Pancho: A Low German Feature Film for the Whole Family

Yesterday, my husband and I went to see Pancho at SBS. Pancho is a feature length, Low German film by Will Friesen, who is well known for his comical Youtube videos in Low German. Later this week, there will be numerous more screenings at the Mennonite Museum.

Pancho is a coming of age story about, well, Pancho, who is growing up, and wrestling with no longer having a Mom. It is set in Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua, where Pancho is spending his summer doing small jobs, riding his bike, playing ball, squabbling with his little sister, and hanging out with friends. But he's not prepared for the changes that are coming.

Pancho is a good film that the whole family can enjoy. I found that the story moved a little slow at first, but during this time, the character was well developed and the viewer could understand who Pancho was and what he was going through. It dealt well with the family's struggles and brings them to a solid conclusion. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry.

For me, it was exciting to see a movie filmed in the area where I live, about Mennonites who speak Low German. I think Will has done a great job capturing some of the culture, and I was glad he touched on some of the themes he did. I would encourage anyone in Chihuahua to go support Will and enjoy a good movie with the family later this week the the Museo Menonita, km 10. The entrance fee is $50 per person.

Show Times:

December 8,9: 6pm, 8pm
December 10: 4pm, 6pm, 8pm
December 11: 2pm, 4pm, 6pm, 8pm

And for my friends in Ontario, watch for Pancho coming to Aylmer and Leamington in the New Year!

The Effects of Communism on the Identity of Russian Mennonites

I wrote the following essay for my final assignment for my "Mennonite History" class at Steinreich Bible School.

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Communism had detrimental effects on Russian Mennonites, turning their peaceful, prosperous lives into lives defined by persecution, pain, heartache and intense suffering.  I decided to write about the persecution of Mennonites in Russia during communism because I was sure to find a wealth of information.  However, I discovered it to be a heavy and depressing subject.  The documentary “And When They Shall Ask” describes the lives of the Mennonites prior to communism as “a long, soft summer evening.”  However, in the early 20^th century, their economic progress, well-developed educational systems, churches, culture, and family life were slowly snuffed out by the Marxian philosophy adopted in a nation for the first time.  The goal was to change not only the face of the nation, but also the face of the individuals.  And it did.  For the majority, the face of the Mennonite was not transformed into the “communist man” that was hoped for, but it did transform the Mennonite face into one of pain, hardship, grief, and, starvation; a face robbed of its freedom of religion, education, culture and prosperity.  Moreover, it robbed untold faces of their existence and left behind a trail of broken families.  Those who survived were indeed changed.      

            The years before the introduction of communism were the Golden Years for the Mennonites.  They had increased in numbers, wealth, and had built a good life in a new home with their own public institutions. It was a time of growth, peace, and prosperity.  Leaders in agriculture, Mennonite farmers developed new methods and machinery and also became involved in industry.  Motivated to be well-educated, they governed quality schools with their own curriculum.  Some respect was given by the government to their pacifist views, and alternative military service options were made available.  It was a culture admired by Tsar Nicholas I, a culture that was able to contribute to the nation, but was also able to remain independent with freedom of language, education, culture, and religion.       

“Communism” is defined by Merriam-Webster simply as “a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property.”  It made its way into Russia shortly after the turn of the century.  Dissatisfied peasants rose up in 1905, World War 1 began in 1914, and the Russian Revolution followed in 1917—the year that communism was fully established.  Civil war ensued, as the Red Army, made up of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, fought against the White Army, those resisting communism.  In 1924, Lenin died and Joseph Stalin began his rule in Russia.  He introduced the Five Year Plan in 1928, demanding rapid industrialization (supposedly to defend against invasion) and large collective farms; the plan resulted in a severe famine from 1932 to 1933.  Furthermore, churches were shut down and schools forced to adopt Marxian philosophy. Throughout Stalin’s life, countless people suffered under his communist rule.

