wait, what´s your job?

talking with my family i realized that i don´t really write about my job. ok maybe i have once. i guess i do usually post about traveling, host fam, or random events (sidenote: last weekend we went to visit fellow salter kristen in santiago de chiquitos where she teaches music and pretty much the coolest salter there ever was. i´ll put some pics up later)

i love my job. it is both totally normal yet totally strange at the same time. Centro Menno ¨Drop-In Center¨ has a mini-bookstore, hang out area, and a library in both German and English. It´s a place for low german speaking colony mennonites to stop in while they are in town shopping or whatever. Let´s back up and i´ll explain some things. My over-arching organization I work for is Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Centro Menno is part of the Low German Mennonite program of MCC Bolivia. And I came as a SALT volunteer. ok awesome.
Colony Mennonites are on a wide spectrum of conservatism. The majority in Bolivia are pretty conservative because they left Canada, Mexico, and Paraguay because they wanted to hold on to their Old Colony traditions. I don´t really want to go into depth with the how and why of their beliefs because i don´t fully understand myself, but let´s just say they are kind of like the amish, but not. To really really simplify things, they chose their way of life minus modern conveniences because they believe its how God wants them to live.

Way of life and rules depend on the colony. One colony may not allow rubber tires on their tractors, so they use steel. This is to keep people from traveling too far out of the colony on their tractor. Another colony may require women to wear a head scarf and hat, others a head scarf, io others just elaborate braided hair dos. but the women wear brightly colored, big flower print dresses made out of polyester. i have no idea how they do it in hot humid santa cruz. men wear a wide range of overalls, pants and button up shirts, cowboy hats or trucker hats.

Now Low German (or Plautdietsch) is not the german spoken in Germany. oh no its not. It´s a 500 year old dialect that is not a written language, yet its the first language of over 300,000 mennonites in the world. To me it sounds like a mix of German, Dutch, Old English and a lot of random Spanish words thrown in like ¨no se¨ or ¨bien.¨ Here´s an example of the difference: english-¨this little book¨ high german-¨dieses kleine Buch¨ low german-¨dit kjleenet Buakje.¨ what the what? i´ve tried studying it, but so far all i´ve managed is how to say good morning, good day and goodbye. when i try to speak high german, spanish comes out. when i do manage high german, either they don´t understand or it turns out they speak english haha!

I manage the library, checking out books, helping people find books, repairing books, etc. Pretty interesting since the majority of the books are in German and the majority of the mennonites who check out the books are women and only speak low german. we also sell cds and tapes (gasp what would the elders say?) so i play the music and try to sell them. usually pretty interesting trying to communicate. one day a man started looking at the audio tapes and asked a question in low german. sometimes i can guess what people are saying and can point the way to the bathroom or help them find a book, but i had no idea what he said so i asked
¨ablan español?
¨nä¨
ok, english?
¨nä¨
ok now what?
then he spoke up and said ¨ekj räd Spanisch¨
um perdón?
Spanisch!
oh ok i´m sorry he doesn´t speak español, only spanish.

i also manage the subscriptions for the 3 periodicals we distribute, label and package them. so i´m really getting to remember the colony names and popular colony mennonite names, such as Peter Peters, Corny, Klassen, Thiessen, etc. and i do just random office admin stuff. one day i was sitting at my desk and i looked up at a large mennonite family (7 kids in their overalls and dresses) and thought ¨crazy awesome.¨ i love studying culture and history so man have i hit the jackpot with this job. we also break for tereré in the mornings and afternoons and drink it with whomever is hanging around. sometimes i can follow the conversation, but i usually need someone to interpret for me. so we hear old colony jokes or stories about family life. for example, one man in his 60s wanted to buy a book for each of his kids, but he has 27 so the thought it might be expensive. turns out he was a widower with 13 kids and married a widow with 14 kids. yowza. i asked him if he could remember all their names and he said it wasn´t too hard because there is a few duplicates :)

but maybe one reason i don´t really write about my job is because Centro Menno is here to help deal with the issues and struggles of colony life and i don´t want to just be writing about the negative things that do exist. the colony mennonites in bolivia became known to the world through international news last june when a group of colony men were arrested for mass drugged rapings in some colonies. i myself didn´t know about this until i was in language school and my teacher told me colony mennonites were bad people because all she knew about them were the horrible rape cases. these crimes will affect the colonies for generations and who knows how long emotional, physical, spiritual healing will take, if it happens at all. i don´t really know what to say, just that i don´t really have much to offer them. i just pray for them and treat evey woman i meet here with respect and a smile, because who knows...

if i´ve just succeeded in confusing you, write me an email and i´ll try again. also, here´s a website with a ton of pics of mennonites in bolivia. i have no idea how this photographer was able to take these pics, but it provides a glimpse into life here for them.

http://www.jordibusque.com/stories/MennoBolivia/12.html