The Mennonite Girl In Mexico — Part One
Photo by Ashton Mullins
I’m Roxanne McClane, I write articles about our travels in Mexico. This is one about our encounter with a young, pregnant, Mennonite woman and her plight, as well as about our own exasperating mechanical difficulties in the mountains of the state of Oaxaca.
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One season during our travels through Mexico, we decided to have our daughter, Isabelle, fly into Acapulco where we would pick her up in our truck and fifth-wheel RV so that she could travel with us from Alcapulco up through the state of Oaxaca. After staying a few days in Oaxaca City, we would then go to Vera Cruz City where she’d fly back home.
We drove to coastal Salina Cruz and then up the mountainside on rustic road 190. Pulling along our fifth-wheel RV was always a chore, and iffy, when climbing a steep grade, and on this steep, curvy road it was especially scary. We got halfway up the mountain toward Oaxaca City, just coming into the small town of San Bartolo when our dog, Houdini, started to whine and alert us. At the same time, Isabelle announced, “I hear something scraping behind us on the asphalt.”
Mac pulled off the road in the middle of town and got out to investigate.
Isabelle sat inside the truck and waited for the verdict but it wasn’t long before we heard a loud, “Oh, shit!” through the open windows as Mac discovered the source of the dragging noise Houdini and Isabelle had heard. A piece of the metal leaf spring, which was part of the suspension on the RV, was hanging down underneath the trailer on the left side dragging on the road.
Since we had been traveling on steep roads with lots of potholes and topes in the towns we drove through, having something break was not a huge surprise, at least to me.
Mac wisely stated, “This is a total pain in the ass not being near a major city to find a spare.” Uh-huh, I murmured to myself. What else is new? Although vehicle repair needs had seemed fairly easy to obtain throughout Mexico, from the many llantera shops we’d seen along the roadways that fixed tires and mecánicos for most mechanical problems. But Mac thought we’d likely need a muelles for springs and other metal fabrications to get this one replaced.
There was a mecánico shop just up the road, which we were able to limp to, but it had no leaf springs to replace our broken one. The mechanic really wanted to help us though, so he patched the spring to get us to a place that might have a replacement, which, he thought, might be Oaxaca City, as Mac had surmised.
“Oaxaca is still nearly 120 kilometers away,” Mac groaned. “I doubt a patch job will hold that far.”
Yet we had no choice but to drive on.
Not being confident in the ‘band-aid’ the man had put on the broken spring, Mac drove slowly and cautiously up the mountain, stopping at every pull-off to check the supposed repair. It continued to stay intact, he was surprised to see, at least until we came to El Cameron nearly an hour up the road.
We saw a wide area across from a gas station where Mac pulled in to check the situation once again. He wasn’t shocked to find the repair had finally given up.
“Being able to go a little over 20 miles on that piece-of-shit patch job was quite an accomplishment, I’d say, because I’m surprised, we were able to go ten!” Mac said in exasperation. “I’m not sure why the guys fixed this thing the way they did and thought we’d actually get someplace far enough for a real repair,” Mac spouted sarcastically, “because it looked as if they merely wrapped the piece in tin foil and held it together with baling wire.” He laughed mockingly, “I’m sure it would have been duct tape had they known about it, but I haven’t seen duct tape around here. No wonder it didn’t hold.” He shook his head.
I knew it wasn’t exactly tin foil, but the fix was obviously just as temporary.
“Well, the guy was creative, and he did want to be helpful,” I pointed out.
“And they were really nice,” Mac admitted. “They didn’t want to charge me anything, but of course, I paid them for their efforts anyway.”
Photo by Jezael Melgoza
Since it was getting dark, we had to stay the night where the RV sat. Mac walked across the street to talk to the attendants at the Pemex station to ask about mechanics in town that could fix our spring. He also wanted to alert them about our plans for staying across the road. He didn’t want them to call the cops on us for illegal parking or vagrancy.
When Mac returned, he had a smirk on his face and said, “The men were concerned about our dilemma and very helpful. One told me about a mechanic down the street, who was good but was, unfortunately, closed until the morning because of the festival in town. But they then told me that the police chief happened to be in their convenience store if I wanted to check in with him. Since I did want to, I went into the store to chat with the chief,” Mac paused with a smirk on his face and added, “I found him eating a donut.”
