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.  

Blushing Menno Bride

Most Old Colony people get baptized just before they get married.  After they are baptized they have a wedding at the bride’s house.  It is the bride’s parents’ responsibility to pay for and prepare the food.  

The people that could afford it would invite the whole Colony and all the siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  The guests would start arriving around ten a.m. and lunch would be at noon.  

The bride and groom would sit in the Brütlied Schtow, a room designated for visiting and sometimes drinking and smoking with the youth of other villages within the colony. The bride and groom wouldn’t drink because, being newly baptized, they were expected not to sin anymore.

Instead of having dessert after lunch, at around three o’clock, they would serve faspa. They would serve tweeback buns, kringelkes twisted buns, jam, sugar cubes, Schmaunt Küaken cookies, and instant coffee. In our village friends of the bride would bake a cake for the Brütlied, bride, and groom which would be served to them during faspa.  

This was not done in all colonies. It was up to the individual colony women to decide or, perhaps, if the bride asked for one. But, some people from other colonies didn’t like this because it was too worldly to have a pretty cake.  We were told to tone down “the bling”, which were the marshmallows we cut into floral shapes!

Young couple after their marriage.

This photo was taken by Mexican photographer Eunice Adorno

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/01/24/the-flower-girls-mennonites-in-mexico/#18

The oldest girls of the Colony who were not married would be setting the tables and serving the food.  They would always serve Komstborscht, cabbage soup, head cheese, tweeback, and ketchup.  The bride’s family would bake all the buns. 

Sometimes the girls of the colony would be asked to help bake and chop all the cabbage and make the head cheese the Friday before the wedding.  The wedding is always on Saturday.  Shortly after faspa people would go home and then around seven the youth would come back and have Komstborscht for dinner with the Brütlied.

The bride’s family would start preparing months ahead. They would rake the whole property, paint the house on the inside and out.  They also painted the bottom ten inches of the trees white around the front of the property.  

People would say those rich people would use this wedding day to really show off all they had.  The poor people would hold this event at the school of the colony and not have any food.  

The bride and groom would sit at the front of the school and all the immediate family would sit just like at church and sing. Then they would have faspa at the bride’s house with the immediate family members only.

This photo is from http://www.whileoutriding.com/

After the wedding day, the bride and groom are not officially married yet. The bride would still sleep at her parents’ house for the week until the Sunday after the wedding. 

During this week, the bride and groom go to visit each other’s family, including aunts, uncles, and cousins, during the day.  This week is the time for them to decide if they really want to be with each other.   

In my lifetime, this has happened once where the groom decided he didn’t want this and left the bride. She was devastated and was known as the “bride” for the rest of her life.

Some women live in fear during this week. If their groom decides not to go through with it, the bride’s chances of marrying are slim to none.  

During this week the couple has to go to the justice of the peace with two witnesses each to get a marriage certificate to make it legal.  During this time the bride would get a gift from her groom. Most of the time it was a necessity for their homes like a table and chairs or a gas stove.   

On the Sunday a week after the wedding, the couple goes to church.  After the church service, the couple gets top getruet, officially married, and then the couple goes to the bride’s house for lunch and faspa.  

The newly married couple does not go on a honeymoon. Most newly married people do not have a house yet so they live at the groom’s family’s property until they have their own.

The woman starts to wear a black kerchief after the wedding day at the church unless she has had sex before that. If they have had sex before they get baptized, they have to confess to the preachers and promise not to do it again until they are officially married. 

In that situation, the woman has to wear the kerchief all during the baptism and the wedding. This is so shameful for her family because everyone knows what she did. 

Writing Low German Mennonites into a History of Canada

Dr. Royden Loewen

“Writing Low German Mennonites into a History of Canada”

Royden Loewen is the Chair of Mennonite Studies and Professor of History at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. He has published widely on Mennonite and immigration history in North and South America. 

His most recent book, published by University of Toronto Press in 2013, is Village Among Nations: ‘Canadian’ Mennonites in a Transnational World, 2016-2006.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Royden Loewen at the lecture. It was recorded on Friday, March 7, 2014. 

2014 Bechtel Lecture 2 

Durango-Mazatlan

According to Mail Online News. 

Once a dangerous road in a treacherous Mexican mountain range known for marijuana and opium poppies, the Devil's Backbone has been transformed by what may be one of the country's greatest engineering feats.

The Durango-Mazatlan Highway, designed to bring legitimate commerce safely across the Sierra Madre in Mexico, is now completed.

“It will change the landscape of this part of the country,” Sinaloa state tourism Secretary Francisco Cordova said. “It's an opportunity to develop these areas and diversify the local economy.”

The highway project, 140-miles-long, has 115 bridges and 61 tunnels.

