Book review | Desert Mailbag: Letters from South America
An introduction to the book by a son of the author
“We need a Grade 3–4 teacher who can speak German!”
Forty-five years ago, the EMC was responsible to provide teachers for the Lucero school on the Tres Palmas Mennonite colony in East Paraguay. Sarah Martens of Kola EMC had been a missionary teacher there since the mid-60s, but most of the other staff were local Mennonites or Paraguayans. In 1979, Walter Kruse, Sarah’s brother-in-law in Canada, learned of the need. German was his father’s language and what Walter had spoken at home—but only until he had started school; then post-war anti-German sentiment kept the family speaking only English.
Did he have enough German to teach in it? And what about community life in Low German outside of the classroom? Though his mother was Russian Mennonite, she hadn’t taught him Low German. Fifteen years earlier, however, while Walter was earning his education degree from Brandon University, he met nurse-in-training Anne Martens at a young adults’ church event. After being baptized at the Kola EMC early in 1967, Walter married Anne. Now that he was part of an EMC family, Walter learned Low German from his wife so he could understand what his brothers-in-law were saying at the gatherings.
So, strengthened by a sense of call to serve, hopeful that his grasp of German would be enough, and sent by the EMC Board of Missions, Walter and Anne and four young children flew from frigid Winnipeg to tropical Asuncion in March of 1980. During their two years of service, they were part of the EMC missionary fellowship, encouraged by field visits from mission board representatives.
Walter’s early teaching career got him fascinated by the far north; now he was intrigued by the cultural landscape of Paraguay: the indigenous people, the Paraguayans (a mix of indigenous and European), and Mennonite settlers. The observations he made were recorded in the form of letters mailed to Canada; he later edited them, took some literary liberties, and collected them in this book.
Walter and Anne returned to Paraguay for a year in the mid-90s, this time to the Chaco, and with only the son who was born after the first adventure.
– David Kruse
Right from the first page of the book, which states the author is writing from a hammock with inkwell sitting at one end of the swing and a cowhorn cup of yerba at the other, one knows this will be a delightful read. Desert Mailbag is framed as a collection of letters sent from Paraguay to Canada over a period of three years while Kruse is on a teaching assignment. Essentially, they are 50 vignettes of life and culture in the storied Chaco and jungles of the South American country, written by a keen observer who sees everything as an adventure.
Some letters describe place, often in vivid detail, which transports the reader to Asuncion with its brick-walled streets and fires in the courtyards or the fenses used for recreational ranches on the vast plains or the houses set in the thornbush of Chaco (beautiful like “an outpost of Eden”). One can almost smell birds sizzling and dripping over glowing embers in preparation for lunch, see the reddish raised lines on someone’s feet that denote hookworm tunnels and feel plus-40 degrees of heat as buildings and cars shimmer and bake in the sun.
Other letters comment on customs and culture of Paraguay—yerba gets a whole chapter—with a bit of history thrown in, as well as life on Mennonite colonies. The central and most intriguing part of the book is the experiences Kruse has and the individuals he meets—often described with a good dose of humour. Expeditions such as going fishing—which involved miles of travel along roads choking with dust only to arrive at a muddy water hole—hunting alligators at night with burning sticks for guidance, and attending a motocross race with spectators rushing onto the tracks at any time with no sense of liability, make for favourite campfire stories.
And it’s obvious Kruse will find interesting any person he meets—take, for example, Diedrich, drafted into Russia’s Red Army but escaped to serve with Germany; or Ivan, a ship pilot who doesn’t trust any GPS except the stars; or visitors who came to the house for tea at 7 o’clock in the morning.
This book is like a series of short stories that can be read in any sequence and picked up when one has a few minutes of time to read something uplifting. Along the way, one may learn fragments of Paraguayan history (e.g. Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia).
Readers who wish to learn more about Mennonite settlement and struggles to adapt to local culture will be disappointed. The impression one is left with is that Mennonites are totally enmeshed in the culture of the country. There are few references that are distinctly Mennonite. One is a description of a typical Sunday on the colony which follows the same ritual week after week: early service in one of the five churches to avoid the heat, yerba on the porches with friends, noon meal, siesta, faspa. This book will also not enlighten the reader on EMC missionary work in Paraguay.
While there is a curious lack of comment on life in the classroom, one can assume that responsibilities were fulfilled successfully, and no doubt Kruse entertained his students with stories of his own past in Manitoba—which included stints in carpentry, stone masonry, sign language interpreting (part of his assignment in Paraguay) and tree planting. He lived with his family in the Kola area for many years, then retired to Rosenort to live out his remaining time.
The book is available for purchase at Mennonite Heritage Village gift shop (Steinbach, Man.) or online at https://mennonite-heritage-village.com/product/desert-mailbag.
