Menno Moto

by Cameron Dueck

  Land, and the gulf between have and have-not Mennonites, gave Hein and his group a sense of urgency. But the bickering over water supplies and the growing friction between Mennonites and Mexicans also set the stage for a well-rehearsed grouse among the Mennonites.

  “We can see that here the Mexican people are no longer on our side, they don’t like us anymore,” Hein told me with a glum face.

  Mennonites appeared affronted that some of the Mexicans didn’t want them as neighbours. They were hard-working and clean-living, and their businesses provided jobs for Mennonites and Mexicans alike. Their infringements—buying up land, farming it intensively, and sucking up all available water supplies, refusing assimilation and fostering a righteous superiority over their neighbours—struck them as too nuanced to be taken so seriously. Once again, Mennonites were the nationless martyrs and victims.

  “The Mennonite people have no fatherland,” Hein said. “We are strangers in this land. If it were our land, we’d set things up and fix these matters so that we could be successful, but we can’t, it’s not within our power to do so. Now our freedom to grow is gone, so we have to go where we can grow. That is how it has always been. We will never find a fatherland, it will always be like this. The Bible says that we Christians will always be moving, that we will never be at rest. That is God’s plan. I feel that doing this is part of God’s plan.”

  “Your own family was forced to flee Russia, and now you want to go back,” I said. “The story of how Russia treated us has been a big part of our culture for 150 years. Do you ever think of that history when you make these plans?”

  Hein twisted his mouth in the shape of dismissal before speaking. “If we are Christly people God will carry us. I know that Christianity is not strong in Russia. We think the Russian people are good people now, but yes, it could happen again, those terrible things that happened, and we’d have to leave again. Many people here are against the idea, they still have bad feelings for Russia. One preacher said to me, ‘That what happened may be over, but I still don’t like the Russians.’”

  The moves to Prussia, then Russia, Canada, and Mexico, and now back to Russia were all based on promises that the Mennonites would have their home, would be left alone to farm and raise their families. In reality, each king, queen, and government making those commitments also needed the Mennonites to feed and build their growing nations. And, if the plan worked, the nation would reach a level of sophistication, density and modernity that would be unacceptable to the Mennonites.

  So Hein was right—the Mennonites who refused to integrate and adapt were damned to an endless wandering, arriving in underdeveloped, impoverished nations and then choosing to leave once that nation was on its feet. The offers always sounded tempting when heard from halfway around the world, when the Mennonites were once again coming to the end of one of their cycles.

  Those Mennonites content to remain in Mexico viewed Hein and his group curiously, even expectantly. What would they find in Russia? Some hoped for reports of a new promised land. History had shown that if the first group was able to establish a beachhead more would follow.

  But, like in previous migrations, there was also a feeling among the broader community that it wasn’t quite that bad where they were, that Hein was overreacting a bit. The fact that it was often the poor who moved first was fodder for snide comments long after they left. The Mennonites who remained in Russia in Johann’s time surely mocked the poor, hope-filled farmers who had left, just as those of us who remained in Canada disparaged the Mennonites who moved south. Now it was the Mexican Mennonites who looked askance at those considering a move to Russia.

  But they did hope that, now that Russia was no longer communist, their neighbours would once again be successful colonialists. Russia had cost Mennonites much pain and blood, but most of that was directly blamed on communism. That word, communism, had become so loaded with mistrust and misconceptions that its removal left only a plot of virgin fertile land in people’s minds.

  Hein and his group were still a long way away from selling their homes and moving to Russia. First, they needed to go on a scouting trip, and Hein was anxious with travel arrangements. A group of eleven men, those who were known for their business acumen and eye for land, collected US $55,000 from potential immigrants to pay for a reconnaissance tour of western Russia.

  Russian farmers in the region had experienced their own droughts in recent years, but the dark soil still looked fertile in comparison to that of northern Mexico. The conditions in Russia were closer to those of their old homes in the Canadian Prairies than their Mexican home. Winters in Tatarstan are cold, summers mild, perfect for growing wheat, sugar beets, and potatoes.

