A mobile phone sat on the windowsill. That was a forbidden technology on the colony, especially inside a home. Calls were sometimes made up plietch, outside in the yard, or from the barn, but not in broad daylight, and certainly not in the house.
I pointed at the phone. “Does stuff like that, having a phone inside, does that make them go against you?”
“I put it there because it doesn’t get a signal in the house, because of the tin roof,” Otta said. She shrugged. “What the colony says, the rules it has, they don’t mean so much to me anymore. I have to be able to speak to my man.”
“I go to the prison as often as I can, every few weeks. But the trip takes money and the journey makes me so uncomfortable. Driving to the city with all those people looking at me.”
At first, I thought she meant the people in the city and in the prison itself were staring at her. Jacob had shown me his room in Palmasola and its lack of privacy, and she had stayed in that room with him overnight. All those people in the prison looking at her. But no, she meant those people looking at her were other Mennonites, because of Jacob.
“There’s a big bus that comes through the colony in the morning, and everyone who wants to go to Santa Cruz goes on that bus, and then in the evening it comes back. It’s all full of people from the colony. And they don’t speak to me. But oh, how they stare at me, because they know where I’m going.”
Now that I knew the curiosity the community had for Otta and her troubles I thought of my own entrance into her corner of Manitoba Colony, how I’d stopped and asked where she lived, by name. The defiant wife of a rapist was entertaining a strange man who had arrived on a motorcycle. That would get them talking.
“It’s been hard to speak to any women on the colony. You’re a lot braver than most,” I said.
Otta waved her hand, it was nothing. “Before this, I wouldn’t have let you come in like this, without my man here. Now, it doesn’t matter.”
I couldn’t imagine my mother going it alone like Otta was doing. It was rare for my mother to drive to town by herself, let alone to the city of Winnipeg—of similar size and distance away as Santa Cruz was for Otta. Matters of money and interaction with non-Mennonites were entirely left to my Dad. If a stranger came on the yard, the first thing she did was send me to fetch Dad.
“I’m not scared. Not of anyone,” Otta said, forcing out another dry laugh. “What should I be scared of, they’ve taken it all. They’ve already done their thing. Ya, I live here, my house is on the colony, but I’m not part of the colony. I go to a church off the colony and I have very little to do with people here. They leave us alone.”
She looked at Gerhardt for confirmation, but he said nothing. He leaned on the table, thin shoulders hunched up to his stick-out ears, and gave his mother a wan smile.
Otta had two young girls who still attended the colony school.
“I’m very surprised that they still allow the girls to come to school. There’s another family, when they bought a car and started to go to another church, the leaders said the children could no longer come to the school. But my girls still go to school.”
Otta paused. “I think it’s very good that they let them come,” she added. “They don’t do the things they could do to help, but at least they allow us that.”
She laughed, heartily this time. She took a breath and laughed some more. At the luck of it, or at the unpredictability of censures handed out by church leaders, I wasn’t sure. Her eyes never left my face as she laughed. When she took a breath and pitched into a third cackle I felt uncomfortable, but joined her with a stiff smile. I tried to imagine life at school for the girls. Some of the rape victims were classmates. Everyone at school knew their father was in prison, and why.
“They learn almost nothing at school. It’s a shame. They learn to memorize stuff, but they don’t learn how to think. Only memorization. I sometimes ask them things when they come home, to see that they’re learning to think problems through, and they haven’t learned a thing. But what choice do I have? Where else will I send them? I have no car, no money.
“I think that if people here would learn things, like how to think, this situation would not have become such big story. The men stuck in jail and the girls, they were told what to say, again and again. The men were told what they should say to confess, the girls were told what to say when they got in front of the judge. I know very well that many of the girls and women did not know what they were saying. They don’t know Spanish that well, they just allowed themselves to be taught what to say. It’s the same as in the schools here. They are told things, the children don’t understand what it means, but they memorize it.”
Despite the poverty and the critical stares of her neighbours, Otta saw the whole case as having a positive outcome. The whole sordid case, the accusations and bribing of officials and convoluted stories had drawn back the curtains on colony life, and her family had been set free. Just as Jacob had also said.
“Ya, things are so much better now. My children have become betjeared. The attitude, the spirit, of the whole family has changed.”
The issue of becoming betjeared, or converted, scored to the heart of colony ethos. To become a “born again” Christian was to snub the Old Colony church. The stagnant church taught yielding to God, the onerous guilt of sin and following the “old way” as dictated by its overbearing male leadership. Being betjeared or “saved” was considered selfish and prideful. To claim such a conversion showed a sense of daring, of reclaiming one’s spirituality. It was a personal expression that raised the leaders’ hackles.
“The children say everything just feels so different now. We are not just focused on the sins we’re committing. We’re free from that now. We don’t just measure everything by our shortcomings, like it is here without understanding the scriptures. Now we can have joy too.”
