The ghost rapes of Bolivia

Story by: Mail Online News

The ghost rapes of Bolivia: 

Horrifying story of women who were drugged before being tied up and assaulted in own beds... and they can't even remember what happened

In 2009, nine men in a Bolivian Mennonite community were jailed for raping at least 100 women and girls 

The gang used a powerful sedative adapted from a tranquilizer to drug households before carrying out the attacks at Manitoba Colony

Women were not initially believed despite waking to blood-soaked sheets 

Despite the convictions, it has emerged attacks in the colony have continued 

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By BECKY EVANS

PUBLISHED: 15:22 GMT, 6 August 2013 | UPDATED: 16:56 GMT, 6 August 2013

The spate of terrifying night-time rapes in an isolated, orthodox Christian community went on for four years and yet the victims could barely remember the ordeal and many believed they had dreamed it. 

It was not until 2009 that nine men were eventually convicted of the rape of more than 100 women and girls in their own homes in the Mennonite Manitoba Colony in Bolivia.

But despite the convictions, it has emerged that the sexual attacks in the closed community are continuing.

More than 100 women and girls were raped in the Mennonite Manitoba Colony in Bolivia but despite the convictions four years ago residents have admitted that the sexual assaults have continued.

An investigation has uncovered that once more women and youngsters in the Old Colony, where motorised vehicles and electricity are banned, are suffering sexual assaults they can barely remember.

Vice.com has found that many families believe the assaults are continuing despite the men, aged 19 to 43, being jailed. 

But members of the closed community told Vice that without cameras or streetlights - both forbidden in the community - or a police force, they have no way to stop or catch the rapists. 

They say they will have to wait until someone is caught in the act and in the meantime increase security at their homes.

One husband, whose wife was raped in the first spate of attacks, told Vice.com: 'It's definitely not as frequent. [The rapists] are being much more careful than before, but it still goes on.' 

From 2005 to 2009, women complained that they regularly woke up to intense pain and semen and blood on their sheets but their claims were not initially investigated and they were not believed. 

Some even reported waking up to find rope tied to their wrists or ankles or dirty fingerprints on their bodies but the victims could not remember the previous night. 

Many women had hazy memories or images of at least one man on top of them but they were not able to resist.

Residents say they have heard repeated rumours that the night-time rapes have continued but because the closed community does not have a police force the alleged crimes are unlikely to be investigated.

The Manitoba Colony in eastern Bolivia is home to about 3,000 people

The eventual trial found that the attackers used a powerful sedative to drug whole families before carrying out the rapes. 

Many women were attacked as they lay next to their husbands, who were also knocked unconscious by the narcotic.

A girl of just three was among the victims and a woman of 60 years old.

A pregnant woman gave birth at just six and a half months after being raped while unconscious.

Young girls were taken to hospital the next morning suffering from terrible pain and bleeding.

The gang of men, who had led some women to believe they were repeatedly attacked by demons, were eventually caught and jailed in 2009. 

Two of the men were found trying to break into a house and their story unraveled. 

Each of the nine-strong gang were jailed for 25 years and a vet who supplied the anaesthetic  - made from a cow tranquilizer - was sentenced to 12 years.

The colony - about 94 miles from Santa Cruz and home to about 3,000 ultraconservative Mennonites - has been deeply scarred by the scandal.

Sara Guenter told Vice that she tried to stay awake and asked a trusted worker to guard the house but the attacks continued when no one was watching her home.

She said: 'It happened so many times, I lost count.'

Some residents initially believed the rape claims were concocted to hide affairs while others believed it was down to 'wild female imagination.' 

Electricity is banned in the Old Colonies and the community lives off the land. Men and women's roles are strictly segregated with men working as farmers and given extra education whereas women only are responsible for cleaning and cooking.

The community has no police force so no one investigated the claims until two men were finally caught trying to break into a neighbour's house. 

Before that there had been no investigation and the authorities were accused of turning a blind eye to the situation. 

Abraham Walls Enns, Manitoba Colony's civic leader told Vice: 'That's all behind us now. We'd rather forget than have it be at the forefront of our minds.