            During the earlier communist years, from 1918 to 1921, one of the greatest terrors to the Mennonites was an anarchist named Nestor Makhno. Makhno led a huge army, comprised mainly of peasants under the motto “anarchy is the mother of all order.”  Every land owner was viewed as an enemy, and thus, the wealth of the Mennonites made them a prime target.  The army invaded villages where they robbed homes, murdered innocents, burned property, and raped women and children. They took food, livestock, and anything else that could be taken; what was left was destroyed.  When the German army entered the Ukraine in April 1918, the Mennonites were able to experience a brief time of peace and security.  The soldiers came with a familiar language and background and became welcome guests in the homes of the Mennonites.  However, with this also came some conflicting feelings.  Children were curious over the weapons that accompanied the soldiers, which made it more difficult for parents who held strong pacifist values.  Nevertheless, the peace was short lived.  When the war ended in November 1918, the German army retreated and the Mennonites’ security went with them.

            With the German army gone, Makhno returned to terrorize the Mennonites once again.  The Germans had left weaponry behind, and with it a great struggle of faith and values, particularly for the younger generation.  As young men watched their mothers and sisters get raped by the anarchist army, they became angry and questioned their non-resistance philosophy.  Many became convinced they had to take up arms with their roles as men and protect the ones they loved.  Thus the “Selbstschutz” was formed, meaning self-defense. However, this defense only provoked further attacks.  Hundreds were killed by the army in the fall of 1919, including 245 in Chortitza alone.  Some villages lost all their men.  (A severe famine also affected the Mennonites between 1919 and 1920, and approximately 2,200 Mennonites lost their lives during these two years.)  In later years, the “Selbstschutz” was regretted by many members of the Mennonite community.

            The Mennonite church continued to suffer greatly under Stalin’s rule which began in 1924.  Gradually their freedom to practice their faith was snuffed out. In 1925, the General Conference petitioned the government for eight rights for the Mennonites which they felt critical to their survival; the appeal was denied.  In 1929, laws were introduced forbidding churches from helping one another materially and having organized meetings or events. When the Marxian philosophy was forced into schools by 1930, Mennonites could no longer educate in accordance with their faith. Teachers unwilling to adapt were exiled and the well-developed educational system fell apart.  Churches were closed down and ministers arrested and exiled.  Also, military service exemption now required an application from each individual.  Some young men who applied were imprisoned, while others who refused to participate in service were sent to forced labour camps.  Eventually, almost no exemptions were made and many were forced into regular military service.  Communism had made a direct attack on their faith and cultural practices.

            According to Stalin, communism was not a choice, and those unwilling to conform were sent to forced labour camps or exiled to remote areas of Russia, like Siberia.  The Black Raven became another terror to the Mennonites.  The term referred to black vehicles used by state police (the NKVD) during Stalin’s rule.  Families would lie awake at night in fear.  Would the knock come at their door that night?  The car would arrive in a village at night and men would be arrested, never to be seen again.  This left many homes without a father; women now had to care for their families.  In some cases, mothers would work long days on collectives, leaving young children alone at home.  In their desperation to survive, their children suffered emotional neglect and only distanced themselves from the parent they had left.  Women often minimized their difficulties and loss and they became hardened by their experiences.  The effects of their pain remained until the later years of their lives, as well as those of their children.

            Persecution during the communist years divided families as well as dispersed the Russian Mennonites across the globe.  Many had left Russia prior to the introduction of communism.  23,000 left Russia between 1922 and 1927, settling in the Americas.  In 1929, 13,000 attempted to escape, but only 5,677 succeeded. Prior to Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Ukraine in 1941, nearly half of the Mennonites in Russia were sent to Siberia, forced labour camps, or uninhabited areas of the country.  Many were dispersed to Germany and the Americas again during World War 2.  Following the war, many tried to escape with the retreating German army, but Stalin ordered all the escaped Russians to be returned, so most were captured and returned to their homeland, now a prison.  After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, no Mennonites were left in Molotschna or Chortitza, although some returned later on.  Similar to the effects of persecution in the early church of Acts, communism caused the Mennonites to be dispersed around the world.