I looked at Gerhardt for confirmation, but he gave me no signal that he agreed with his mother. His eyes flitted up to meet mine and then returned to the tabletop, where he pushed a crumb in circles with his small finger. He didn’t look very free to me.
“I’m glad to hear that you feel freer. Jacob, and the others in prison, said the same thing. But still, now you’re alone, without the community you had before.”
What I didn’t say, but thought to myself, was that she had nowhere to go. Her education was no better than her children’s, she was barely literate, unable to communicate in the national language. There was little chance of her getting a job off the colony to support herself and her children.
“It’s hard, very hard. To have the patience, waiting for him to come out, not knowing when it will be. Someone said maybe in time for Christmas, which would be a very nice present, but I don’t have my hopes up. But even though I’m alone now, our lives are better, freer.”
It was time for me to leave. We went outside, where Gerhardt played with a pet turtle that lived in his sandbox. The turtle pulled its head into its shell when he picked it up, and Gerhardt tapped at the shell and tried to coax his friend out.
“When I’m alone he doesn’t hide like that,” he said, disappointed at the turtle’s timidity. It was the only thing he’d said in my presence, other than his name. His voice was soft and high-pitched.
“Maybe he’s doing something bad up plietch,” I said. Otta snorted at the joke; Gerhardt didn’t get it.
Being twelve meant Gerhardt was expected to work and help the family put food on the table. Most boys his age would work on the family farm for a few years before they were qualified to work for neighbouring farms, the cheese factory, or a local schmiede.
“He’s done school, so he could be out working, but with his pa gone he has no one to teach him,” Otta said. “And he’s too small to go work for others. Anyway, I told him I need him at home to keep me in good cheer. And he charges the batteries, operates the water pump, things like that.”
Otta p
atted the man of the house on the head. He smiled shyly.
Theirs was a small yard by colony standards. A black horse-drawn buggy was parked outside the shed. Laundry flapped on a clothesline, white sheets hung next to dark dresses. A large tree beside the shed had a rope swing hanging from a low branch. A modern multi-speed mountain bike was leaned against the outside of the house; another forbidden convenience. Bicycles were viewed in the same light as cars and trucks, they tempted youth to travel outside the colony to explore sinful temptations. Old Colony Mennonites removed the pedals, sprocket, and chain, then cut and welded the frames to convert bicycles into giant scooters. That made them inefficient enough that they would not tempt young people to stray. But Otta’s bike was complete, with gears and brakes. Now Otta and her family were free to ride a bicycle.
CHAPTER 15
Bolivia
Unanswered Questions
The stories haunted me at night. I was staying in a small cottage near David’s radio station, in the countryside on the edge of the colonies. At night I sat on the porch, nursing a bottle of cheap whisky, staring into the darkness of the Bolivian savannah and wondering who lurked and preyed there. My house had electricity—bugs crashed into the porch light until they made tortured circles in the dust—but all around me the land was pitch-black and quiet. There was little traffic, no commotion or nightlife—at least none that I could hear. Who knew what was going on in the darkness. The stillness left room for imagination.
I had built walls in my mind. Walls that separated the rose-tinted memories I had of growing up in a happy, healthy, moderate Mennonite family, my version of Mennonite, with what others saw as being Mennonite. Other rooms contained different Mennonites, varied in tone and dress. Some rooms contained those varieties I found in the South, who took Mennonite faith and culture and tailored it to fit them the way they wanted to wear it. I’d always known those other rooms existed, but I’d never opened the doors to see inside, and I’d certainly never considered that we were all in the same house. I had trouble associating myself with what I found in some of the rooms.
The dangers of mixing heretical zeal and isolation were well-documented in our Mennonite history. At times the wild, heretical streak in Anabaptist culture led to an austere and pious life, but repression also gave way to orgies of sex and killing. Not long before setting off on this journey I’d read the story of Jeronimus Cornelisz, whose family was of early Frisian Mennonite stock. He ran away from his debts and became a Dutch East India Company merchant at sea. In June 1629, his ship, the Batavia, was wrecked on the remote Morning Reef off the west coast of Australia.
Cornelisz and his gang lorded over the islands and the two hundred Batavia survivors. As food and water became scarce the killing began, with the mutineers murdering about one hundred and twenty people over a two-month period. The men enslaved and raped the women. Eventually Cornelisz and fifteen of his men were discovered and hung by the trading company.
Now the story of Cornelisz felt a lot closer to home than I liked. When I was in Santa Cruz, I’d noticed the look people gave me when I said I was Mennonite and that I was staying on the colonies. I felt embarrassed, and always hastened to add that I was a “different kind of Mennonite,” though I wasn’t sure myself what I meant by that. There had been times on this journey where I was very proud to identify as a Mennonite, however tenuous other Mennonites might judge that connection to be. I thought of Klaas and his family in Belize, and their willingness to break conventions in order to bring change to their colony. The hard, honest working success of the Mexican Mennonites, a trait I reminded myself of when things got tough. In every community I’d visited I’d seen a willingness to help others and give generously. But now all those good things were pushed aside by the ugly results of repression, isolation, and ignorance.