'We only knew that something strange was happening in the night.

'But we didn't know who was doing it, so how could we stop it?'

Offers of help from outside of the colony, including from more liberal Mennonite communities in Canada and elsewhere, were rejected.

Orders for psychological help for victims has also never materialised.

According to: Mail Online News

THE OLD COLONY MENNONITES WHO LIVE WITHOUT ELECTRICITY 

Old Colony Mennonites do not use motorised vehicles or electricity

Mennonites are Christians that can be traced from Protestant groups on Europe.

They follow the teachings of 16th Century priest Menno Simons, who gave the group his name.

There are about 1.7million Mennonites in 82 countries, with prominent communities in Canada, the U.S., Ethiopia, India, and parts of south and central America including Bolivia, Mexico and Paraguay.

Almost 400,000 Mennonites live in the U.S. with more than 220,000 living in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The vast majority of Bolivia's Mennonite population are ultraconservative.

Over the centuries, members have been severely persecuted and partially due to their pacifism Mennonites fled to other lands where they were tolerated.

In the Old Colonies, motorised vehicles, electricity, dance and sport are all banned.

Old Order Mennonites tend to use horse and buggies for transportation and speak in a German dialect.

GHOST RAPES OF

BOLIVIA - PART 1

GHOST RAPES OF 

BOLIVIA-PART 2

Anna's Chicken Tamales

Anna's Chicken Tamales


Ingredients

30 dried corn husks

1 chicken 

3 quarts water

2 teaspoons salt

Dough:

4 cups masa harina (corn flour MASECA)

3 cups of chicken broth and the rest water as you need to make the dough a past like consistency 

Red pepper sauce:

4 dried red chile Anchos or your favorite kind

Water

1 onion

3 whole garlic cloves

1 teaspoon of black pepper

1/2 teaspoon of salt, more to taste

1 teaspoon of texmex seasoning

Sometimes i can't get the dried red peppers:

Then i just add a to the chicken, instead of the red pepper sauce. 
  
A cup of the chicken broth 
Five tablespoons of sweet chili powder
A pinch of hot chili powder
Three tablespoons of garlic powder 
Five tablespoons of texmex seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

In a steamer, cover the chicken with water, salt then bring to a boil. Reduce heat, steam for 10 minutes or until meat is tender, or just boil the chicken in a regular pot. Remove chicken from broth, set aside until cool enough to handle. Strain broth skim fat, remove and toss the skin and shred chicken off the bone.

Add the chile anchos, onion and garlic to a small saucepan add enough water so that they are just covered. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes, until the chilies have softened and plumped up.

Reserving the soaking water, remove the chilies onion and garlic from the pan and place in a blender. Add the salt, pepper and teaspoon of texmex seasoning.1 1/2 cups of the soaking liquid.

Purée for 2 minutes, until the sauce is completely smooth, taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning. If you want more heat, add a bit of paprika or cayenne pepper and purée some more.

Mix shredded cooked chicken with red pepper Purée.

Place corn husks in a large bowl and cover with hot water.

For dough, in a large bowl, mix 3 cups reserved chicken broth and water with masa harina mix until well blended.

Drain corn husks. Place a corn husk on a work surface, make a small ball out of the dough and press flat with a tortilla press or baking dish, lay the tortilla shaped dough into the husk, add a spoon or tow of the meat mixture and fold it.

In a steamer basket, position tamales upright.  Place basket over 2-3 inches of water. Bring to a boil, cover and steam for 15-20 minutes or until dough peels away from husk, if the pot boils dry add additional hot water to pat as needed. 

They freeze well before you steam them, but when you steam them from frozen you just have to stem them ten minutes longer. 

They also freeze well after you steam them, i keep a sip lock beg of steamed ones in the freezer to take to work for lunch.  They worm up nice in the microwave oven still inside the husk.  

Mennonites Don’t Cry

Continued from Tattoo-woman & Menno-girl

I just couldn’t go back to sleep. It was 4:00 a.m. so I decided to get up and have some instant coffee. Before I got laid off, if I wasn’t busy working, I would go to the mall and walk around for hours and fantasize about which outfit I would buy once I had saved enough money.

