and methodical. It was an act born out of desperation, an act of submission that a father never wants to have to resort to for his own children. But when there is no other option, the food for horses can become food for humans.
Baked into something resembling bread, the kafir tasted awful. It was a dense consistency and could probably have been used as a hammer. In order to make it even remotely palatable, Mom sprinkled it in water and added a half teaspoon of sugar. It was the only way we would eat it, and for the time it was the only food we had. When it hit my belly, I realized just how desperate we were. No produce. No credit. No flour. Nothing but kafir. I didn’t resent the situation we were in, but seeing Dad’s concession made me realize that God cares deeply for his children and wants to give them bread to eat.
* * *
Our homestead was one of 20 in the village of Friedensfeld, a kilometre-long stretch of road divided into farms 100 metres wide. Each farm was one kilometre deep, though some had land beyond it. It was modeled after the Russian settlements from which the families had all come, and how much space you had for agriculture depended on where the bush started on your land. Over time the bush would be brought down and the farms expanded, trying to push the amount of food we could produce. This village—Friedensfeld—was in the settlement of Fernheim in the Chaco, a small section within the country of Paraguay. It was (and continues to be) a country that knows what it means to be poor.
* * *
Before Dad owned the world’s first hybrid truck (a Chevy motor with a Ford body can be considered a hybrid, can’t it?), our family had only one bike. It was a beautiful black Heidemann single-speed adult-sized bike. As a young kid I would see my older siblings hop onto it and pedal off, and I was desperate to copy them. Not one to take labels (like adult-sized) to heart, I decided that I was going to ride the bike, no matter what came in my way. The problem was I was five years old and much, much too short.
But that wasn’t about to stop me.
An adult would climb onto that bike by swinging a leg over the bar, sitting on the seat and pedalling the way it was designed to be done. Not me. Since my head was barely higher than the seat itself, that wasn’t an option. But a bike isn’t a completely solid object, and the middle of a bike happens to be a large hole. For me, this was my opportunity. Slinging my leg through the triangle formed by the bars of the bike, I could get both my feet on the pedals if the bike was tilted 20 degrees to the side. My back end would be sticking out in the air, my head was under the handlebars in order to be able to see, and my arm had to stretch across to grab the opposite handlebar, but I was biking.
And that was all that mattered to me.
It was 500 m to my grandpa and grandma’s house down the dirt road, which had more bumps and potholes than anything I’ve ever seen in Canada, but I was determined to get there using my bike. With my body positioned like someone doing yoga, I pedalled as fast as my little legs would take me. One of the older men in the village couldn’t stop laughing as I rode by, shaking his head.
“That kid has determination like nobody else I’ve ever seen,” he’d say. It was uncommon for a kid to ride a bike—never mind an adult bike that was far too big for him. My determination set the stage for more struggles, challenges and victories to come in life.
* * *
The horse’s hooves beat the ground beneath us in a rhythm that I had become familiar with. The reins were gripped tightly in my hands, my brother hanging on to the horse without his hands behind me. The kafir fields stretched out before us, and we leaned forward with excitement. We hit the beginning of the kafir and started screaming. Galloping beside the field, we let our lungs take control of the situation. Sometimes the yelling was words, sometimes it was just noise.
As soon as we began yelling, the horse pounding the ground beneath us, there was a reaction. From amongst the stalks, hidden until now, came the sudden whooshing and beating of the wings of hundreds of pigeons. Afraid for their lives, they took off into the air. They had been sitting on the tops of the stalks, pecking away at the kafir. Since it was the food for our horse and part of our livelihood, it was our job to protect it.
Not to mention that it could also be a lot of fun.
We got to the end of the row and pulled up, turning around. They had settled on this side now, and we went back at it, leaning forward and making our throats hoarse. More pigeons took off. They usually fled at our noise. I pulled the horse up short, reining it in with instinct. We stood still, beside the kafir. My brother didn’t have to ask or speak; he knew what I had seen. Up ahead was a flock of parrots, still on the kafir. They didn’t flee as quickly, but that was OK. We didn’t want them to. Art leveled his slingshot at the bird, taking aim. He was shooting over my head, and with action born of experience I ducked down so the bullet wouldn’t hit me.
The shot was true and the bird fell off the stalk with a thud. It was flopping on the ground, and I had to move quickly. If it regained its senses and took off, it would all be for naught. I dropped from the horse and darted between the stalks, picking it up and flinging it on the ground. The slingshot bullet and the impact of the ground was enough to finish it off instantly.
“You got it?” Art’s voice rang out.
“Got it!” I called back, celebratory.
“Good,” he responded. “Get the beak.”
I reached down and grabbed the top of the parrot’s beak. Without the beak, we had no evidence that we had killed the parrot. Without the evidence, we couldn’t get paid for killing it.
With a quick cut from my pocket knife the beak came off, and I took the top half. I brought it back to my brother, handing it up to him on the horse. The horse whinnied and snorted, stamping its foot. It wanted to move. And we wanted to hunt, so my brother quickly dropped the beak into the shoe-polish container, and I climbed back up onto the horse, swinging up easily and lightly.
The hunt continued, each parrot’s beak worth seven cents from the mayor of our village. A single hunting trip could net 10 to 15 parrots, more money than we could earn from any other job we could find.
* * *
Right from a young age my life included working on the farm. Chores were common and included bringing the cows in at the end of the day, watering the horses, feeding them, collecting eggs from the chickens, cleaning the yard, weeding and raking. Making money was no simple task. In order for my parents to get us gifts for Christmas they had to sell eggs outside of the market, egg by egg, penny by penny. Since our society dealt only in a line of credit (and ours was so bad they couldn’t buy gifts), this was the only way for them to buy us a gift. They’d work at it the entire year, earning enough from eggs that we didn’t get to eat for a simple gift.
Just like any other kid, I had a wish every year for Christmas. But unlike most kids, my only wish was the same every year: a soccer ball. It’s not that I didn’t get one—I sometimes did—but I used it so much that I would need a new one by the next Christmas. The balls were simple and plain, and they’d bounce in every direction off the mud clumps that decorated the landscape.
On our property was a large bottle tree, with gigantic needle-like points coming off of plum-sized protrusions. One bounce off the bottle tree and a ball was popped like a balloon.
But the game didn’t end there. With no other access to sporting equipment, we’d open the ball up and patch the rubber bladder with bike patches, then close the material up and sew it together. It was probably the only time in my life I’d ever be caught with a sewing needle in my hand. Given to us at Christmas, the soccer ball would become
