father. Johann, then my grandfather Jacob Dueck, then my father, Leonard Dueck, and then me. All with the same nose. I’d never met my grandfather, he died a few years before I was born. But I’d claimed a grey fedora he’d once owned, and each time the sweat-stained rim touched my head I felt connected to my grandfather and even to Johann himself.
By the time we arrived in Canada Mennonites had already set a precedent of requesting that kings and governments grant them a Privilegium—an official document that defined special rights and privileges for the Mennonites, ranging from releasing them from military service and swearing oaths to allowing them to run their own schools in German. They had been granted Privilegia by Prussia and Russia, and Canada did the same. Our demands for a Privilegium shock me now. Imagine, migrating to another country, but demanding that the host country waive their civic norms to accommodate arriving immigrants. Imagine if today’s immigrants asked for that— they’re barely allowed in as it is. These demands were a habit of ours that I’d have many more opportunities to wonder about on my journey.
“We came because of the promises that were made,” Menno continued. “The government said it would allow us to run our schools in German. The Mennonites would be left alone to their own ways, their schools and churches, inheritance laws and the ways they ran their villages. We were known as good farmers, which was why Canada wanted us.”
When Johann arrived, there were already French and Scottish settlers along the riverbank, but inland the Prairies remained unbroken. That’s where the Mennonites sank their plows into the earth and planted wheat. My relatives still lived in the villages and towns that were founded when the International dropped Johann on this riverbank. We built farms and grew rich and employed non-Mennonites when the work became too much. More and more Mennonites moved to Winnipeg, the provincial capital, less than an hour north of our campfire, now the largest urban concentration of Mennonites in the world. In Winnipeg, being Mennonite is not exotic. Mennonites prospered, as they had in Russia, but as Canada began to take shape as a nation, so did its laws and national identity, and our Privilegium came under scrutiny. That meant the same laws for everyone, no more exceptions for the Mennonites. The government said no more schools in German and insisted on overseeing education. My family adapted—my mother gave all her children very Canadian-sounding Irish and Scottish names—while trying to remain separate from the rest of society. But that kind of Canada wasn’t good enough for all Mennonites. Some felt cheated.
“In the 1920s some of our people began to move, about seven thousand of them. They went to Mexico, where they bought lots of land, for a good price,” Menno said. “Soon others moved to Paraguay, for the same reasons.”
This was the beginning of the story I was setting out to discover for myself, the story about the Latin American colonies of Canadian Mennonites, those who had left to find yet another promised land, a new Privilegium. I knew almost nothing about the Mennonites who had left Canada and moved south. There were tens of thousands of them, living in exotic, steamy corners of Latin America. How would they compare with my idea of what it meant to be a Mennonite? What would I have in common with them?
Menno took a swig of coffee and shifted his chair away from the campfire smoke.
“But, of course, Mexico also changed, and there were people with different ideas, Mennonites who wanted change, and those that didn’t, and farmers who could no longer afford the land. Compromise of any kind meant giving in to the ways of the world, so the most old-fashioned ones, the most conservative of them, and some who were just interested in fresh land, started looking for a new place.”
It happened again and again, creating a trail of colonies and farms cut from virgin forests and dry plains across the Americas. Each one marked a new frontier, a fresh start that ended in disappointment for a stubborn few when the respect shown towards their Privilegium was not to their liking. They carried that contrarian spirit to the next plot of fertile soil and planted their wheat in promises that they would be left to their own ways.
“That group that moved to Belize, they weren’t from here, were they?” an aunt asked in a gravelly voice from the shadows.
“Well, sure they were,” an uncle responded, debating the facts of something long ago but never forgotten. “That group, it included some of our own. Some of them went to Mexico first, and didn’t like it, so they moved to Belize. We had cousins that moved with them, no?”
The Mennonites spread across the Americas, planting wheat wherever they went. In dry corners of Mexico, in the lushness of Central America, in the green hell of the Gran Chaco, all the way down to Patagonia, often requesting, and being granted, a Privilegium. The seeds of those communities came from here, from this riverbank, from the families that came to Canada from Russia. Mennonites with noses just like mine.
The bonfire popped with an explosion of sparks. Two of my aged uncles dragged more deadfall firewood out of the woods with a great deal of huffing an
d puffing. Conversation drifted through the historic moves, the names of the countries with the biggest groups, where I might find relatives; which branches, which breakaway church went where and when. The place names, repeated time and again in the countries where Mennonites planted their big dream: Manitoba Colony, Swift Current, Rosenhoff, Menno Colony, Steinbach. The same blood, the same names, the same seeds, again and again.