That morning, for the first time, I realized how quiet it was. As I was sitting there drinking my coffee, I realized how much I missed my family that I left behind in Mexico. It was always so loud in the house back home. I felt really guilty for leaving my mom and, especially, my little brothers. 

I wondered who was doing all my chores or if mom had to do everything by herself. I felt so bad for always telling my little brothers to go away when I was cleaning the house or making tweeback (buns). I wished I would have been nicer to them.

I looked through the window of my apartment that didn’t even have curtains yet. It was starting to get light out as the sun was rising. I decided to just get ready to go to this group Bree had told me to go to. I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t go and I ran into her at the coffee shop again. I pictured in my mind what would happen.

She would say, “How was the job finding club?” 

“Ahhh, I didn’t go,” I answered.

And what I imagined happening next was NOT pretty, so, no matter what, I was going. I brushed my teeth, got dressed, and put my long brown hair that had been in braids or a bun my whole life into a ponytail. I put on my white socks and sandals. It was cold that morning and I had to walk all the way uptown. I thought I would just take the socks off later when it warmed up. I figured that’s what anyone would do in my situation.

   

When I got there I had the scary butterfly feeling in my stomach. I was so nervous. It was at a local library and hardly any people were there yet since it was still really early.  

I walked around the building and there were two guys and a woman standing behind the building smoking. When they saw me, they couldn’t stop staring at my socks and sandals. That made me even more nervous.

I wanted to turn around and go back to my apartment but then I remembered Bree and walked right up to these people and asked, “The job finding club?” 

They looked at each other with a strange grin on their faces and one of the guys said, “Yup, it’s here, downstairs, but the door is still locked.” 

It didn’t open until nine and it was only eight.

I sat down on the steps because I was so tired from the long walk. About half an hour later, all kinds of people were showing up with books and backpacks. Some of them were beautifully dressed and smiling. They looked like they were so happy and knew exactly where they were going and what they were doing. 

I was so aufjenstijch (jealous) of them. I wanted that, all of it! Knowing where I was going and what I was doing, the earrings and the open toe shoes some of the women were wearing with the polished toenails peeking through – and, of course, no socks! One of these beautifully dressed women went down the steps to open the door to where I was going. I followed her.

After she opened the door she turned around and asked, “Are you here for the job finding club?” 

I said, “Yes.” 

She smiled, shook my hand, and said, “My name is Kim and I will be running this group today. You’re the first one here so you get to pick where you want to sit.”

I thought, ¨this is awesome¨ she was super nice so whatever was coming next, at least, she would be the one helping me. It didn’t take long for the room to be filled with people: men and women of all kinds of backgrounds and some of them spoke less English than I did. One man had a family member with him to translate. I didn’t have one of those so I had no choice but to figure this out myself.

As I was looking around, a man with curly salt and pepper hair, dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, came in. He looked normal to me but what did I know about people and what was normal? Where I came from, everybody looks the same. 

He came and sat down beside me. I thought, “Oh, crap!” I was hoping women would sit next to me. I wasn’t used to men and women sitting all mixed up together. Back home in the colonies men and women were always separated. 

It was making me more nervous but, before I could have another thought, Kim said, “Welcome to the job finding club. We will start by going around and introducing ourselves and I will pass this paper around. I want you all to write down your name and phone number. At the end of the day, I will give you all a copy of it.”

Everybody said their name. The man next to me was Mark. 

Kim said, “I expect you all to help each other out with finding work. After we leave here today, if you hear of a place that is hiring, call each other and let everyone know.” 

Everyone said "okay."

“Today we are going to focus on resume writing, let’s start by writing down your work skills,” Kim said. 

Everybody started writing, except me. I wondered, skills? What does that even mean? 

Kim saw me looking all confused and came right over to help. I asked her what skills meant and she explained it to me. She was going to get up and leave, but I asked her how to spell sewing? I could feel her thinking, “Oh crap, this is going to be a long day!”

Kim asked where I was from and how I ended up there.  I explained the shortest version of my story to her to the best of my ability. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her face looked so puzzled and then she said, “You are Mexican and you speak Low German? I think this is not the place for you. You should be in school, not looking for a job.”

