With only a bit of effort and thanks to his practice, he manages to drive a screw perfectly into the board by hand. Michael tries it as well: his screw goes in a bit wonky. But it goes in and out without any trouble – and all without an electrical drill.

We had already been near Mennonite communities in Bolivia and Paraguay, but somehow never made the detour. This time, it’s just one turning away, so we are very curious.

We’ve ended up with the Mennonites in Belize. There are many of them: some more traditional, some more modern; those with horse-drawn carriages and no electricity, and those with massive tractors and perfectly equipped DIY stores.

Welcome to Springfield!

The women wear blue dresses; the men wear black trousers with braces over white shirts. Most also wear a hat or a bonnet.

There are a few wind turbines and plenty of children everywhere, all of whom are busy. We stop at a sawmill. Is all of this really supposed to work without electricity? We can hardly believe it.

Ruben is repairing a saw when we approach him. He speaks Spanish, English, and Pennsylvania Dutch. His family came to Belize from Paraguay 30 years ago. At that time, Mennonites in Paraguay were being robbed constantly. Since there was already a community in Belize, they migrated there.

He shows us the saws. The drive system? Pure horsepower – the literal kind. They have horses walking in a carousel which powers the saws. But there is a backup solution in case no horses are available: water power. Water runs at high pressure through their PVC pipes and provides enough power to run even very modern woodworking machinery. Just like in Europe, only without electricity.

For their community, electricity is a threat to the cohesion; therefore, there is a tendency to reject anything electrical.

Ruben sends us on to his brother Martin, who is a carpenter. He is currently pulling a post out of the ground with his three boys. His wife and the other three children are standing nearby. They are just as interested in us as we are in them.

We speak German with them – they learn it in school because the Bible is read in German. At home they speak Pennsylvania Dutch, (it’s called Dutch probably from the similarity to the dialect word Deutsch for German. Alongside the old characteristics of the Palatine dialect, they use many loanwords from English in their German. So, Martin isn’t a Schreiner, he does Carpenterarwett (carpentry work) and they “farm” their land instead of bewirtschaften (cultivating) it.

It’s a bit hard to understand them when they speak their dialect to us, but it still works quite well. Even in the High German they learned for reading the Bible, you can sense the 18th or 19th-century origins. In any case, we can make ourselves understood; otherwise, they would also speak Spanish and English.

“Aha, caught you!” – or maybe not?

Further along in the village, a young lad is building huts – with a mains hook-up! “Aha, caught you,” we think. But the wooden huts are not for them; they are for sale. The work is well done, and the finished huts are loaded up and sold to outsiders.

They quiz us, and we are surprised by how much they know and how they use modern technology. They order parts from Amazon via third parties, be it doors or PVC pipes. They also have bank accounts and talk to their families in the USA on the phone, though not via their own mobile phones.