Tour Leader’s Blog

This is our second day in Khiva after having sojourned in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan; Samarkand, the jewel of Central Asia; and Bukhara, the ancient holy city of Islam. On the way from Samarkand to Bukhara, we stopped as planned in Serabulak, the small village where Great Trek Mennonites spent the winter of 1881-1882. There the villagers showed uncommon hospitality by giving the trekkers the use of the mosque. Here and in a tent outside, Mennonites conducted worship services, two marriages and 31 baptisms. Here they also waged their theological and eschatological debates. From here they departed in the heat of the summer to cross the Kyzyl-Kum desert by camel, horseback, wagons and down the Amu Darya River in kajucks (barges) to Lausan, an ill-fated two-year sojourn. After two years the 23 families had enough of fanatical eschatology, failed crops and repeated attacks by the Turkomen. Of 100 horses, all but 12 were stolen. They also lost cattle, and the worst of it was the murder of Heinrich Abrams who was trying to prevent the theft of his wife, which the Turkoment had earlier threatened to do. Tomorrow we will visit Lausan, until this year unknown to us.

Today we visited the village of Ak Metchet, where in 1884 Mennonites settled at the invitation of Muhammed Rahim II, Khan of Khiva. Here Mennonites flourished and built a stable community of faith. Surprisingly they became modernizing agents, bringing new agricultural produce, improved livestock, and trades of many kinds. Craftsmen made windows, doors, parquet floors, installed colorful tiles from Russia and painted intricate designs with brightly colored paints in nearby Khiva—for the Khan’s summer palace (ca. 1900), for the Khan’s son’s palace called Nurulabai (1890 and1910). They also crafted windows and doors for the Russian school, the post office (1912) and the hospital (1912). We visited all these places.

At Ak Metchet, some 100 villagers, students and teachers were waiting for us. Some of the men were dressed in suits. School was dismissed for the two hours we were there. (Only North American Mennonite tourists visit this village of 10,000). Locals pointed out the locations of the dwellings, the school house and the church house Mennonites built in 1884, the one surviving pear tree planted by Mennonites and the well which still contains water. They also showed us the location of the cemetery; markers are long gone.

They told us about the products these Germans brought to Central Asia, their strange practices, and the affair between a Mennonite young man and a married Uzbek woman. (It was the first we had heard of it!) Then Mollie Enns read the account of the 1935 deportation of the whole Mennonite village witnessed by her (and Alex’s) grandfather Jacob Rempel and uncle Alexander Rempel. It is an amazing story of heroic resistance of the women of the village when the Soviets came to deport the ten families who were to be deported to Siberia (The husbands and fathers, leaders of the community, had been sentenced to be shot.) Two hundred women converged on the 18 trucks, laid in front of the wheels, crowded inside, climbed up on top, while chanting, “All or none. Take all of us or none.” The overwhelmed Soviets, never reluctant to use their guns, simply walked away. But then a few days later all the trucks in the province were commandeered to deport the entire village. They were transported to Gulag 7 in the Turkmenistan desert near the Afghan border. That was the end of the Ak Metchet Mennonite villages. Villagers knew the story. They added details. They brought us a mortar and pestle given them by departing Mennonites.

We handed out gifts to the children and teenagers: pens, markers, caps, visors, notebooks and candy. They showed us the school now being enlarged and modernized. Soon they will have new rooms, modern equipment and computers with an Internet connection. The state is providing 150 million Sum in the local currency. The primary objects were two desks crafted by Mennonites still in use and solid as ever.

We expected that tomorrow we would participate in the grand opening of the new museum exhibit on Ak Metchet Mennonites, but I just learned that it has been cancelled. The official reason is that the director of Ichan-Kala, the inner walled city where the museum is located, is in South Korea for a conference.

All trekkers have remained healthy with the exception of Erica Janzen who appears to have a stomach flu. We trust she will rebound soon.

~ John Sharp