“Ahhh, I can’t! I just got an apartment and I am on welfare and that doesn’t even pay my rent. I really need to find a job.”  I replied.

“I’m really sorry to tell you this but it will be nearly impossible to find you a job. Your English is not good. You don’t know what skills mean and you can’t spell sewing, Anna, this is tough” Kim said.

During that whole day, Kim couldn’t help anyone else because she had to spell everything for me.

Mark, sitting next to me, heard everything. He tried to help but he had his own stuff to write down. I got a nasty headache from all the frustrations, not eating, and not sleeping the night before.  At the end of the day, Kim said, “You can come back tomorrow and maybe we can figure something out.”

I never had time to take off my socks like I had planned and just walked home in them. The weather didn’t even phase me anymore. I just cried my face off the whole way walking back to my apartment. 

I thought there was an upside to that. At least, I could cry as much and as long as I wanted to. No one was telling me not to cry. In the colonies back home people would keep, crying a big secret. You would never see anyone cry like I did that day. You just had to sweep whatever problem you had, no matter how big it was, under the fluadakj (rug), and carry on.

If anyone was ever seen crying, they were told, "schäm de (shame on you) and stop it!" 

I think it was understood that, if you didn’t cry and acted as if nothing was wrong, then the problem didn’t exist. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I was going to need a big rug because I wanted to sweep myself under it

I knew that it was just my beginning and how big and real my problems were. I wanted to do the work to figure it out. I never expected it to be easy or wanted someone to do it for me; I just needed a lot of guidance. 

I was exhausted when I finally got home. I didn’t even eat, I just went to sleep. I think that was the first night I didn’t have nightmares and I slept through the whole night. Click here to continue reading my story.

Tattoo-woman & Menno-girl

Continued from Feeling LOW German

My last two weeks at work went by really fast.  I met Bree, who would occasionally go out for lunch with George, a.k.a. the tattoo man. She also had lots of tattoos and a nose ring.  She was really beautiful with very short black hair and she always dressed in black.  She didn’t sit with us.

She had her own group to sit with and they always played cards during break time.  She had a really serious face and she never smiled. But, then again, most people didn’t smile. It was like they were in pain all day but, as soon as the end of the shift bell rang, everybody suddenly got happy.

I was sad when the bell rang because I didn’t have any friends.  Felicity, the woman who called me a shmuck felt a bit sorry for me and that was why she invited me to sit with George and her. It was really awkward because, every time George said the F word, I turned red like a tomato and didn’t know where to turn my face. 

For the most part, I enjoyed observing everyone. Every person in the room was so different from what I was used to, in the way they dressed and interacted with each other.  I really admired the way some of them didn’t care what others thought of them.

One day I was in the bathroom at work when Bree came in. She had never said anything to me before.  She looked at me and said, “You are friends with George, right?”

“Ahhh, I sit at his table at lunch,” I answered.

“You want to see what I got yesterday?” She asked and before I could say anything, she lifted her t-shirt and showed me that she had gotten her nipples pierced.  Again, my face turned red like a tomato and felt like it was about to burst into flames. 

I said, “Oookaaay,” and left the bathroom as fast as I could.  I heard her laughing after the door closed behind me. She knew that it would embarrass the heck out of me and she loved it.

The next day, I had to show Bree how to do my job. She had never sewn a thing in her life and she was going to do my job after I left.  I turned the sewing machine on and off, took a seat cover and sewed it, and then looked at her and said, “Okay?” I did not have enough English words to describe my job to her.

She was really frustrated. She rolled her eyes and left. I was thinking, “Yup, I feel your pain” Not the pain she was probably having from the piercings, though. The situation was very frustrating but it wasn’t just that.  I felt like she had some problem with me. So, our supervisor decided to teach her how to do my job.

About a month later, I ran into her at a coffee shop. She looked at me, and I thought I had to say something to her and the words just flowed out of my mouth, “How is work?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes and said, “Seriously, you are asking me how it is to work in a factory, sitting at a sewing machine in one spot for eight f#cking hours a day, day after day? Ahhh, somebody please kill me now!” 