Mac laughed heartily at his little joke, while Isabelle and I rolled our eyes and waited patiently for him to get over it.
He finally continued, “The chief essentially told me there was no problem with us being parked here, and they would keep an eye on the trailer through the night, so not to worry.”
That information was a bit relieving until Isabelle made an uncomfortable point, “How do we know if the cops are honest?”
That gave Mac pause but then came up with a solution to help keep us from worrying too much. He said it would be harder for anyone to get into the RV if we had the slides in to block the door. “And with Houdini on alert, he’d warn us if anyone came lurking about.”
Before we implemented that reasonable-sounding plan, we decided to walk to the town square where the festival was going on and find some supper. With Houdini staying as our watchdog, we didn’t feel too uncomfortable leaving the rig as it was.
The town’s square had benches beneath trees along concrete sidewalks and people mingling. But the main action seemed to be down a side road where we saw tents set up in the middle of the street. Isabelle urged us to go see where the delicious smells were coming from, because we were all hungry, and the smells of cooking meat had begun to inflame our hunger pangs.
We walked to the long tent with tables and benches inside the front part and a kitchen in the back. Isabelle and I sat at one of the tables, while Mac went to the back to see what was available to eat and drink. He came back quickly with information.
“They have beer and tacos,” was his report, and then added, “And they also have menudo, if anyone wants that intestine-ladened stew.”
We all voted for tacos and beer, and he went back to place the order.
While we were waiting, a group of people came in that looked to be Mennonite, since the women wore long dresses and cloth caps, while the men wore dark pants and a vest over white shirts with wide-brimmed, straw farmer’s hats. We had driven through Mennonite Country that fall on our way south and had seen this style of dress on the people in that area.
I remembered reading, after we’d passed through one of the large Mennonite colonies in Chihuahua on our way south one year, that most of the people were Russian, Dutch, or Prussian, who’d migrated and settled in Canada in the early part of the 20th century. When a law was passed in Canada that stated all children had to attend school, the more conservative Mennonites decided to leave Canada and make their way to Mexico.
The women were plain of face with dull brown hair under their caps and some carried babies of various ages. But one young woman was pregnant and looked nothing like the others. She was naturally pretty with a peachy complexion, blonde hair, and big, blue eyes. She seemed to be looking for something. Without turning her head conspicuously, her gaze was darting about almost frantically.
I thought she looked scared, or uncomfortable, even though she’d come in with a tall, clean-faced, handsome young man who had his hand on her shoulder. They sat at the table nearest us.
When the men went off to get food just as Mac returned with ours, I was surprised that the young woman turned to us and asked in a conspiratorial tone, “Where are you from?” in perfect English with no accent.
Photo by Enrique Guzmán Egas
I told her and asked where she was from, but she didn’t reply to my question. She just kept looking back toward the other women and over to the men waiting in line to be served in the kitchen.
She asked several questions about why we were in Mexico, how things were in the States, and when were we returning. I got the impression, because she kept looking back toward the women in a nervous way, that she was longing for news of home but didn’t want the other women to know she was talking to us. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was there under duress or if she was there of her own free will and was merely homesick.
I asked her if she lived here, and for how long, she nodded but didn’t answer my question about how long.
“Are you from the States?” I asked her and she nodded again with her head bowed. When I asked if she wanted to go back home, a woman with the group saw her talking to us and yelled something in a stern voice in whatever language it was, making the girl turn away. I saw her scowl at the other woman, and then glanced back at us with that same fearful look I thought I had seen when she entered, but she said no more to us. By that time the men had returned with their food.
When we were finished and ready to leave, I turned to her and told her softly that I hoped all would be well, and then we left. She didn’t look at me, but she gave an acknowledging nod with her head still bowed.
I wished I could have asked her more, but I didn’t want to get her into trouble with the group that was obviously her new family. Good or bad.
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In Part Two: When Mac needs to go on an adventure to repair the RV, Isabelle and Roxanne have their own adventure in the Mexican town they’re stuck in, while Roxanne’s anxiety rises.