            Communism had a direct effect on approximately 120,000 Mennonites, the majority of whom experienced loss of homes, property, and/or family members.  It also had direct effects on their church life, educational systems, and presence around the world.  Years of peace and growth were followed by years of destruction and suffering.  Communism sought to take away the identity of individuals and cultures and replace it with the identity of a “communist man.”  Although the identity of many or all Mennonites in Russia changed, for most, it did not change to a “communist man.”  Some Mennonites became stronger in their faith while others turned away and abandoned their heritage.  What communism did do was further spread the face of the Mennonite around the globe and spread its influence, especially to the Americas.  Now scattered in numerous countries were the faces of Mennonites that carried untold pain, many suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, or other mental illnesses.  Some opened up and shared their experiences while others remained closed.  Although church meetings did resume again in Russia in the 1950s, surely the people that met there were different from the ones who met fifty years earlier.  As of 2012, only about 3,000 Mennonites remained scattered throughout Russia, many located in Siberia.  They no longer possess the wealth or recognition they once did, but many continue to possess the faith of their forefathers.  It was a faith that remained despite persecution and the loss of all they held dear.  It was a faith that endured through the fires of communism.

What Did I Do?: Ueberraschung!

Well, I feel like I'm finally getting caught up on things I was behind on and moving ahead. I must say I have been feeling a little computer illiterate trying to adjust to this new piece of technology. As you will no doubt notice, when I'm busy, I'm not very creative with new ideas. It's made even more difficult when I'm left without a computer to research anything on. I also lost part of my idea list, so I have to try to remember some of my ideas.

February 19: I won! 

On Thursday, I won an interesting Facebook challenge posted by my friend Kevin Abell. The prize? This Monroe thermometer. I don't think I've ever won a Facebook conversation before and it's also my first picture with Kevin.

 February 20: According to Knowledge Nuts, people have a false idea of how many rats there are in the world, particularly in big cities. News sources have exaggerated the numbers, saying there are twice as many rats in New York City as there are people, but it's not true. Personally, I think I only ever saw one rat while in NYC, that was running along the subway track. I admit I got pretty excited about it. Maybe it's because of signs like this one that I didn't see more.  Yep, I had to take a picture of one.

February 21: On Saturday, I learned about bed bugs, how to detect them, and identify bed bug bites. I had a bit of a freak out on the weekend, but now I can rest assured I don't have bed bugs.

February 22: On Sunday, I tried eating a kiwi with the skin. I really like kiwi when it's ripe and sweet and I've heard of people eating the whole thing, but the fuzzy skin has never appealed to me. Well, I determined to try it, especially after watching my nephew munch through the skin and explain how healthy it was. I looked at the kiwi before eating it with more contempt than a piece of raw fish. I managed one crunchy sour bite, then sliced it in half and scooped the inside out with a spoon. But now I can say I've tried it. If it had been a little riper, it might have not been so bad.

February 23: I can't wait for the day I can go to the pool in a T-shirt or even a sweater. It's way too cold. But to another swim class I did go, and it was rather grueling. I hadn't been to the pool in two weeks and not having exercised since my last class didn't help. I'm still learning not to drink pool water when I sink. When I came up coughing and sputtering to no end, people stared at me like I almost drowned or something. It reminded me of a similar experience I had a few years ago in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a little traumatic.

I also learned some interesting things about James Dole, "the Pineapple King" who turned the whole Hawaiian island of Lana'i into the world's biggest pineapple plantation. In 1927, he offered a $35,000 cash prize for the winner of an airplane race from California to Hawaii. The conditions were very dangerous. Add that airplanes weren't exactly what they are today and that nobody had ever flown to Hawaii before. Many entered the race but only two actually finished it. Ten people died trying. In the end, the winner shared the prize money with the second contestant to finish, but alas, they weren't the first people to fly to Hawaii. Two army pilots got there before the race started.

So that was tragic and James Dole felt really bad, for good reason. But back in 1913, his company made a machine that peeled 100 pineapples a minute. That's pretty cool. It would take me entirely too long to just peel one. I'm afraid though I might feel a little guilty from now on when I buy Dole pineapples. Not fair.

February 24: You know those annoying parking meters? Well, I found out who came up with that idea. Carl Magee, a U.S. reporter invented the parking meter. He was an interesting man who exposed corruption. However, he also shot and killed a bystander when he got into a fight with a corrupt judge he had just berated in his newspaper. The judge didn't get shot as intended, but someone else did. He was acquitted, however, and when he moved to Oklahoma City, he came up with the idea of the parking meter in 1932, in order to resolve the city's massive parking problem.