“Na yo,” one of my uncles said, slapping his knee for emphasis. Na yo. Meaning, it was done. There was nothing more to say. Let’s go, it’s getting late. They all stood up, folding their lawn chairs. One by one they hugged me goodbye, climbed into their cars, and drove away.
I crawled into my cold tent and tried to fall asleep, but my mind was kept awake chasing dreams. The restless movement of the Mennonites struck a chord with me. I’d been moving incessantly my entire adult life, but instead of virgin farmland I’d sought out the world’s largest cities. I funded my travels with pen and camera, trying to scratch my maddening itch of restlessness. Was that a Mennonite trait? Maybe hearing from those Mennonites who kept searching for their own utopia would give me some answers. Maybe meeting them would make me say, “Ah, that’s where that bit of my identity came from!”
Long, complicated, and somewhat dangerous journeys were not a new fascination for me. A childhood preoccupation with adventure had been fuelled by reading books that were far beyond my understanding of the world. Each one I snuck off my older brother’s nightstand took me to new worlds. Papillon and Midnight Express painted vivid images of the swashbuckling escapades and dangers to be had across the seas in foreign lands.
My parents also travelled, but not to resorts and cultural destinations. They went to foreign places to do volunteer missionary work. It was the accepted way for a Mennonite to see the world. When farm work slowed down for the winter they joined church groups and flew off to build schools and radio stations, sew uniforms, and bring financial support to missionaries in Mexico, Paraguay, Brazil, and Haiti. They came home bearing exotic gifts—Dad once brought a suitcase full of switchblades for his boys, unaware that they had a more sinister purpose than whittling sticks—and their stories of adventure spurred on my imagination.
I sailed yachts across oceans, dropping anchor in dodgy foreign ports, finding my way through the ice of Arctic seas, travelling to places where tourists didn’t normally go. Then I discovered motorcycles. The mobility, the hours of constant motion, and the rawness of it. Never mind the wind, rain, and baking sunshine, or the fear of getting hit by a truck. I loved the exposure the motorcycle gave me to a time and place. I could hear the shouts of children playing beside the road. I could smell cooking fires down an alley and feel the change of pace when I pulled into mountain villages. On a motorcycle I was in the centre of it all, totally independent and mobile, and I could travel great distances.
I drifted to sleep following the yellow dotted line of an open highway that led south, connecting people, homes, language, and foods that I hoped would feel familiar to me.
My alarm awoke me at dawn. I remained burrowed in my sleeping bag for a few minutes, savouring the warmth. Then, as the sleep cleared from my mind, I remembered.
“This is it, the start. Day one,” I quietly said to myself.
I could feel the presence of the Red River but could hear only the steady hum of traffic on the nearby highway. I crawled out of my tent and pulled on my boots, shrugging into my motorcycle jacket as I skidded down the riverbank on the slippery grass for one last look. The Red flows north, one of the few rivers on the continent to do so. Contrarian, like a Mennonite.
It was a cool, grey morning, and mosquitoes buzzed by in their lazy, weaving hunt. The cackle of familiar laughter had drifted away with the smoke, leaving behind only the smell of the cold campfire. It was just me, my bike, and my maps. And the river, which flowed smooth and steady, moving on to a better place.
I scrambled back up the bank and broke camp. I ate some zwieback with honey, had a gulp of water, and saddled up. The rasp of the engine starter shattered the stillness of the campsite. Then I turned onto the highway and opened the throttle, slashing through expansive fields of wheat, following the Mennonites south.
CHAPTER 2
United States
Middle America
I stayed in the fast lane, hunched over my tank, ears plugged against the scream of the engine, visor down to fend off wind and attacking insects, like a warrior on a mission.
In my mind’s eye I had a clear geographical picture of this audacious plan to ride across two continents. The Mennonites in Mexico, Belize, Bolivia, and Paraguay formed a chain of islands across the continent, while the bits in between were less clear, linked by roads I had yet to discover. I wanted to get into the centre of that picture in Latin America as fast as possible, and that required crossing the United States. I’d criss-crossed the US on previous road trips and knew the soul-destroying effect of its freeways. They take travellers through endless suburbs without cities and past service centres identical in their blandness. So I sought out the secondary roads, where the curves were tighter and the smells riper. The fragrance of freshly mown hay, a pungent cattle feedlot, the sting of exhaust from an old farm truck, and the rancid waves emanating from a dead dog on the grass verge filled in what the eye didn’t see at highway speed.
