“As I’d finished saying that, I could hear those people running up again, with their rifles, and they said, ‘There is no money!’ They were angry. And one of them said, ‘We don’t have time to talk! Let’s run to Mexico.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not running to Mexico, I’m going home.’ I don’t know what my face looked like, but those people could no longer look me in the eye. They were looking down like this.” Klaas bent over to look at his feet in exaggerated submission.
“And the guard, his rifle was like this.” Klaas pointed at the ground. “Five minutes later he said, with a friendly look on his face, ‘You can go home.’ And that’s what I did, with my three partners.”
There were tears and shouts of joy, prayers of thanks and wonder at the protection of God when they walked into the colony on Saturday evening, four days after they were kidnapped. But the kidnappers planted an extra seed of fear in their heads before releasing them, threatening to come to Spanish Lookout and grab them from their beds at night if they didn’t deliver the promised cash. The threat gnawed at them when darkness fell, and every shadow became a Guatemalan guerrilla coming for his due.
“When I came home, I saw scared people. The Mennonites were completely unaware of what to do. They were in shock.”
The former captives asked the community to help them pay the ransom. Some of them threatened to flee to Canada if the ransom wasn’t paid, they feared the kidnappers so much. The police advised them not to pay, but they took up a collection anyway. Not as much money as the kidnappers had demanded, but hopefully enough to appease them.
“One guy said he was single, he had no wife or children, so it didn’t matter if he was dead, so he went,” Klaas said. “We were terribly afraid. In hindsight I think maybe we shouldn’t have given them the money, but at the time I was very happy that they were doing it.”
The Mennonites tucked a Bible into the bag of money, so that this encounter should not be in vain.
“He said, ‘We brought you the money, now please give me back my wristwatch,’ and he got his watch back. So they departed with a handshake and peace. And I was so happy, so joyful. I felt peace.”
Klaas clapped his hands with finality, beaming at me. But he also seemed eager to leave the scene, and we hurriedly climbed into his truck. He was not the first, nor the last, to be kidnapped. Menno Penner, a citrus farmer and small business owner in the nearby city of Belmopan, was kidnapped on his farm on March 17, 1999. Men dressed like soldiers came out of the jungle and took him away in his own pickup truck. Five days later his family received a ransom note demanding US $1 million, threatening that they would never see their husband and father again if they did not receive the money. The family refused to pay, and Menno was never seen again.
“The kidnappers are just like corn farmers,” Klaas said. “If you get a big corn crop you plant corn again. If they get easy money, they do it again. But now the possibility of making money is too small, the Belize Defence Force (BDF) is alert now.”
The Mennonites suspected that their farm workers were passing inside information to the kidnappers and helping them carry out the attacks. It was an unsettling thought.
“We were strongly encouraged to make parties and invite the neighbouring villages. To create some connections and help them build roads, schools. And that is what we have done,” Klaas said. “The more people we have in favour of us, the harder it is for the kidnappers to get away.”
Klaas’s confidence returned with each kilometre he put between us and the kidnapping site. We drove to Aguacate Lagoon park, which had been built by the colony. It was near the border, where the kidnappers were thought to have come from. Empty picnic tables dotted the trim lawns and a lonely-looking dock jutted out into the lake. There was no one else there.
Five years earlier two Mennonite men had been kidnapped and brought to this park. They were tied to trees and the kidnappers stole their pickup truck. The kidnappers drove to the colony store, which also contained the colony bank, to carry out a heist. Inside, they stumbled into police who were shopping on their lunch hour. The police gave chase, but the suspects escaped across the border into Guatemala, leaving the two Mennonites tied to the trees until the police found them.
“Before all this happened the park was busy all the time,” Klaas said as we drove down leafy, winding roads. “You can use it for free, and stay here for the night if you like, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Klaas refused to pick up hitchhikers unless he knew them, and when he slowed at the ubiquitous speed bumps placed along Belize’s highways, he made sure his doors were locked and windows closed. Most of the colony stores closed before sunset, before trouble could get a start. Greta cautioned me against leaving my laptop computer near the windows of the house, which was separated from the road by an expansive lawn and a grove of trees.
“It’s too easy to see the computer if they walk by, and then they have an excuse to break in,” she said.
Mennonites were pacifist and weren’t supposed to carry guns, or even hire people to carry them on their behalf, but Belize’s culture of violence was just too much. The colony hired armed police to patrol its streets, and many of the large businesses also had armed guards at night. One of the guards was shot dead in an attempted robbery in 2010. Once again, taking up arms in defence had only made things more complicated, just like in Russia.
Klaas’s kidnapping caused him to have a mental breakdown, so he moved to Canada for a year of treatment—that’s when he met my parents. When he returned to Belize, he remembered the commitments he’d made in the jungle.
“In those four days I was in the jungle I learned two things. That is to pray to God, and believe he hears it, and to like all people, Mennonite or not. I am non-racist,” he said, wagging his index finger.