“Ahhh, yes?” I answered and explained to her that it was better than being stuck like I was. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even pay for a coffee and I hadn’t talked to a person in a month. Now that was killing me, and I wished many times that it just would.  When she heard me say that, her face lit up and she smiled at me for the first time.

She said, “Anna, would you let me buy you a coffee? If you have time right now, we can sit and chat for a bit.” I almost blew up with excitement.

If I had the time? “Ahhh, okay.” I was floored.  Time? That was all I had. I hid my excitement from her because I was afraid she would roll her eyes at me and leave again, but she didn’t.  We sat and chatted for a while about George and that they used to “sort of date.”

I thought  “Waut de schissjat! (What the heck)!” does “sort of dating” mean?  I knew what dating meant and thought, "Is this why she has had such a bad attitude toward me about sitting at George’s table?" 

I just sat there and smiled. Finally, someone wanted to talk to me and she bought me a coffee. I was thrilled.

I thought because she was so beautiful she must have many options to choose who she wanted to date and marry. Not the other way around, like it was for us Mennonite girls in Mexico.  

She suddenly changed the subject, I got the feeling that she didn’t want to talk about George anymore. We talked about how miserable we both were, how we both felt that we would be better off dead.

Tattoos for women on shoulder quote

She felt that it was okay for her to think that way but she told me that I was too young to die and that I should join this group that offered help with writing resumes, practicing interviews, and searching for jobs. She explained to me where it was and told me to go there first thing in the morning the next day.

I brought home a newspaper from the coffee shop and tried to read it but I just ended up getting so frustrated and ripped it to pieces and went to sleep. Since I was going to this group early the next morning, I thought I needed a good night’s sleep but I just had nightmares about a newspaper story that read: TATOO-WOMAN AND MENNO-GIRL JUMP OFF THE BRIDGE.

It was so strange. I was dead but I could hear and see everything people were saying and doing.  This was all happening in Mexico, in my colony, and everyone around us was asking what I was doing with a woman like that.

They were saying that they knew something bad was going to happen to Anna. Her parents should have never let her go to Canada. She was lost and now she has ended up just like her grandfather. Click here to continue reading my story.

Mennonites in Mexico looking for new home again?

A community that left Manitoba a century ago is eyeing Russia

 Credits go to David Agren macleans

Peter Friesen talks as if he’s seen the promised land. A Mennonite farmer and father of 13 in Mexico’s northern Chihuahua state, his blue eyes brighten as he paints a picture of a place with pleasant people, raging rivers and vast tracts of virgin land ideal for agriculture. “We saw really good land with lots of water,” Friesen recalled, while seated in the booth of a Mennonite pizzeria that sells pies smothered with the prized local product, a tangy cheese known as queso menonita.

Friesen isn’t talking about paradise. He’s talking about Russia, where his Mennonite ancestors once worked the land before departing for the Canadian Prairies and then the high plains of northern Mexico. Friesen and 10 Mennonites recently travelled to Russia to explore a possible relocation from Chihuahua to the prairie of Tatarstan—900 km east of Moscow and similar to Manitoba with its cold winters, hot summers and flat prairie. The possible relocation is not a nostalgic return to his roots, but rather a resolution for the most pressing problems Mexican Mennonites face: shortages of land and water. “We could cultivate 10 times more than we have here,” says Enrique Voth Penner, who also went to Russia.

For the Mexican Mennonites, an estimated 50,000 of whom are eligible for Canadian passports, land is scarce—a problem for a people with large broods and a fondness for farming. Previous generations of Mennonites pushed into the Chihuahua desert from their original settlements (including the aptly named Colonia Manitoba), drilling wells as they went. But times have changed. What land remains lacks adequate water to coax crops such as corn and wheat from the region’s sandy soils. Wells now are being drilled to depths of more than 500 m and the National Water Commission has stopped issuing permits. Making matters worse, Mexico just experienced its worst drought in 71 years. Water problems “have given people a push, given them a reason to migrate,” Voth says.