  “We are a bit nervous about it all, but we are going now to look, not to buy,” Hein said. “I’ve been amazed at how many people came and asked about this. We do not have any fixed numbers on how many will go right now, if it were to happen, but many come to me and say, ‘If this happens, I want to come along.’”

  “We think that if we do have to move, then this opportunity in Russia could be an open door for us given the situation here. Mennonites did very well in Russia, and we were good, peaceful people. Maybe the Russians remember that.”

  “Na yo,” Hein said as escorted me to the door. He stood on the porch and watched me put my helmet and jacket on. It was still wet outside. Not raining, but a shower had just passed, or another was about to start.

  “If it keeps raining like this maybe you won’t need to go to Russia,” I said, shouting to be heard through my helmet. “There will be enough water for everyone.”

  Hein gave me a faint smile and raised his eyebrows to acknowledge my comment. Clearly, a little rain wasn’t going to put him off his plan.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mexico

  Manitoba Colony

  Manitoba Colony was still with afternoon heat. It was Sunday, a week after I had arrived, and the tractors were parked. The pickup trucks drove right past the farm-supply stores on the Mennonite Corridor and instead stopped at the ice cream parlours. A fresh breeze ruffled the fields of lush corn that continued on with their work while the masters rested. Families were at home or visiting neighbours and relatives. They could spezear—casually banter about local news, farming plans, and church gossip—for hours on end, interrupted only by meddach’schlop. The weekly afternoon nap was dear to the hearts of hard-working Mennonite farmers and remained central to the Sunday schedule.

  It was a stillness that I remembered well from growing up, when only the essential farm work was done—collecting eggs, milking cows, and feeding livestock—but field work was forbidden. Everyone went to church in the morning and then, usually with guests or extended family, ate a large lunch. In the afternoon the farmers lolled on couches or in the shade of their backyards, spezearing and retelling stories we’d all heard a hundred times, told through mouths full of sunflower seeds. Pure laziness reigned, on Sundays and Sundays only. As the afternoon shadows grew longer guests would shift to a different home, like a game of musical chairs. We would arrive at our neighbour’s or a relative’s home unannounced, and it was expected that they would serve faspa, a light meal of zwieback, the white rolls made on Saturday for Sunday consumption, cheddar cheese, cold meats, pickles, and pastries, and plümemoos, a cold, milky plum pudding, all washed down with gallons of coffee. Faspa was eaten only on Sundays and holidays. In summer it often ended with watermelon served with roll’kuake, lightly salted deep-fried dough dipped in Rogers Golden Syrup. The indolence was stifling for us children. Not that we were eager for more farmwork, but the stillness of a Sunday afternoon, when adults were hard to rouse into action, was the opposite extreme. We rode our bicycles and wound down country roads on dirt bikes and three-wheelers, trailing plumes of dust. But all the roving across our Mennonite community could not hide the fact that nothing much would happen on this day.

  I was staying in Bram’s news
paper and radio offices in the heart of Manitoba Colony. The reporters were gone for the weekend, leaving me space to write and do laundry. But the Sunday-afternoon stillness brought back that old restlessness, so I hopped onto my bike and drove aimlessly through the colony, feeling fourteen again.

  Young Mennonites roved the colony in groups. They parked their cars and trucks in small clusters on the roads and leaned on fenders, spezearing, free from the withering gaze of elders. Rock and Mexican pop music spilled from open doors. Some boys were red-faced and drunk, teetering in their tall-heeled cowboy boots, plaid shirts open a daring button or two lower than during the week, their tall white hats pushed back on sweaty foreheads. The girls with them, still wearing their long dresses but with their hair hanging free, flirted with the boys, running across the fields with a squeal when the boys gave chase.

  Drinking is forbidden in most Mennonite communities. When I was a teen we drank secretly in rock quarries and around campfires, and if our parents caught us we were in big trouble. I was nervous when, already an adult, I had a glass of wine with a meal in the presence of my father. I still felt like I should hide the glass under the table.

