The group of three American
carpenters and a dozen or so
Nicaraguans stood for a moment
smiling in the already intense
morning sun. The bus that had
dropped off the Americans slowly
roared away on down the unpaved
street and disappeared leaving a
long veil of dust hanging in the air.
All around as far as the eye could
see stretched the streets of sim-
ple, mostly hand-built houses of
the village of San Rafael in the
area of Tipitapa about seven ki-
lometers west of Managua, Nica-
ragua.
From the shade of her porch
across the way a woman holding
a basket eyed our group calmly,
obviously waiting for something
interesting to happen. A pig, dark
red like our American Duroc, hur-
ried by and continued on up the
center of the street. Late for church,
William Lane is a poet and carpenter living in Orrtanna, PA. The article first
appeared in the May 17 issue of The Gettysburg Times.
I thought. An old mother dog lay
down in the dust and sighed. It
was Sunday morning. The govern-
ment had called for voluntary work
to honor the memory of a West
German doctor and 13 other civ-
ilians, all Nicaraguans, killed by
counterrevolutionaries in an inci-
dent a few days earlier. And here
we were.
Someone shrugged, another
raised a hand in welcome and we
all started in on the project at
hand, a little 20 by 20 foot pole
building soon to be a combination
police station and community cen-
ter. The poles were in place. Now
we were digging out the perime-
ter of the building where large
blocks cut from a kind of soft stone
obtained locally would next be set
in concrete forming a foundation
for the wall of the building. Some
of us went to work with heavy dig-
ging irons, others with shovels.
Still others readied the blocks and
carried water for mixing the con-
crete. An older man in a baseball
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cap and armed with a carpenter’s metric rule ran around taking mea-
surements. Whenever anyone
would pass on the street our group
would call out things like, “Where
are you, this morning?” People
would answer, “My mother is call-
ing me,” and so forth amidst gen-
eral laughter.
Before long a man appeared
from somewhere with a bucket ful
of frescas, little plastic bags full oi
frozen juice. I was glad. I was al-
ready feeling the tropical sun in
my knees. Everyone tore off the
corner of his plastic bag with his
teeth and we stood around suck-
ing on the frozen juice.
The men were full of questions:
What was it like in America? What
did Reagan want, anyway? Did
we, like them, believe in God? Did
we go to church? How much did
we make a month? Did we like
Nicaragua?
When we started back, I think
we all worked a little more slowly.
With so many hands present the
job was going quickly. The big
blocks were almost gliding into
place. From time to time I stepped
back, rested, and watched while
thinking about the 30-year-old
German doctor.
According to the local newspa-
per he had been traveling with
other technical advisers and vol-
unteers along a road southeast of
Wiwili in the department of Jino-
tega which is in the nothern part of
Nicaragua. The contras, former
Somosa National Guardsmen now
operating out of Honduras with
U.S. backing, had blocked the
road. When the jeeps and van in
which the volunteers were travel-
ing came to a stop, the contras
opened fire. Several people were
killed immediately. Others, includ-
ing the German doctor, were first
forced to disembark and then ex-
ecuted on the spot. Still others
managed to escape. Standing 44
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Women clear way for a recreation center
there in the heat of San Rafael,
none of it seemed quite real. Yet it
was very real indeed. Over the
last two years attacks against ci-
vilians, particularly technical ex-
perts, foreign volunteers and Nica-
raguans involved in community
affairs, have become an important
aspect of the contras”war against
Nicaragua, an aspect all too in-
frequently reported in the North
American press. More than 400
Nicaraguans have died in these
attacks.
At 12:30 our bus returned to
take us back to Managua. After
many goodbyes and handshakes
and a short thank you speech
from a local community leader,
we made our departure. As we
drove away I looked out the bus
window at the waving residents of
San Rafael and at the unfinished
building. Someone, several seats
up, was rereading the newspaper.
On the front page from under a
banner headline the West German
doctor, young and handsome in
the family snapshot, smiled enig-
matically.
After getting cleaned up and
having rejoined the other Ameri-
cans and Canadians with whom
we were traveling, we learned that
a public demonstration was being
held that afternoon somewhere in
Managua also in honor of the doc-
tor and the others. We decided to
try to find it. After several false
starts we arrived at Managua’s
main hospital where, in fact, a
ceremony was underway. We were
led to an inner courtyard of the
hospital. Two doors on one side
opened onto a small auditorium,
perhaps the hospital chapel. It was
jammed with people, Nicaraguans
as well as international health
workers, many in their white coats.
We heard the end of a speech
and then some singing. A woman
beside us was whispering in what
sounded like Dutch. Someone else
was talking quietly in French. Some
German children, having grown
restless, wandered through the
courtyard. Many people stood
around as if in a daze. Gradually it
began to dawn on me that this
wasn’t a demonstration; this was
a funeral.
When the singing ended peo-
ple began to leave the chapel. We
Americans stood still in the court-
yard not knowing quite what to do.
TomBs Borge, the interior minis-
ter, and other Nicaraguan leaders
came slowly past us stopping to
shake hands and talk quietly for a
moment. Ernesto Cardenal, Cath-
olic priest and minister of culture,
came past without speaking. He
was wearing the black beret in
which he is often photographed, a
personal trademark. I moved back
against the wall to make room and
waited to see what would happen
next. Then, they began to bring
out the coffins each raised high
on the shoulders of six people.
They had to move slowly in such a
crowd. We squeezed tight against
the wall to make room and the
flower laden coffins went slowly
past.
