"It's a fine line though. I believe in literacy but who are we to tell people they need a certain reading level to be happy in life? In a lot of cases I think we are complicating their lives. Some of my students are so wonderfully naive. They didn't have any idea about what was going on in the Persian Gulf. I teach them about it but they were happier before I told them. Most are content not knowing."

"We talked about self-esteem a lot today," Klaus said, thinking back to some of our earlier conversations in the truck. "Real self- esteem problems come when you remove people from their home culture and try to change them. If you take someone who has family and is well-respected in the Mennonite community and put him in downtown Calgary, he will probably develop problems with self- esteem. And if you take a Native girl off a reserve and put her in an all white school that doesn't respect her culture, she will have a really hard time. We see that here over and over again."

"But in our case it was a little different," Klaus explained, "because it was our choice to come here. We are choosing to be part of this community, to live this way. I'm sure it would be quite different if we just ended up here with no preparation or idea of what we were getting into."

I asked Klaus and Susan since they are both involved in literacy work, if they ever talk about anything else? Susan laughed and said, "Are you kidding? With homesteading and trying to raise five kids, having literacy to talk about helps to keep us sane!"

Just then the children came in the door. School books, winter clothes and stories of the day filled the kitchen. Without being asked, everyone pitched in and within minutes the table was set and the evening meal served.

Over dinner Susan told Klaus she learned that morning that the student who had been studying for his truck driver's licence had passed the test. (Klaus apparently had taken the time to orally tape the driver's manual for the man so that he could study more at home.) "We all clapped for him," Susan said proudly. "I kind of wished he wasn't a Mennonite man though because I really wanted to give him a hug."

I asked Klaus how long it had taken him to tape the manual. "I stayed up half the night one night," he said casually. "But that was OK with me. Getting this licence will hopefully help him to get a better job; he has a big family to feed. We do it for them and I'm sure they would do it for us. I enjoy helping like that because it means I can do something for someone that doesn't cost anybody anything."

Susan added, "There are a lot of people in this community who just freely give. When we first came out here we were cutting down bush and a fellow came along for most of the summer, just to help."

After supper Klaus warmed up the truck in preparation to drive me back to High Level. In the summer Klaus is able to drive to High Level by crossing the Peace River by ferry then heading north. In the winter the place where the ferry crosses the river becomes an "ice bridge". The river is flooded and plowed by the Department of Transportation to make a roadway across the river. To drive straight north and west to High Level (the way we had come down to Thompkins Landing) is almost twice the distance. Klaus considered taking the shorter route across the river but Susan warned him that one of her students had said the ice wasn't safe yet.

Klaus looked over at me and asked what I'd like to do. I asked him how risky it would be. He winked at one of the children and said, "How well can you swim?" I opted for the longer route.