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 43update * update . update . update 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 0 I 0 0 o 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.
