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The Caribbean is full of surprises. During our recent road trip through the Central American country of Belize, staff photographer Zach Stovall and I enjoyed a rare treat, thanks to Mark Howells, the Aussie owner of the Lamanai Outpost Lodge: We ate breakfast with a nearby Mennonite family. Belize has some 10,000 Mennonites — about 3 percent of the total population — who live in small communities all over the country. Defiantly nonviolent and anti-military, they left Europe in droves to escape religious persecution; Belize is one of about 65 countries where you'll find them.
Over a long table laden with fresh eggs, pork, black beans, cucumbers, milk and home-made bread, patriarch Abraham Wiebe — Abe to his friends — did all the talking, partly out of patriarchal privilege and partly because of a language barrier. Mennonites in Belize speak an unusual amalgam of German and Dutch called Plautdietsch, though in the interest of working and doing business here, a few, such as Abe, have learned English and Spanish too. The somber faces family photo you see here belie the Wiebes' warmth, hospitality and good humor.
Three thousand calories later, Abe gave us an impromptu tour of his farm — gorgeous rows of tomatoes and beans growing without pesticides or artificial fertilizers, chickens producing the eggs we'd just eaten. There was the family's horse-drawn buggy and carriage, and the horses snacking on mashed sugar cane. The Mennonite faith has some very firm notions about technology's ability to corrupt, so they shun its influence wherever possible. To wit, horse-drawn vehicles can use rubber tires, but motorized transportation — a farm tractor, for instance — cannot. Abe's tractor has wheels fashioned out of steel, with a "tread" comprised of welded-on segments of rebar. It seems at first like a needlessly challenging lifestyle, but after spending a little time with these people, you start to see the beauty in their ways. Life here isn't always easy, but it works.
Our feature story appears in the May issue of CT+L, on newsstands April 27.
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