  Paradoxically, some of the most conservative Mennonite sects are also the most tolerant of drinking among youth—a less formalized or mythologized form of the rumspringa that the Amish practice. The partying is tolerated as long as teens don’t mingle with weltmensch too much. Once they are baptized and have become members of the community they are expected to give up this behaviour. Baptism, which takes place in one’s late teens or as a young adult, officially makes you a voting member of the church, and also the colony. Youthful misbehaviour is forgotten if the person makes a change in lifestyle, if they “grow up” and take on adult responsibilities in the family and community.

  I stopped at a farm where a car and a pickup truck were parked side by side in the front yard, some of the young men sitting on the truck box while others lounged in the shade of a nearby tree. They were a mix of Old Colony and Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites, differentiated by their dress but united in their boredom. The Old Colony boys wore the bibbed overalls called schlaub’betjse, the Kleine Gemeinde wore plaid western shirts and jeans, dressed like cowboys. Some swigged cheap local mescal mixed with sports drink, others favoured whisky and cola. Conversation dropped to a murmur when I turned off my bike engine and greeted them in Plautdietsch. I introduced myself and they only nodded. Despite their outward bravado not one of them would look me in the eye, and the girls, even the one lying across a boy’s lap in the back seat of a car, refused to acknowledge me or look in my direction.

  “Good day to be lazy,” I said in Plautdietsch.

  There was a long silence before one of the boys answered. “Ya.”

  “So which of you lives here, on this farm?” I asked. I tried to turn it into a joke. “Who’s the boss?”

  They didn’t find me funny. The same boy, shooting me a sidelong glance, answered: “We don’t live here.” Then he muttered something I couldn’t hear, and his friends laughed.

  I hung my helmet, which had a camera mounted on top, from the mirror of my motorcycle. I was adjusting the camera, hoping to capture the scene, when the talkative one sauntered towards me, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The mud on his trousers hinted that his legs had been unsteady for a few hours already. There was a puddle between us, and as he crossed it, he gave the water a kick, spraying me and a few of his friends with mud. He cackled with laughter while I tried to smile as I wiped the muddy water from my face, unsure if he was trying to be funny or intimidating.

  “Is that thing on?” he asked, and pointed at the camera.

  “No, it’s not,” I reassured him.

  “Good. If you take pictures, I’ll beat you up. We don’t like to have our picture taken.” He was close enough for me to smell his boozy breath as he rocked back and forth on the heels of his cowboy boots. He squinted at me, sizing me up. I smiled, doing my best to appear benign, unsure if he was about to take a swing at me. His friends were enjoying the suspense more than I was.

  “Why is that?” I asked. “You seem to be pretty open-minded Mennonites. You’re drinking and listening to music. Why no pictures? Where I grew up, in Canada, we could take pictures, but we weren’t allowed to drink or smoke cigarettes.”

  He snorted and took a swig from the bottle dangling from his hand, and then recited the rules he was living by, in perfect cadence and rhyme.

  “Ya, wie tjenne drintje, schmeatje enn fleatje, oba bild aufnehme doohne nijch.” (Ya, we can drink, smoke, and swear, but we do not take pictures.)

  A school bus pulled into the drive and disgorged a load of drunken, hyper Mennonite teens. The boys stumbled towards the low concrete wall and lined up to relieve themselves. The girls made a show of averting their eyes and screamed with laughter, their faces red from drinking and excitement. When the boys were done, they zipped up and stood about, swigging from bottles. They acknowledged but did not socialize with those who were there first. I asked one of the new arrivals where they had come from and who had organized the bus. Was this some kind of Mennonite pub crawl? There was a sullen, mumbled answer and another young man chimed in to claim they were part of a church group. That elicited a collective guffaw from the group. Soon the new arrivals piled back into the bus, and it lurched down the road with its drunken payload, a long toot of its horn saying goodbye to those who had never left their spot under the tree, where they swatted at flies and stared out into the empty, sunbaked yard.