February 25: What I'm about to share next should be taken with a grain of salt. I apologize to my readership who won't be able to understand much of what I will share next, and to my Mennonite, Low German speaking readership, I apologize for my horrible spelling. I never did become proficient in reading or writing my mother tongue. Also, I can't use an umlaut, so I have to improvise. And I'm definitely about to become less serious.

I learned a number of new things through an afternoon of browsing a Mennonite cookbook compiled in Mexico. I must say it provided a fair share of amusement to me, a Mennonite born and raised in Canada. Although my roots are in Mexico, I've only been there to visit a handful of times. What made this cookbook particularly interesting was the different German words they use for things. It seems to have a wealth of great recipes if you can figure out how to read and understand them. In all likelihood, this cook book is correct in the German it uses, and the Low German language I'm used to is just so far removed.

Something I have often noticed is that our Low German vocabulary is rather small. We don't seem to have words for a lot of things, or we just take English words and pronounce them to sound German. And there are things that are just different between German and Low German. Well, to understand this cookbook, I think you needed to be proficient in German, Low German, English, Spanish and possess some imagination. It also seemed they have some food products in Mexcio that we don't have in Canada, or perhaps we just couldn't understand them. There were a number of canned milks that showed up in recipes, but we could only figure out evaporated milk for certain.

My favourite word I learned was ueberraschung, which means surprise. This was through a recipe for Schokoladenueberraschung. To learn that ueberraschung meant surprise was a surprise! I didn't know we had a word for surprise! Maybe if someone had thrown me an "ueberraschung geburtstag fest" when I was a kid, I would know this stuff! I also think the word sounds an awful lot like our Low German word for "backwards", but maybe that's just me.

We figured out that plaetzchen are cookies and kuchen is cake. To me, kuchen means cookies and cake is cake. And we figured out that kekse are cupcakes. Karrotten Kuchen is carrot cake, but I say "gelmehren." We eventually determined zimt meant cinnamon, since it was in with recipes for Cinnamon Rolls. At home, that's still just koernel rollen to me. When providing instructions for icing cookies or cakes, it uses the word "streiche", oba ekj do kuchen beschmeiren. Schokoladenschnitzel are chocolate chips. I get the chocolate part, but to me schnitzel is milanesa.


One of the ones that had us stumped for awhile was Schlagsahne, which we finally concluded was whipping cream, or whipped cream. To me, cream is Schmaunt, and if I'm reading a German recipe, it's Rahm. This made me wonder, if whipping cream is Schlagsahne, then what do they call Schmauntfaht? There are a lot more examples, but I simply can't write about them all.

Ah, yes, we Mennonites are a unique people with a unique language, and we could argue with no end about words and pronunciations! With this cookbook, the nice thing is if you need clarification on a recipe, it not only provides the name of the woman who submitted the recipe, but also her Campo number, phone number, and husband's name if applicable.

In the end, what is my conclusion to this matter? Dit es bloss nicht wo wie dat gelieht han!

And for the song I was singing constantly this week.

"If you wanna know how far My love can go
Just how deep, just how wide
If you wanna see how much you mean to Me
Look at My hands, look at My side
If you could count the times I'd say you are forgiven
It's more than the drops in the ocean." --"Drops in the Ocean" by Hawk Nelson

School Reflections on Mennonite Culture and "A Complicated Kindness"

This post requires a brief introduction so you will understand what you're reading. In the last few months, I've been working on upgrading my Grade 12 English credit. In the course, I had to read two of three novels, and write three reader response journals for each. One of the books I chose was A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, a novel set in a Mennonite community in Manitoba in the 1970-80s. I was intrigued by a book about my culture and thought it would be great to connect to. I did have to meet a few content requirements, but I liked how the format of this assignment allowed me to express my views and write about Mennonite culture, and I decided to share one response journal on my blog.

Having said that, I want to add that I cannot recommend this book. Readers that know me personally will quickly understand why. The more I read, the more disturbed I became and it certainly had an unhealthy effect on me. However, I also appreciated how the author exposed some of the problems in Mennonite cultures and I really connected to some of the points she brought out. I have tried to be as sensitive as possible in detailing these. Please understand that this is a personal perspective and reflects my understanding and experience of being a Mennonite.