I called the Canadian consulate the day after meeting Otta. They knew about the rape case, but were unaware one of the accused was Canadian. I gave them Jacob’s name and passport number, and they said they would contact him. But there was little they could do besides visit him in prison, and offer him medical care and moral support as a corrupt justice system and reclusive community had their corrosive effect.
The rapes were bad enough—spawning pity for each Old Colony woman I saw. Who had done what to them, how, when, and where—the facts would forever be cast in doubt. Real justice could never be served. But what had happened after the rapes were discovered also gnawed at me. Speculation, torture, coercion, and lies. It was this that evinced how ignorance fed vengeance in a vicious cycle. This part of the story hadn’t been told in full by the international media that had come here to hear about the “Ghost Rapes.”
I’d never encountered anything near the darkness of this case in my own community, but the obstinate closed-mindedness felt familiar. That blind dedication to tradition and culture, no matter the cost, made the outside world seem scarier, but also more seductive. Us and them. I explored the latter first through books, then through travel—and both made me realize that the world and its weltmensch weren’t as evil as I was taught they were. For me the isolation of mind and society were an inconvenience and perhaps a catalyst. But here in Bolivia, I’d found these played out to the darkest, most sinister effects. The darkness disgusted but intrigued me. It coloured everything I saw and heard. Each time someone declined to make eye contact, every person who gave an evasive answer, each uncomfortable silence and awkward exchange made me wonder: Victim? Rapist? Or just wounded by the witch hunt?
There were still many questions left in my mind, and those questions, the confusion between superstition and hearsay and truth and fact—all that doubt was what made everyone on the colony a victim of these crimes.
I spent hours riding my bike through the colony and on the roads surrounding it. Sometimes I was searching for a certain farm, a person I’d heard was willing to tell their story. Other times it was aimless riding, taking comfort from the steady buck and weave of my bike on rough roads. The bike felt light and free without her usual load of luggage. The full-throated roar of the engine ripped apart the silence of the colonies, and I imagined a raw open wound that lies could not hide.
My cottage was just outside the town of Pailón, a grimy little outpost fifty kilometres east of Santa Cruz. Pailón was the nearest commercial centre to the colonies, and on most days it was filled with Mennonites on business. It also contained a string of greasy barbecue joints that were hugely popular with the Mennonites. The restaurants belched out clouds of blue smoke, their glaring fluorescent lights making the diners appear sallow and ill. I tried each one before I realized they were all equally bad. Over-cooked meats, limp french fries, sweet sodas. I recognized faces I’d seen on the colonies and waved hello to them. Most gave me only a shy nod before moving on, herding fat wives, bashful daughters, and gangly sons to their table.
One Sunday afternoon I was invited to join a zangfast, a community song and worship event held in an open-air hall. It was a rare mix of Mennonites from across the spectrum of conservatism, possible because it was held on neutral ground—not on any one church or colony’s territory. The hall was packed, standing room only. Old Colony Mennonites of good reputation in the church wouldn’t be caught dead there—with musical instruments and wayward Mennonites who might pollute their minds—but there were many who still wore the Old Colony garb while they searched for a life beyond the colony, like those who lived in nearby Villa Nuevo. Others came from more liberated Mennonite churches and communities. The day was blistering hot and muggy, but only the missionaries wore shorts. Women sweated in long dresses, men plucked at their thick trousers and shirts buttoned up to the collar. The seats were filled mostly with young families and teens—this was a safe and acceptable place for young people to meet and socialize, so they came in droves. The Canadian volunteers who had come to work on the new school in Villa Nuevo were the stars of the show as they led the singing with their guitars and harmonicas. Songs
about simple faith, honest living, hope, and humility. Each song was followed by polite applause. The applause marked this as an entertainment event—no one would clap for music played in a church. People sipped at soft drinks and cups of cold yerba maté and coffee poured from Thermos bottles they stashed under their seats. There was an earnest wholesomeness to it that made me feel homesick.
“This next song speaks to my heart,” one of the missionaries said in Plautdietsch, strumming his guitar for effect. “There are days when I’m lonely or scared, or I just don’t feel joy. And then the words of this song give me comfort.”
He began to sing, his strong tenor voice carrying the flat Plautdietsche tones over the crowd, through the open-sided hall out into the grassy parking lot and beyond.
Länen, länen
Guanz vesecha kaun ekj met ahm gohn’
Länen, länen
Länen gaunz aun Jesus siene Oarms
Leaning, leaning
I am secure walking with him
Leaning, leaning
Leaning fully on Jesus’s arms
The next morning, I lingered over my breakfast, picking every crumb from my plate, drinking every last drop of coffee, not wanting to leave my comfortable little cottage. Over the past weeks I had unpacked my bags, cleaned and reorganized everything, made it my temporary refuge. I changed my mind half a dozen times during breakfast. Go, don’t go, go, stay. The house was cool, and a gentle breeze whispered through the open windows.
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