I stopped to refuel in Ohio, at a station on Highway 224. A red pickup truck with a man and a woman inside growled to a stop at the pump beside me. The driver, wearing his Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to show a chest of curly white hair, climbed down, stuck the fuel nozzle into his truck, and then sauntered over to my bike.
“Looks like you’re travelling a ways,” he said, looking at my Manitoba licence plate and heavily loaded bike. “How far ya goin’?”
“Argentina.” I thumped the duffle bag slung across my seat for emphasis.
He gave a low, drawn-out whistle. “Great trip. You drive safe now,” he said before he returned to his truck.
“Mary, that guy is going all the way to Argentina on that motorcycle,” he told his companion as he climbed back into his truck.
“Well, I say!”
“Isn’t that something?”
“Sure is.”
“Mary, where is Argentina? Is that in Mexico?”
At night I camped in state parks and built crackling fires for company. I studied my map in the firelight and counted the miles done and the ones to come. When I collapsed into my sleeping bag, I could feel my body tingle with echoes of engine vibration. My hands were swollen from gripping the handlebars and my ass was so sore I winced as I remounted the bike each morning.
But my bike and I were becoming one. I soon realized the bike was grossly overladen, so I began jettisoning gear—an extra pair of jeans left here, a spare packet of batteries there. I’d buy what I needed as I travelled. Even with just the “basics” my bike and gear weighed so much I feared I’d never be able to lift it back up if it fell over. Tent, sleeping bag, campstove, camp pots, warm clothes, cool clothes, rain clothes, sunscreen, laptop computer, video camera, regular camera, small camera, second small camera, big camera, toiletries, first-aid kit, spare tire tubes, tire pump, wrenches, screwdrivers, spare spark plugs, spare light bulbs, and a thick stack of maps that told me where to take all this stuff.
Within a few days I was riding through the American Midwest, where our Mennonite cousins lived. Pennsylvania, off to my left, was the Amish heartland. We’d started out in Europe together nearly five hundred years earlier as Anabaptists—rebaptizers— rebelling against both the Catholics and the Protestants. The Anabaptists believed that Christians should be baptized only when they were old enough to understand their faith, and that the faith had to be an active, tangible part of their lives. By design it was a fragmented movement without a clear leadership structure, because it was the power structure of the state churches they were rebelling against. That didn’t go down well wit
h the Catholics or the Protestants, and the Anabaptists were tortured, drowned, and burned at the stake. A lot of them.
But the Anabaptists stuck with it and their numbers grew. Some of them decided to live communally, following the teachings of a minister named Jakob Hutter. They shared all their possessions and became the Hutterites that today live on colonies in the Canadian Prairies and the northern United States. A Frisian minister named Menno Simons led another Anabaptist group, who called themselves Mennonites. Menno Simons preached pacifism and a quiet family-focused life, and his followers refused to swear oaths. They quoted James 5:12: “let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay,” and argued that because all they said should be truthful, swearing oaths was unnecessary.
But that wasn’t hard-core enough for some, so in 1693 a Swiss Mennonite minister named Jakob Ammann set off to create his own group. Ammann preached the need for a distinct appearance, from untrimmed beards to uniform dress, and a large group of Alsatian and Swiss Mennonites left Menno Simon’s group to become the Amish. Early in the eighteenth century the Amish began to migrate to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and eastern Canada, building pretty farming villages and orderly white fences that marched across green hills. Today, they famously shun cars and electricity. Instead, they drive horse-drawn buggies and wear the same style of clothes they wore when they arrived in America.
The Amish have become minor celebrities, attracting tourists by the busload who stop in Amish communities to buy quilts and homemade candles. The movie Witness, starring Harrison Ford, helped place them on America’s cultural map and contributed to widely held stereotypes of the Amish.
The reality television show Breaking Amish follows Amish and Mennonite youth who have left their communities to live in New York and experience the evil temptations of the world. I’ve been asked dozens of times if I experienced rumspringa as depicted in the reality show—the Amish tradition of allowing teenagers a few years of freedom before they commit to the church and community. No, I didn’t.
Menno Moto Page 2