Rebekah Nimtz is an MCC Service Worker in the cross-roads, bread-basket city of Cochabamba, Bolivia.
A colony Mennonite from Bolivia will confess that a typical outsider perception of them is summed up by overalls and cheese. Other perceptions are shaped by often unflattering media tabloids. Even within MCC Bolivia there exist gaps in understanding, despite the fact that MCC Bolivia’s work first began with assisting colony Mennonites in 1958. In light of this, our latest team reunion focused on bridging some of those gaps, coming together with different colony members to share diverse life experiences, cultures and traditions for two days.
Jorge Niño and Elysha Roeper. Photo: Fredy Hiebert
Klass Rempel is originally from Belize, has a father from Mexico, a Bolivian daughter, a German daughter-in-law, a Canadian grandfather, and a Russian great-grandfather. He touched on the history of the Low-German speaking Mennonites’ first land-scouting presence in Bolivia in 1926. Thanks to Bolivian Decree 130 they were given freedom to work the land, remain exempt from military service and utilize their own education system following the establishment of the first colony in 1952. At a growth rate of 34%, they are now a population of around 70,382 in Bolivia. A few of their economic contributions include the production of soy, livestock, peanuts, sesame, sorghum, milk, cheese, mills and corrugated metal.
Benjamin Guenther lives on the dry Chaco border with Argentina, in what was formerly an agricultural dead zone infested with vipers. With persistence his colony found wells when even Chinese technology had given up, though the setbacks of drought and lack of industry in the colony persist. Benjamin studied to become the colony’s only veterinarian and school-teacher. In addition he is also a merchant and father of eight, to which he added with a smile, “I’m rich but not in money.”
Fredy Hiebert
In an example of government cooperation between the Bolivian state and the Mennonites, Benjamin jovially clued us in on his leadership of a government sponsored event to make the largest cheese in Latin America, which turned out to be the largest in the world at 4,120 kilos.
For another perspective, Tina Dyck shared her story of leaving the colony, due to personal and family difficulties as well as questions around leadership and Biblical interpretation. Once baptized into a colony, leaving is equivalent to letting go of everything the colony represents. Yet Tina now has her own family and glowed with a sense of ownership, telling us that she writes and records praise songs in Low German for her church in a transition community.
For members of the MCC Bolivia team, the sharing sparked different reflections on their own changing perspectives. Juana Masavi, from Bolivia, found, “The colony Mennonites are very amiable and creative. There is great respect toward leaders. I found it very interesting that there is assistance available [via Low German speaking transition communities] if they leave their colony, but one suffers greatly in leaving everything and entering the change into freedom [from the colony].”
Fredy Hiebert
Grecia Ramirez from Peru, part of the Bolivia Seed program took this away from the conversations and visits:
Something that impacted me [was] the men sharing that they don’t have higher education but nevertheless they are frequently nurses, dentists, etc. They manage by reading books and by practical application. [Benjamin shared how he sews up wounds] and how someone was saved by paralysis with an invented mechanism made of a spark plug with cables, a battery and metal to transmit electricity. Girls learn to sew by 12 years old and at the same age boys are driving tractors built by their fathers. They are far from the city and use only solar energy, yet head into the city to sell [the things] they produce.
Jacob Klassen, a Mennonite from a more conservative colony touched on 1 Timothy 4:6 as a key verse: “But you, persist in what you have learned.” Colony tradition is protected via agricultural life and young people stay in the countryside, as opposed to a tendency in Bolivia at large of young people migrating to the cities. Buying land in a colony is equivalent to agreeing to be part of the colony in every respect.
“It was amazing to see a culture that has worked so hard and succeeded at preserving their history and way of life. That shows an incredible inner strength and self-reliance. People are so interconnected with their neighbors and are able to rely on one another,” reflected Elysha Roeper from Canada, serving with the Seed program. “[There exists an] understanding of each person in the community that they are a part of something bigger. There’s ‘buy-in’ to the philosophy they are founded on.”
Fredy Hiebert
On our next-day visit to the colonies, thirty people from seven countries passed fields of sorghum and peanuts, along with tow-headed children in bibs playing at the end of drives where giant milk cans sat in wheelbarrows awaiting refilling. The neatly trimmed hedges, I was informed, alert prospective suitors that a homestead possesses unmarried young ladies—as hedge trimming is the work of teenage daughters.
One of our stops was a nacho factory, inspired by Mexican influence, a would-be-gigantic operation were exportation permitted. Other shops included a general store where we were served as if we were regulars. We toured a pharmacy akin to a well-stocked health food store and our blood-pressure was taken at a combination clinic-dentistry.
When we pulled up to the home where we were to eat lunch, I and a fellow Hoosier couldn’t help but be reminded of a rural Indiana homestead of spacious lawns with barns and farm equipment, but with the addition of palm, mango and mandarin trees. Among the extended family gathered for the occasion, women shared with women and men with men, simply because, “Sometimes we like to talk about different things.” One daughter of the family shared how much she dreams of travelling the world but does it via the Centro Menno library. An abundance of smiles and examples of needlework were freely passed around.
Fredy Hiebert
Our hosts ushered to large tables overflowing with food piled high and regularly refilled: meat sandwiches, borscht with dill, jello with fruit and Russian salad. Satiated, we filtered outside for wagon rides. The horses at first startled by so many strangers calmed down and proceeded to amble along the dusty road, suddenly not bumpy now that we were traversing it at the pace of the clip-clop of hooves and the rhythmic flip of mane instead of in vans.
Later that evening MCC Bolivia Representative Steve Plenert mentioned the “holy moment” of seeing all the women at one point scoot chairs together in the shade of the front porch, bridging divides in openly chatting about personal matters like dating, mothering, difficulties and loss. In bidding farewell I could feel our group contemplating a way of life without distractions, and the colony members the once in a lifetime opportunity to have the world at their door in the form of a boisterous visit of internationals.
Perhaps the strongest impression left on both groups can be summed by this interaction, when Otto Funk from Paraguay, who works in Centro Menno, asked his wagon driver in Low German: “What do you think of all this?”
His reply: “In God’s eyes we’re all the same.”
Fredy Hiebert.