Officials predict the $2.2 billion highway to transform northern Mexico for the good, linking port cities on the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific with a 12-hour drive.

Plans for the project began 15 years ago. Eventually, the highway will move 5 million vehicles a year—four times the number handled by the old road.

Some locals of the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Durango think the new highway will improve access, will others fear they will lose business when cars and trucks bypass the towns.

Authorities hope the project will increase tourism to such areas plagued by drug violence. On either side of the Balaurte Bridge, part of the highway in the western part of the country, Sinaloa and Durango were among the deadliest states in terms of drug-related killings between 2006 and 2011.

“The road will increase jobs and keep people busy,” said Eligio Medina, mayor of the city of Concordia, Sinaloa. “When there is social mobility, criminal groups are more limited.”

I got this information and the pictures from Mail Online News.

Long: The Durango-Mazatlan Highway in the western Sierra Madre near Concordia, Mexico, vies to be one of the country's greatest engineering feats.

Long fall: The canyon the new the Baluarte Bridge crosses is deep enough to fit the Chrysler

Building, which is more than 1,000-feet-tall

Connection: The $2.2 billion highway will link port cities on the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean with a short 12-hour drive.

Dangerous: The new highway replaced what was known as the Espinazo del Diablo, or the Devli's Backbone, a road stretching along the spine of a mountain with drops of hundreds of feet on either side.

It’s all worth it when you get here, my favorite place to stay is at the Royal Villa Mazatlan.

  The locals are always wary nice to me, i have never came across any unfair treatment or violence.

Before the new road was built it took about eight hours to drive from Durango to Mazatlan.  Plus an hour an a half from the Mennonite Colonies to the City Durango.

The population of Mazatlán, Mexico is 354717 according to the GeoNames geographical

database.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

As soon as we turned fifteen, we started talking about getting married.  My friends were so worried they might not meet someone because our colony was far from the rest of the colonies. We were the only colony on the other side of the main highway; most of the other colonies were side by side.  

There was no church in our colony and no preachers lived near us either. We were considered schtolt because we were not watched closely so we could get away with changing our dresses and sock colours more than the rest of the colonies.  I guess you can say that I am from the wrong side of the colonies.  Maybe that is where my misguided thinking started!

The only way the guys from other colonies could visit us was by horse and buggy and it would take a long time to get there.  Once in a while, there would be some that hired a Mexican to drive them but, even then, if they decided to date us they would have to do this every time they wanted to visit. It would be time consuming and expensive.  

A lot of people just married someone from their own colony.  Even then, however, we didn’t have a lot of options because most of us were cousins.

When a guy was interested, he would just sit beside us with his arms around us so we couldn’t move.  It was so annoying that they had no courting skills whatsoever.  

They came at us like a bunch of animals. Most of them only had the nerve to do that if they were drunk and, most of the time, that was the case.  

They were drunk and acted really obnoxious.  Even if someone would look past all that and agree that they could visit again, they would only see each other twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday nights, and occasionally on Sunday afternoon.  

We really never got to know the person that way.  It was okay with me if we didn’t get visitors too often from other colonies.  

Once in a while I got to stay at my grandma’s in a colony far from ours.  My favorite cousin, Susie, lived in the same colony.  One weekday afternoon, Grandma told Susie and me to go to the kisaree, the Cheese factory, to buy some cheese with her horse and buggy.  

So, we were riding along in the colony and noticed a few guys sitting on the side of the road. We thought that it was our chance to really impress these guys by riding past them with Grandma’s best horse and looking all cool but, of course, this didn’t happen. The horse decided to go right up to the guys and take a big dump right there in front of them. We shamed ourselves half to death! 

        

There were rumours going around other colonies that guys were afraid to come to our colony because of our neighbours.  They were so different. They moved there because they got kicked out of a colony in Chihuahua were they lived before.  

They bought the first piece of land that was not part of the colony so they could build a house there, even if the colony didn’t want them there because the land was sold to them by the Mexicans.  The reason the colony was not happy with them living so close was because they were not Old Colony.

They dressed like worldly people, they cut their hair and they didn’t belong to any church. The people of the colony were afraid that these outsiders would influence and misguide them.  They tried to get them to move but it didn’t work. 

They stayed. These are the neighbours who inspired me to learn Spanish.  Their kids spoke Spanish fluently and most of them married Mexicans and stayed living on that property.  They had six girls and six boys. 

The boys would beat up guys that visited our colony just to mess with the elders in order to get back at them for trying to force them to leave. Eventually, the guys of this family left the colony.  

       

The reputation stuck for a while but it wore off and we had visitors again once in a while. The guys of our colony at least had a choice.  They could take the bus to town and catch a ride to other colonies but the girls were stuck sitting around waiting for others to visit.  