We were back at the house, sitting on the front porch. Greta watched her husband, nodding and occasionally interrupting to corroborate him.
“The first thing he said to me when he came home was, ‘I like all people’, and I thought that was a bit weird to say after what had happened,” she said, tucking her chin in and furrowing her brow as if she was once again hearing it for the first time. “But, it’s true, it’s the way it should be.”
“There’s a lot of racism with the Mennonites. We are better than the other people, or else we wouldn’t be right,” Greta said, laughing and slapping her rounded knee at her own joke.
Klaas’s renewed charismatic faith ran against the grain of the subdued, quiet form of religion that Mennonites traditionally practise. He lost his role as a church leader, and the rejection hurt.
“That experience opened my eyes. I was very closed-minded, so dumb with religion, handcuffed by it. Jesus wanted me to be rid of that. God made it very clear to me while I was captive. People are all the same. It doesn’t matter if they are Chinese, Creoles, Garifuna, Indians, Mennonites; I’ve learned to love them all.”
CHAPTER 7
Belize
Spanish Lookout
It was easy to be unique in a place like Spanish Lookout. It helped if you weren’t afraid of being different, or even relished it a little bit.
I rode along with Klaas as he drove his red pickup truck from store to bank to mechanic. At each stop he put a sparkle in people’s eyes, a look of expectation for a joke or a story. And there was also something deeper, something mildly condescending. A sense of amusement at the expense of others. In Plautdietsch we call it spotte.
“Hallo!” Klaas hollered when we walked into the Farmers Trading Center. “The Lord has given us another great day!”
The demure Mennonite women at the checkout counter blushed with uncertainty over how to reply. They snickered at his jokes, and then smiled at each other knowingly when Klaas moved on.
When we arrived at the mechanic’s shop to pick up a machinery part an amused smile appeared on the owner’s face as soon as he saw Klaas.
“Hallo. So how is the world?” the mechanic asked, a comic prodding lilt to his voice.
When I told people on the colony where I was staying, the response was often the same.
“Ah, I see. At Klaas and Greta’s?” they’d ask with a smirk.
“What’s that like?”
Klaas and Greta were beloved in the community—they did far too much good for there to be any animosity—but they stood out for being different. It wasn’t just because they had adopted Kenia and Evelin when they were young El Salvadoran orphans. What set their family apart was that they were vocal and fervent promoters of education and assimilation.
“We’re a bit Oot bunt,” Greta said, a hint of pride in her voice. She meant contrasting or clashing with the pattern of a quilt. “All of our children finished high school and went to university or college.”
Neither Klaas nor Greta were educated beyond the usual colony school, which put little emphasis on the sciences and did not include high school.
“At fifteen, I can remember sitting in a tree, crying that I couldn’t continue school,” Klaas said. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t stay dumb. Each person I meet can teach me something.
“The first one has to build the bridge, and then the next drives the train over. We’re building the bridge,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, as he grew more earnest. “The educated are thought to be too proud. Most Mennonites believe that you have learned enough if you can read the Bible and know not to steal. Then you should quit school and go to work. Two plus two is four. If you have two and take one away, you only have one left. If you have learned that, it’s all you need.”
We were sitting on the front porch again. The porch was where everyone gathered for a break in the shade, and as the day grew hotter more people appeared and the breaks grew longer. We drank iced tea, and when our glasses ran dry Greta would call out to Kenia or Evelin to bring refills. Klaas was growing animated, nearly upsetting his tea as he gesticulated with both hands.
“The Mennonites have gone through a sieve. Those Mennonites that wanted to remain dumb fell through and moved away. Those that had learned too much to believe in the nonsense of moving away have stayed where they were. All those ignorant enough allow themselves to be swayed by the preachers who say if you follow me, you’ll be able to go to heaven, and you don’t need further education. That’s religion. All those Mennonites that moved from Canada moved because of religious matters, and education was one of those matters. They wanted to remain dumb and thought it would be easier to get into heaven if they were dumb than if they were smart.”
A lean-to attached to the house was cluttered with wooden benches and tables, glistening with fresh varnish. Klaas had built the furniture for a school their family had started twelve years earlier. It was steadily expanding with his daughter Tina as principal.
“You should go see it,” Greta said, giving me directions to the school. “There’s still time before dinner.”
Jireh Fundamental Education was on the farm one of Tina’s grandfathers, Greta’s father, had built when he moved to Belize fifty years earlier. Mature trees shaded the aging outbuildings. A two-storey farmhouse, its wooden siding peeling and pockmarked, was the main schoolhouse. With ninety children enrolled for the upcoming school year, they were rushing to build an additional classroom beside the house.
The school operated on a tiny budget, but it was earning a reputation for its academic standards. At first, the community had viewed the school with suspicion, but as it proved itself, it had gained support.