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Reader Response Journal 1 for A Complicated Kindness Chapters 1-10

So first I want to vent about how I feel about this book. On a whole, I haven't been impressed. It's a mockery of not only Mennonites, but particularly of the Christian faith. The only way the author can get away with all the use of profanity, including profaning God, is because the story is told from the perspective of a girl who is rebelling against her culture. Having said that, Toews effectively tears down the outward image of Mennonite culture and gets a lot of points about the culture bang on!

While I'm on the topic of my reactions to this book, I may as well expand more. Although I grew up in a different Mennonite culture in a different time, I can understand a lot of what Nomi is working through. I understand that although the characters profess religion and go to church on Sundays, there is a huge youth culture full of sex, drugs, alcohol and rebellion. What happens down at the pits is really not far-fetched. What did surprise me was the author's use of profanity, and particularly using the names of God as swear words. This is generally not acceptable in Mennonite culture, or the Christian faith. The reason she uses it though is to show the Nomi who inside has completely turned away from everything she has been taught growing up, as well as to authenticate characters like Tash and Travis. This was definitely a big disappointment to me, but it does show Nomi's troubled life, as well as the youth culture among many Mennonite groups.

Something that surprised me in a good way was the community's focus on third-world missions, aside from the fact that people are often compelled to serve out of guilt or because of manipulative threats. Depending on the community, this is something that is certainly not always common. In fact, in some churches, actively proselytizing can be very looked down upon. However, on the flip-side, in many Mennonite circles, serving the poor or reaching out through missions is an important way of demonstrating faith.

I don't feel very warmly about the characters. Nomi's a rebel who describes herself as a "sad, cynical pothead." (p.32) I don't find much about her likeable. But at the same time, I pity her, because she, along with her family, and all the people around her are trapped in a religion that is all about dos and don'ts, but it doesn't actually change them. They have the Bible pushed down their throats, but they don't "get it". The result is, of course, misery. I like her dad, Ray. I can't say I'm drawn to her mom, or sister. Travis seems like the kind of guy who will, sooner or later, be most interested in getting into Nomi's pants. Although a little more thoughtful about things, he seems to encourage her increasing substance abuse. I don't like him either.

There are things that Nomi says that really hit the nail on the head, specific ideas and mentalities I could really connect with. "We've been hand-picked. We're on the fast track, singled out, and saved." (p.17) What Nomi describes here is the idea that is common in some Mennonite communities that they're a sort of elite people, almost like a special people to God that will be saved, and everyone else will be condemned. Very wrong, might I add. In Chapter 7, Nomi describes the town she lives in, in relation to the museum village. "It's right next to the real town, this one, which is not really real. It's a town that exists based on the idea of it not existing in the world." (p.47-48) Nomi understands that their community denies the pleasures of this world so they can enjoy the next, but she doesn't know what they will be. She makes a good point here. When having a conversation with her teacher, she hits the nail on the head when she says, "I want to know what it's like to be forgiven by another human being (I was stoned, obviously) and not have to wait around all my life anxiously wondering if I'm an okay person or not and having to die to find out." (p.48) This statement really describes her confusion. In the church I grew up in, and in many Mennonite churches, a common belief is that a person cannot know if they're saved and going to heaven. We were taught that Jesus died for our sins, so we could go to heaven, but that was about it. The rest was up to us. We had to try to live a good life, make our good outweigh our bad, and hope, that maybe, just maybe, we'd make it into heaven. Hell was used to scare little children when they did something bad. If a person claimed to be saved or born again, they were gone off the deep end, and quite possibly rejected by their family. This seems to me to be at the heart of what Nomi can't understand and why she sees their faith as fantasy. It's a "reject-everything-here-in-hopes-of-something-better, in-hopes-we-can-make-it-in" way of life. This is what really saddens me about the culture.

I really appreciated when Nomi said, "Somehow all the problems of the world manage to get into our town but not the strategies to deal with them." (p.52) This is so true. Mennonites are human, just like everyone else, and many of the same problems exist, whether it's drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, abuse, or promiscuity. But many communities do not seem to have solutions to deal with them, aside from discipline or excommunication, which doesn't actually help the people.