The girls would settle for the first boy that asked because they were so worried that it would be the only chance they would have to meet someone. Parents would encourage the girls to get baptized and get married between ages sixteen and nineteen.

I think parents were worried that, the longer their daughters stayed single, they might get ideas and change their minds about wanting this life. They might be misguided by people that came from Canada because the girls in Canada would wait longer to get married.  But it’s not like there was much of a choice. 

If you didn’t get married, your life would be horrible because you wouldn’t fit into any of the groups.  You couldn’t visit with the married people because they might talk about sex and, since you were unmarried, you couldn’t be part of that conversation yet.

If you were twenty you were too old to be with the youth because you might already know too much about sex and having babies and you might tell the young people who were not to know about this until marriage. This happened to some girls. 

They would stay home and help their parents on the farm and that was their life. This never happened to the men. They could stay single as long as they wanted and, as soon as they decided to date someone, there were tons of girls ready. Since it was a man’s job to find a girl, he could take as much time as needed. 

  

The only chance the old women had to marry was when someone’s wife died and, even then, sometimes the widower would marry a younger girl.  It seemed like there were way more women than men. 

They had all the options so we had to pray that someone would choose us.  It happened in our colony that there was a couple that only had one daughter. This was odd since most people had about twelve.  

So, they adopted a boy and a girl from a family in Zacatecas where the wife had passed away and left a bunch of kids behind.  We all loved him and, as he got older, he looked and acted so different from the guys in our colony. We all were ready to marry him at the drop of a hat!

But some “shenanigans” happened which we do not speak of. The only daughter got pregnant by her step-brother and so, of course, he had to marry her. There went our dream man marrying his step-sister! At first we were told the parents finally had another baby but, when the daughter and step-brother married, they took care of the baby because the parents were too old to raise him. 

We heard more stories like these than we could count.  The newly married couple never had any more children and about seven years into the marriage she had a heart attack and passed away. She was only in her early thirties.  

There was only one girl left from my youth group never chosen for marriage. Back then we used different words to describe her but she was short and chubby and had a unique personality. 

She ended up marrying the widower, the man of all our dreams! The girl we thought would be alone and miserable for the rest of her life wasn’t worried about it. She was as happy as she could be, like her pockets were full of candy, when she ended up marrying the guy we all wanted!

In 1926, Rev. Johann P. Wall and his family moved to Mexico.

This is my Great Grandfather, Johann P. Wall my dad’s Grandpa.  After i saw a picture of him in the book Village among Nations By: Royden Loewen i got all exited and started looking for him and this is what i found.  My grandpa's name is also Johann Wall, my dad's name is Johann Wall and i have a brother named Johann Wall and he has a son named Johann Wall.

Johann P. Wall, 1875-1961

Rev. Johann P. Wall was born June 16, 1875 to Peter Wall and Aganetha Vogt. He came to Canada with his parents from Russia in 1891. They arrived in Gretna, Manitoba, and in 1892, they lived at Neuhorst, Manitoba.

Johann P. Wall married on Nov. 11, 1894, to Anna Wiebe. She was born May 20, 1875, to Heinrich Wiebe and Maria Froese. Her parents lived at Rosengard, Manitoba. They came to Canada on the S.S. Peruvian, which arrived in Quebec City on July 13.1875.

[line missing]

Minister on Nov. 10, 1903. He was elected as a delegate together with Johann Wall of Neuan\age in 1919, to find a new for his people. In Sept. of 1918, Rev. Johann P. Wall had written a letter to the Honorable Arthur Meighen to express their reasons for s leaving Canada. "Jesus said, when you are expelled from one city fly to another and we must follow the preceipts of Jesus our Master no matter how hard it must be for us to leave and our dearly beloved Canada, and see whether we could live in another corner where we could live in accordance with our faith."

His wife passed away in 1920 and he then married the widow of Rev. Johann Wall. In 1926, Rev. Johann P. Wall and his family moved to Mexico where he continued to serve as a minister for a total of 57 years. He lived to be 86 years old, dying in Mexico in 1961. During this time he preached 1,536 sermons; he married 162 couples and preached at 217 funerals.

He was known for a few things. When it came to the question of private schools he was seen as one who did not compromise on principle. He 'was very gifted when it came to speaking a variety of languages, namely: English, High and Low German, Spanish and Russian. He also loved horses and was, therefore, often nicknamed "cowboy and preacher."

Rev. Johann P. Wall moved to Saskatchewan in 1899 and homesteaded NW 22, Tp41, R4, W of 3rd, west of Hague.