  “Do you ever go into Cuauhtémoc to drink in the bars and clubs rather than here?” I asked one of the boys under the tree. “It might be more fun than this.”

  He shook his head.

  “They’re full of Mexa,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re German, that’s why we wouldn’t drink with them. The Mexa shoot each other. It’s too dangerous to go there.”

  Instead they opted to play out their frustrated boredom in the safety of their own community, a strategy I knew well from my own secretive rebellion in Mennville. There was a callowness to our teenage partying. Sheltered from pop culture and generally forbidden to associate with non-Mennonite teenagers, our curiosity and recalcitrance were expressed by building Saturday-night bonfires in the stone quarries, drinking ourselves silly on beer and vodka, and then making colossal efforts to appear in church the next morning. For all our attempts to reach beyond our village, we knew that we were just rowdy country bumpkins. Urban nightclubs filled with weltmensch were more intimidating than appealing. The swagger of an off ya fallja Mennonite, those who have “fallen away” from the church, is for the benefit of other Mennonites, not for outsiders.

  Often the term off ya fallja was used with a smirk. It was reserved for those who had burst out of their repressed former lives with an embarrassingly energetic embrace of all things worldly, all things sinful. The more repressed they had been, the more pronounced the change when they became off ya fallja. Sometimes young men who came to Canada from the southern colonies became off ya fallja. They were excited by the freedom they discovered but they were still painfully unfashionable and intimidated by the outside world. Their idea of cool was often decades behind the current trends. They bought loud cars, listened to louder music, swilled cheap booze, wore sunglasses—forbidden by some sects—and bragged about it all in stumbling flat-toned English that gave away their Mennonite roots no matter how hard they tried to bury them. The off ya fallja girls—always fewer than the boys—wore the tightest jeans they could find and applied makeup until it was impossible to tell if they were pretty or not.

  These teens were curious about me, casting sidelong glances at me and whispering among themselves. One of the boys worked up the courage to ask me where I’d come from. How come I spoke Plautdietsch? I explained that I’d grown up in Canada, a place they were all familiar with because most of their families had come from Canada one or two generations earlier. I told them I now l
ived in Hong Kong, where I was a writer. They looked at me blankly.

  “China,” I said. Then they understood, vaguely. Successful Mennonite businessmen were known to travel to China in search of wholesale farm chemicals, machinery, and household goods.

  “I’m riding to Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina,” I said, knowing that many of them had relatives in those countries. They examined my motorcycle more carefully.

  “It must go very fast, that bike. The trip won’t take long,” one of them said.

  “Can I drive it?” the drunk one with the muddy trousers asked, grasping the handlebar and making a move to push me away from the bike.

  I laughed nervously, and managed to convince him that it was a bad idea, given his state. “If you see me when you’re sober, I’ll let you take it for a ride,” I said, hoping that would never happen.

  Conversation had worn thin. The teens had lost interest in me but were not comfortable returning to their party with me nearby. A few of them wandered off behind the farmhouse. One of the girls suggested a new location, and they prepared to leave.

  “Na yo,” I said. I had pulled on my helmet and started my motorcycle when the same belligerent boy came running from behind the house with a bucket of water in his hand, chasing a screeching girl across the yard.

  When he saw me, he changed targets and veered towards me with stumbling steps. When he encountered the puddle in the middle of the yard he slipped and fell. His friends broke into laughter, and the girl he had been chasing bent over to catch her breath, laughing nervously, wary of the boy. His face, already red with drink, now turned dark with anger as he picked himself up, mud dripping from his clothes, to face me. I was astride my idling bike several metres away, but I needed to drive past him to exit the walled yard. I started off, weaving wide around him and the puddle. As I passed him, he made a lunge for me, missed, and then pitched the empty bucket at me. He missed again. And then again when he yelled an unintelligible insult at my back. I pulled onto the road, my revving engine failing to drown out the taunting shouts of his drunken friends.