The Mennonites now find themselves embroiled in an escalating water war, in which they’ve landed on the wrong side of public opinion and, in some cases, allegedly participated in acts of corruption—namely paying bribes for permits and drilling wells without permission. The competition for water is fierce—so fierce that stories have surfaced linking some Mennonites to organized crime, without offering proof. In October, the leader of a farm group crusading against illegal wells turned up dead. “There are people who are envious,” says Mennonite tour guide Abraham Peters. “It’s time that we explore other options.”

In Russia, Voth found plenty to like: land, water, low taxes and offers of credit. Voth figures 100 families would go, but says the Mennonites, who are pacificsts, still need a guaranteed exemption from military service.

A move would only be the latest for a wandering people; some 6,000 Mennonites relocated to Mexico in the 1920s to escape rules in Manitoba mandating English-only education. The Mexican government promised the Mennonites the right to run religious schools—in complete violation of the country’s constitution, which mandates secular education—and an ability to avoid obligatory military service. The Mexican government has kept its end of the bargain, the Mennonites say, although many from traditional colonies, who still use horses and buggies, moved to Bolivia in 1967 after electricity came to Mexico. Others left during the worst of the drug war, which hit Chihuahua and Durango states especially hard. “There are always people that don’t think they can make it here and leave,” says septuagenarian farmer Guillermo Thiessen.

The community has prospered, as the Mennonites brought agriculture to inhospitable parts of Mexico, and developed a commercial corridor in Colonia Manitoba that attracts buyers from across the country in search of farm and irrigation equipment. Still, they stayed somewhat separate from the broader Mexican society. The Mennonites still speak Low German, attend their own schools—and are best known for queso menonita and the blond vendors in plaid shirts and coveralls who sell it at intersections.

Thiessen says he feels both Mexican and Mennonite and has grandchildren who married Mexicans. He inadvertently shows many Mexican traits, such as saying, “Gracias a Díos,” (thanks to God) when asked how he’s doing, professing a preference for spicy food and going abroad for short-term employment excursions. He recently made $3,000 picking potatoes in Winkler, Man. But Thiessen says he’s too old to relocate to Russia. Friesen is also more interested in Russia for his children than for himself, but he expects a warm welcome, should they ever arrive. “The officials told us in the first meeting, ‘Welcome home.’ ”

Feeling LOW German

Continued from Sinner Lost in Translation

Life was just beginning for me. I felt like I was on top of the world. I had a great factory job and I had just found an apartment that was not too far from the factory so I could walk to work.  

Before I could move in, I had to sign a one year lease. I had never heard of a lease before but I thought, “Sure, I’ll sign it. No problem.” Again, who knew you needed a SIN card for that too but, of course, I already had one of those.  I had used it before so, ¨what’s one more time?¨ I thought. Every move I made I had to be reminded that I was sinning.

I worked all week and on Saturdays, I cleaned my apartment because that is what women do on Saturdays.  I learned that, well, ever since I can remember. I couldn’t imagine what else one would do on a Saturday.

Well, maybe one other thing: my laundry. Back home in Mexico, laundry day was always Monday. I felt so empowered that I got to decide when I did my laundry. I was very hopeful and excited about making my own decisions. What my future would bring … and, how many doors this SIN card would open for me.

Then, about two months after I moved into my very own apartment, I showed up for work all proud and excited to sit in one spot and sew seat covers for eight hours.  Eight hours was a long time to daydream about what I might do the next Saturday and what I could do with the fifty dollars I would have left after paying rent.

Those fifty dollars had to last me until my next paycheque.  I was thinking of how I could maybe get one of those movie players people in Canada called a VCR.

If I had one of those, I could choose what I wanted to watch on the TV a friend gave me.  I could watch two channels if I put some tinfoil on the bunny ear antennas. I wondered if I should take my SIN card to the store to buy this VCR.

Right in the middle of all these pleasant thoughts, I was having about what movies I could watch (after I cleaned and did my laundry, of course), I heard my name being called.

“Would Anna Wall please come to the office?”

My heart stopped for a second or two.  I got up, turned off the sewing machine, and made my way to the office.  I could feel my heart pounding against my chest.

