So I travelled to Bolivia near the end of August … about 3 weeks. The place where Kathy and I and later, our kids once lived.
Someone asked why? The pictures are great, he said, but what’s the appeal? He hasn’t been to Bolivia, so it’s a fair question. And since he asked it of me near the beginning of my trip, I kept remembering the question. Just pure nostalgia maybe? The long, warm evenings? Friends who live there? The informality of the entire political and social and economic culture … where everything is negotiable, as our friend Ona used to say? The feeling that when you are in Bolivia you live a little closer to the edge and a little farther from the securities we entitle ourselves to here in the north? The warmth of the people … who make eye contact on the street and are almost always gracious? The color … everywhere, all the time? It can be a long list, none of which, perhaps by themselves make a return compelling (they actually kind of do) … but they add up. And there is the presence of 130,000 low german speaking Mennonites.
I went a week early before meeting up with a group, a learning tour (13 of us) hosted by MCC Bolivia to visit several Mennonite Colonies and several program sites. During that week I reconnected with people at MCC (who were completely helpful), sat in the Central Plaza, had my shoes shined, hired a taxi for a day (100 USD) who took me well out into Mennonite Colony land to visit several cousins, visited an old MCC friend an hour north, who lost his leg to diabetes but who can still tell stories like any self-respecting Bolivian, ate with other Bolivian friends, wandered around Santa Cruz a little, visited a young Mennonite woman, a relative, who is a midwife and training to become a doctor … it’s not hard to fill up a week and it’s a friendly place. Also, it’s warm.
Conservative Mennonites first emerged in Bolivia from Paraguay back in the mid 50s. Not many years later, the Old Colony began to migrate also … from Mexico, Manitoba, later from Belize, and then also from northern Alberta. Today there are more than 124 colonies all over Bolivia. Someone calculated they grow at least 5% a year. In 2019 there were 106 colonies.
Most of the colonies are of Old Colony church tradition. There’s a history to that label, but In Bolivia that means (for most but not all) that the men wear overalls, and a black cap, or a hat. The women’s dresses are dark, though often with some decorative designs. Their self-propelled farming equipment will be converted to steel wheels. Their mode of transport inside the colony is horse and buggy, but to town it is with local taxi companies or public bus services. In a very real way, they are heavily integrated into the Bolivian economy. They use local taxis, buses, lawyers, realtors, doctors, hospitals. But in another way, they manage to remain true to their commitment (from 2 Corinthians 6:17, ‘come out from among them and be ye separate’) to keep themselves apart. They have their own schools, their own colony structures, usually organized by villages, their own local government, and they work really hard to retain low german as their primary language at home, high german in church and at school, even though they live surrounded by the Spanish language. Many do learn Spanish, which they need in their business and often health matters. There are less conservative Mennonites in Bolivia, who also live in colonies; some of them use rubber on their tractors, and others drive their own trucks and cars.
Near the end of our visit, we were invited to visit an Old Colony school. The kids were on a break, but they had brought all 57 of them back for us, and the teacher was well prepared to give us a glimpse into how things happen in a low german, Old Colony school. I had witnessed a class once before, also in Bolivia. The girls attend until they are 12. The boys usually stay an extra year. The older ones are at the front of the class, girls on the right, boys on the left. The very youngest are at the back, and they seem to take their cues from the ones up ahead. They sang in unison … a rich, vibrant chant-like singing with the older ones leading, just like their elders do in church on Sundays. After the Lord’s Prayer, some math and grammar recitings, also in unison, a few respond to questions from the teacher. But mostly, it seemed, the kids knew exactly when to stand, when to recite, what to recite. It was both dazzling in how completely ‘at one’ they seemed to be, and curious in that it seemed a classroom built around sameness.
They get 6 or 7 years in school and then they become little adults in a world in which they expect to make a living, and to build and create within the traditions they have so long kept. About 50 hts of land per family, to grow soybeans for cash and feed for their animals. Basic equipment. No electricity, except for generators in their machine shops where welders and other tools are needed. Most families have a few cows and a small barn. The milk is picked up in 20 lt cans and taken to their community cheese factory, every day. Almost every colony makes cheese, a cheese that is popular all over Bolivia. The Mennonite economy is built for modest living. One gentleman once told me, ‘we have slowed life down’. And they have. The rest of us could pay a little more attention. They are often accused of clearing massive amounts of land and being unkind to the environment. I’m not sure that is true. A dairy farmer in Saskatchewan these days has 1000 cows. That’s better?
I’m curious about this, because at the same time, out of this world of apparent uniformity comes what seems to me, an unusual and amazing capacity to innovate. One example. There are many. A colony in Southern Bolivia purchased a block of land across a wide river. They, and also all the indigenous neighbors needed a bridge. The Indigenous leadership encouraged the Mennonites to build it, and so, they did. It took 4 years of planning, placing the supporting pillars (during the dry season) and then a couple of years of further design and welding massive amounts of steel and iron into what then became 4 sections, each 30 meters long. They tested it before moving it to the river by driving two 30-tonne caterpillars over it. It bent less than a cm. They also designed and built the cranes to transport each section 100 km to the river, and then to move them, one by one, onto the supporting pillars. There were no professional engineers involved and in the end, the Mennonites paid a hefty fine for not having an official permit. If you ask a Bolivian about that bridge (which made national news), some will say, ‘let the Mennonites build all the bridges’. That bridge helps a lot of people, and, as a taxi driver said to me, had they asked permission, the government would have buried the project with cost overruns (like in Canada also) and endless environmental and other studies. The Mennonites built if for half a million dollars.
The low german speaking Mennonites (anywhere in the Western Hemisphere) are an industrious and hospitable people and there is plenty to think about with them. Across South and Central America, they number about 350,000 people now, the very first of them moving from Manitoba to Mexico a hundred years ago. They have lots of problems among them, but wherever they settle, they seem to assume that they can figure out how to live. It doesn’t always work for them either, but they demonstrate, despite what many would consider the most minimal education, a capacity to figure things out, as part of their commitment to live out their faith a certain way. And, as my brother said, apparently no one has ever told them that there are things they can’t do.
Messy Notes 