In 1899, he broke 27 acres and cropped 6 acres; in 1900, he broke 35 acres and cropped 42: In 1901, he broke 35 acres and cropped 57: in 1902, he broke 20 acres and cropped 97. He built a 24x32 ft. house in the village of Hochfeld valued at $200. He also built a stable, a granary, a shed and dug two wells all valued at $250. In 1902, 'he owned five head of cattle, five horses and three pigs.

Rev. Johann P. Wall was ordained as an Old Colony minister ... [line missing].

Credits go to: Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan (MHSS) 

Sinner Lost in Translation

Continued from Mennonite Schmuck

Growing up in a Mennonite colony in Mexico, I remember at a very young age hearing all sorts of talk about the ¨end times,¨ the ¨mark of the beast¨ and how much sin there was in the world. Canada was associated with sin in most conversations. Nevertheless, poverty and hardship left many families with no other option but to dig out their dusty old Canadian Citizenship cards, tucked away since moving to Mexico some seven decades prior, and drive back to Canada to work in agriculture.

Some families returned home to Mexico at the end of October every year. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I could only assume that what was sinful about the people returning were the items they brought back—such as cameras, watches, colourful socks, and shiny Christmas decorations, which we all knew were not allowed.

Like most others from my colony, I was illiterate when I first came to Canada at the age of 16. I had only written my own name a handful of times. In a Mennonite colony in Mexico there was no need for girls to know how to read and write. To work in agriculture in Canada, reading and writing weren’t necessarily a requirement either.  But we all knew that one had to have a ¨worker’s card¨ and that this card was very important. I had a trusted cousin who helped me apply for it as soon as I arrived.

Not long after I received that card, I was lucky enough to be hired at a sewing factory. I hit the job jackpot for a Mennonite girl who was illiterate and only spoke a few words of English. What I had actually won quickly became more complicated than I had anticipated. When I received my first paycheque I went to the first bank on my way through town. I was so happy. For the first time ever, I held in my hands a cheque with my name on it. I had never seen my name printed on paper like that before.

I stood in the line-up at the bank feeling all sorts of happy feelings. Finally, when it was my turn to go up to the teller, I carefully placed my cheque in front of the man and said, ¨Cash, please.¨ I could tell right away that this man was not as nice as all the other English-speaking folks I had met up to that point. He began laughing under his breath as he asked if I had an account at that bank.

¨No,¨ I said.

¨Okay, then I will need to see some ID and your SIN card,¨ he said.

My heart skipped a beat, ¨A SIN card?¨ I asked.

My thoughts immediately traveled back in time and began connecting the dots. I decided right then and there that that was the reason why it was such a sin to come to Canada.

¨Yes, do you have your SIN card with you?¨ he asked.

¨No, I don’t have a SIN card,¨ I explained.

¨Well, you need one in order to open a bank account,¨ he said.

A woman came over and asked, ¨What’s going on?¨

¨She wants to open an account but she doesn’t have a SIN card,¨ answered the teller.

They looked at each other and the teller said some things to the woman that I couldn’t understand. They both looked at me and laughed. When the woman caught her breath she asked, ¨Where are you from?¨

¨Mexico.¨

¨Of course,¨ she said and continued to laugh as she picked up my cheque. She studied it for a while and asked, ¨So, you work at that factory down the street and you don’t have a SIN card?¨

By that time I had already concluded that I was doomed. I knew that it was true that I couldn´t cash my paycheque without owning such a card. I thought to myself, ¨It’s happening, just like I heard people talk about back in the colony.¨ One day we would all be faced with a choice: take the ¨666¨ mark of the beast or starve to death. At that very moment, I was standing on the threshold of that choice. ¨It’s not too late; I could still make a run for it,¨ I thought.

The story that was unfolding in my head was becoming too real to handle as the bank tellers were enjoying themselves making fun of me. The woman proceeded to tell me, ¨You know, you can’t work in Canada if you don’t have a SIN card; you can get deported.¨  I took my cheque and ran out of the bank as fast as I could, thinking, ¨What does deported mean anyway?¨

I had hellish nightmares that night about the ordeal. The next day I went to work feeling sick to my stomach with worry. I told my fellow Mennonite co-worker about my experience, and she explained to me that the ¨worker´s card¨ was a SIN card, and that’s the day I learned about acronyms. Also, it was true that all people working in Canada had to have such a card.

I explained my concerns to my co-worker. She assured me that a Social Insurance Number card would not contain the mark of the beast. I decided that I couldn’t trust anybody with something as important as that. When I got home after my shift, I carefully inspected my ¨SIN¨ card. I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a combination of the numbers 666 on my card in any way, shape, or form. I was relieved when I couldn’t find any such combinations on the card anywhere.

The next day, I took my ¨SIN¨ card and went to a different bank. The man who helped me was very nice and even asked if he could help me with anything else. It was sinfully easy to open a bank account. To this day I am a loyal customer. Click here to continue reading my story.