I was shaking so badly I could barely walk.  A man opened the office door and said, “Hi, Anna, my name is Hilary. Please have a seat.” All I could do is think, “Hilary? What a strange name” I had never heard a name like that before but I had never been called to an office either. There were a lot of firsts for me on that one day.

This was so strange. I was not used to a man opening doors for me or using words like, “Please have a seat.”  I sat down and looked at my hands because I was afraid to look up at him. As he started talking, I slowly lifted my head and looked at him. 

He was wearing huge glasses that reached halfway down his cheeks, he had a mustache, a haircut short on top and longer at the back, and he had the deepest, manliest voice I had ever heard. 

“So, how is that sewing machine working?” He asked.

“Ahhh, good … great,” I said. 

“So, the reason why I called you to my office is to let you know that we are experiencing a shortage of work and we have to let you go” he explained.

I felt all the blood rush to my feet. I suddenly felt very cold.  He looked a bit worried but he kept talking. “I am really sorry but, because you were one of the last ten people to be hired here, unfortunately, we have no choice but to let all ten of you go. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He asked.

“Ahhh, about every other word. What you mean is that I can no longer work here?” I asked.

“Yes, but as soon as things pick up again we will call you and you can work here again. You are doing a great job. You don’t talk to people and you work fast. That is what we want here” he said. 

In the middle of almost having a heart attack, I thought to myself, “If I could speak more ENGLISH, I probably would talk to anyone that would listen to me, HILARY!!”

I thought "what am I going to do now?"

I explained my situation as best as I could to my lunchroom buddies, George the long-haired tattoo man, and the woman that called me a shmuck.

They explored all my options with me, asked me some questions, and concluded that I would not qualify for unemployment insurance for various reasons.  Apparently, I needed more than a SIN card for that.

“Anna, didn't you just signed a one year lease?" Asked George the tattoo man.

"Yes," I answered.

"Oh shit! Anna, you are so f#cked!” Said, George.

I thought, “What does that even mean?  Here I go again” My heart skipped a few beats. I was turning white and feeling cold again, I drank some water.

My only option at that point was to go find Wilhelm Fehr and ask for help. I was stuck. I had to stay in that apartment for a year. 

I learned very quickly that 'Wilhelm Fehr' (welfare) sure didn't even give out a lot of money to live off of.  I didn’t even get enough to cover my rent. 

What the heck was I going to do? I could barely speak English, let alone read and write it.

There was no other job out there for me.  I thought my life was over.  I felt like this world would have one less problem if I just didn’t exist. 

I thought the reason I felt so low so often surely must have something to do with the fact that I was, after all, Low German.  I couldn’t believe that life was imitating the way I had felt most of my life.  When I started working at that factory I felt like I could learn to take care of myself and that was all I wanted.

I couldn't believe that my dream was so short-lived.  I was on top of the world and so hopeful about building a new life for myself in Canada, where I was the one in charge.  Then, just like that, five minutes in Hilary’s office and that dream was gone.

My Low German thoughts were telling me Hilary was just saying that I might get called back to give me a bit of hope to hold on to so I wouldn’t pass out right there in his office. 

I felt like such a useless waste of a human being. I had no purpose, nothing to look forward to.  I felt like I had nothing to live for anymore.  I began to have thoughts of ending my life like my grandfather did.  Click here to continue reading my story.

Sex, Lies and Rabüs

A Mumkjes  Je'schekj is what happens to women’s bodies after they get married. They get bigger because they are not girls anymore, they are women now. It was pretty clear that this was only supposed to happen to married women.  I believe we were told this so we would not question why women would all of a sudden get a big stomach.

I was curious why some girls were getting a big stomach, a Mumkjes  Je'schekj, even though they were not married. When I asked that once in front of a married lady, she had a shameful grin on her face and said, “That girl ate a Rabüs sot, a watermelon seed, and it started growing in her stomach!”

I thought, “Oh no, what is going to happen to me? I have swallowed so many watermelon seeds I can’t even count. I am going to get huge.” I had nightmares that all the Rabüs sot I had eaten were growing in my stomach, all at the same time.