“When I started teaching here, they said if the building is too ugly the students won’t learn,” Tina said, her laugh echoing in the empty classroom as she gave me a tour. “I proved them wrong. Everything is old, and they still learned a lot!”
Tina was about forty, with clear blue eyes and light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She giggled like a schoolgirl as she showed me around her all-consuming passion.
The school bell consisted of a steel disc from a farm implement, rung with a hammer. Bedrooms and dining room were converted into classrooms. Kitchen cupboards held basic science equipment, an old linen closet now held pencils and chalk. One classroom contained an antique clothes wringer, which was now being used as bookshelf. “My grandma used it when she was washing sheets and work shirts,” Tina said as she gave the handle a crank, turning the drums with a rusty squeak.
“When we first started, I thought about it a lot, that this was my grandparents’ house, and it was very special to me. But everything we’ve lived through here is more real and bigger than the fact that this used to be my grandparents’ bedroom.”
Classrooms were being cleaned, books sorted, and computers repaired for the upcoming school year. It was one of the few Mennonite schools in the area offering high school diplomas, and enrolment was soaring. The teachers were busy evaluating new students, who were transferring in from other schools.
“Many of the new students test much lower than I’d hoped they would, because the standards of the schools around here are way beneath what we expect. When we bring new students in it’s very disappointing for them and their parents,” Tina said. “They come and say they’ve done grade eight, but academically they’re maybe up to grade four or five. It’s because they have shorter school years and they do not emphasize things like homework and pushing through the curriculum.”
Although English is Belize’s official language and most Mennonites in the area had Canadian roots, the level of spoken and written English was poor.
“Our idea was to have a school where children would learn English to a good level,” Tina said, herself at times struggling to express ideas in English. “No one speaks proper English at home, it’s either Creole, Spanish, or German.”
The poor education was not due to a lack of resources or because the children were impaired by malnutrition and domestic strife. Instead, it was, as Klaas had said, due to a deep-seated cultural aversion to education among Russian Mennonites. School, for most families, was seen as a temporary holding place for children, not a potential stepping stone to something greater. The less a child learned, the fewer questions they asked and the easier it was to ensure they followed tradition. Institutions of higher learning would invariably plant strange, dangerous ideas in a student’s head. There’s an old Mennonite saying for that: Dee meea jeleaht, dee meea ve’tjead. (The more you learn, the farther astray you go.)
That was the approach my parents took as well. They encouraged us to complete high school, but my siblings and I did not go to university, as Dad made it clear he would not be paying for it if we did. If we chose to go to a Bible college—small residential schools similar to liberal arts colleges but teaching scripture, church singing, and missionary work instead of art—he would pay all the bills and give us a car to drive. That was a pretty good deal, so I went to Bible college. It was wholesome and fun and not particularly challenging. It wasn’t like I’d miss out on a sought-after internship or career opportunity if my grades were poor. We lived on campus, played sports against other Bible colleges, dated mostly other Bible college students, and learned how to proselytize and be church leaders. My college offered diplomas for music, counselling, and aviation—those missionaries need a way to get to the deep dark jungles filled with sin. I wrote for the school paper and enjoyed badgering college leadership, but after one year of studies, I’d had enough Bible college.
Bible colleges are a popular form of finishing school in Mennonite society, giving students a taste of further education and student life without them having to face the full brunt of interacting with weltmensch. They are also referred to as bridal colleges, as they’re the first opportunity most good Mennonite farm boys and girls get to find a mate from outside their village. Sending your children to Bible college increases the chances that they will return to Mennonite life, perhaps with ideas on how to freshen up the Sunday congregational singing,
but back in the fold all the same.
Using a lack of education to limit choice contradicts the emphasis Mennonites put on adult baptism. Anabaptists believe that baptism is valid only when the candidate confesses his or her faith in Christ and truly wants to be baptized. It is meant to show a conscious decision to follow Jesus’s teachings, in contrast to the involuntary act of infant baptism. I was in my late teens when I chose to be baptized. That difference—that we were making an intentional choice—was emphasized to us by preachers and parents alike. Our baptism had greater meaning than that of the Catholics because we chose ours, it wasn’t simply a rite of passage. But conscious choice didn’t appear to be as important when it came to educating children so they could choose between a life on the colony or a life outside.
Education was also seen as frivolous by many Mennonites.
“My grandmother taught us to always look out for things that were unnecessary. She called it oneidijch, and it was sin to spend time on those things,” Tina said. “Going to school for a long time would be oneidijch. You should be doing more worthwhile things like working with your hands, helping other people.”
Tina, her voice full of admiration, said that despite their upbringing her parents had poured whatever resources they had into their children’s education, even when the money wasn’t there. Even when other families thought spending money on books and tutoring was oneidijch, her parents always somehow found money to pay for education.
“My mother has lamented her lack of education all her life,” Tina said. “She always said if she was better educated, she could better express her feelings, teach others, and explain things better. She feels locked up, she can’t express what’s inside, and she always blames it on her lack of education.”
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