There were other little things that made me excited, like chocolate puffed wheat balls. At home, we press it into a pan and cut it into squares. Simple, but always a nice light snack. I got a good laugh when she mentioned how Mennonites stare! Can they ever! Although this is likely largely stereotypical, I can almost see a line of little Mennonite kids standing at the border line of the neighbour's property, just staring! And Knipsbrat, which I learned later was called crokinole in English. I played that as a kid. It was one of those safe, acceptable Mennonite games. Oh, and can't forget the messy, bloody, and smelly job of butchering chickens. Like Nomi, I can't imagine doing that for a living!

What I found interesting and somewhat surprising was that children read Narnia books, and Ray gives Nomi a copy of The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. This may really vary by community, but fiction books weren't of great value when I was a child, and fantasy in particular can be a controversial genre in conservative Christian/Mennonite circles. Lewis can be a controversial writer, and people have mixed feelings about Narnia. The allegory is probably the main redeeming factor, and that the witch is actually depicted as bad. Personally, I enjoy Lewis's work, but I was surprised that this is part of the education system in Nomi's community.

I also connected to Nomi's love and desire to see New York City, but for a reason totally different from hers. I was never drawn, per se, to big cities as a kid, but in the past year and a half, I spent over 20 weeks in Staten Island. What brought me there was actually the fact that I was a Mennonite. I was volunteering with Mennonite Disaster Service while they were helping clean up and rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy. I loved being in NY, I got to see different sights, and I loved volunteering with this organization I hadn't hear about before. It also greatly challenged the way I viewed my Mennonite heritage, which I had lost a great deal of respect for. To be quite honest, I didn't even like being considered a Mennonite anymore. But working with other Mennonites in a disaster relief project helped me to see many of the different Mennonite cultures from Canada and the U.S. I also got to know and made friends with people from churches I had little to no respect for, and began to see them differently. I saw that there were people who actually had a genuine, active faith. It did exist among them, even if it wasn't the case with nearly all of them, or at least among the ones I knew. This experience also resulted in something else interesting. I had the opportunity to share my experiences at a number of fundraising and awareness events, and my audience was many times, people from the culture I came out of. Yes, like in Nomi's story, the women sit on one side of the church, while the men sat on the other. It is certainly not the norm to have a young, single woman speak to them! I have often been amazed at the opportunities I had to share with this culture. I am curious to see what will come of Nomi's desire to see New York City and how it will impact her.

The style of A Complicated Kindness is unique and surprising in some ways. It's told in the first-person narrative, Nomi being the narrator. It's effective, because the reader can get right into her head. The story is written free-form, and is somewhat fragmented. Nomi talks a lot about the past, and the past is often interspersed with what's going on in the present. She has a hard time dealing with her mother and sister leaving, and it really affects her life, so naturally, she talks about it. I find that as the story goes on, the focus shifts more to what's happening in the present. However, she jumps from one topic to the next, and many things she talks about are very random. It's almost like the book is Nomi's diary, and she's just writing about her life and what has happened to her.

One thing I noticed right in the beginning was that Nomi speaks about her parents by using their first names, rather than speaking of them as Mom and Dad. This is unusual. Also, the author very rarely puts dialogue in quotations. I wonder why she chose not to do this. Perhaps this is because a lot of the story is just Nomi processing things, or because it reads in many ways kind of like a diary. The author's writing style strikes me as modernist in some ways. She uses assonance quite a bit, mostly when Nomi is talking of riding her bike. In Chapter 8, Nomi frequently repeats "I like to ride my bike" and tells of the places she goes. The author really gets on a roll with the modernist style on page 37: "We'd stand by our front doors yelling stuff like shalom and Faloma and nice aroma let's build a snowma in the dark, we'd just go on and on, in early Menno rap style, until his dad asked him if he wanted a smack. A smack attack jack? Get back on track!"

A literary device used a lot in this book is sarcasm, especially with Nomi being a cynical character, disgusted by her community. There is a dark mood, over the story. Nomi is to a great extent sad and depressed, with a negative outlook on her life and the world she lives in. The author uses wit, especially in the way that Tash responds to their culture and the aspects that make no sense to her, like when she points out they can't dance but they can have sex with extended family members. (p.49) I'm not used to such closely related people marrying, but the girl certainly makes a great point!

I am interested to see where Nomi will end up, and also how this small glimmer of appreciation she has for her community, in the complicated kindness she experiences, will grow or fade.