I was so scared, I thought to myself, Dios mio, “If I don’t explode where would they come out and why didn’t anyone tell me before I ate them?”  There were many girls this Mumkjes  Je'schekj was happening to in all the colonies around us.

Some got married right away but this all depended on what time of the year it was and if they had started the baptismal process yet. You cannot get married until you are baptized.  In Mexico the Old Colony baptismal process starts around Easter and ends in mid-summer.

That is the only time of the year you can get baptized.  If it was too late you had to wait until the next year.  If someone swallowed a Rabüs sot in the summer, the families would try really hard to hide it. The girl would no longer join the youth on Sundays.

In a colony not too far from ours, lived a widow with a daughter who had eaten a Rabüs sot and she was getting a Mumkjes Je'schekj and the watermelon grew big in her stomach. Then they went to the town of Nuevo Ideal and the next day they come home with a baby girl. 

We were told that the widow had bought a baby. Then, a couple of months after that, the daughter was married and we got to go to that wedding.  The daughter was wearing a duak, a head covering, and she did not look happy at all.  This was common. I often wondered if people got married just because they had eaten Rabüs sot.  It got really mixed up in my wandering mind.

At the wedding we were told that the newly married couple would take the baby home to raise as their own because the bride’s mom was too old to raise the baby.  I was so confused as I tried to make sense of it all.

The girls that were getting a Mumkjes  Je'schekj  wore a duak in church while they were getting baptized because they ate Rabüs sot?  I was thinking, “Watermelons are causing all this? Who knows what other Mumkje s Je'schekj-causing fruit I should stay away from?” This caused me so many sleepless nights!

When we were old enough to do the dishes and clear tables at weddings, we would overhear the married women talking about how shameful it must be for the parents of a daughter that got married with a duak.  I was thinking, “Oba Dios mio. How big is this Rabüs problem and why isn’t someone telling women not to eat this bad fruit anymore?”

As far as I was concerned, it was very simple: Stay as far away from watermelons as you can or, to be sure, just don’t eat anything with seeds in it. And what about all the sunflower seeds people were eating?

Again, like so many other times, I wanted to know how and why things were happening.  Everyone else just carried on and never asked any questions.  But I couldn’t do it. The mystery haunted me. I had eaten watermelon seeds a long time before and nothing had happened to me.  My body was shaped like a ruler. How does this happen?  

I figured we were part of this and, sooner or later, we would be affected by it and I needed to figure it out. Something told me there was more to it.  So, I worked up the courage to ask my friends what they thought of the watermelon problems women were having and, one more thing, why this wasn’t affecting the men at all.

At first they were shocked that I would even ask about it. They were told not to talk about it but they were curious too.  We talked about it in secret and figured out that all the women this had happened to were over sixteen years old and, since we were all under sixteen, that must be why the watermelon seeds were not affecting us the same way as them.  

I thought, “Even if this is true, I still don’t trust this belly busting fruit. I’m sticking with beans and tortillas. As far as I know they are safe. At least beans are really small so if they do start growing I should be okay!”

One of the girls in our group had a theory that made a lot of sense. She said, “Let’s think of all the girls this has happened to.” They all had a boyfriend and she had seen some of them schmunje . We use this term to describe “making out” but it actually means “heavy petting”. She thought that schmunje was the cause of these big bellies because this happened to her sister.

She saw her sister schmunje and months later she got a Mumkjes Je'schekj  and then her parents had a baby. Then, when her sister got married, she took this baby with her, but just that last baby that was born before her wedding. All her other brothers and sisters stayed home with her parents.   

This is how we learned about most things.  I later on learned this was the way we were kept from knowing exactly what sex was and how women got pregnant, so that we wouldn’t be tempted to try anything.  But I think not knowing the truth is what got so many girls pregnant before they got married.   

If I would have just asked my mom, she would have had a much better explanation for it but, because it was so shameful, I was afraid to ask her. My mom usually had a good way to explain situations without telling me exactly how it was.  She thought I was like most of the other girls who just accepted everything and didn’t care for learning about the stuff that was happening in the colonies around us.