Tales of a Female Nomad

by Rita Golden Gelman

  After four days, I want to get out of Managua; it’s hot, grimy, crowded, smelly, and I’m tired of squeezing onto buses. I want to see the rest of the country; but I don’t want to do it alone. I’m sure there are plenty of visitors who want to escape Managua.

  The next day I walk into Mirna’s Pancakes for breakfast and ask a young woman if I can join her. After more than a year of traveling alone in Mexico and Guatemala, it has become easy for me to approach other tourists. Nearly every solitary traveler is happy to have company.

  Jennifer is from Baltimore and she’s as eager to get out of the city as I am; there is nothing to do here and the heat is unbearable. The hard part is figuring out how to get out. There are buses . . . but they are unreliable, overcrowded, and you have go where they want to go. There are also tours for foreigners; but they are expensive and carefully plotted to show you what the government wants you to see.

  What we want is to share a car and driver and maybe find two more people to join us. We put up some signs in the motels and restaurants looking for people. “Leave a message in Hospedaje Santos for Rita or Jennifer.” And we walk the streets, stopping every foreigner we see, asking if they want to join us or if they know any drivers with cars.

  After two days, we get a lead on a driver. Marco, a cab driver, has taken this German couple around the country. He doesn’t have a phone, and they don’t know his address, but if we catch the Larreynaga bus and get off where the hospital used to be and then turn toward the water for two blocks (you cannot see the water, it is merely a direction), Marco’s house is the third one on the right.

  Sounds crazy, but we actually find the house and end up sitting with Marco’s mother for two hours waiting for Marco, who will be home any minute. Doña Juana, Marco’s mother, is a passionate Sandinista and she talks to us about what it was like during the revolution. There was fighting on her street and her house was used as a hospital. If there was no one else around, she was the doctor, removing shrapnel, cleaning wounds and stitching them up.

  “Did you have any medical training?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Mothers know those things.” She has five children and fifteen grandchildren.

  While Jennifer and I wait for Marco, we meet eleven grandchildren, seven of them Marco’s kids. Marco, his mother tells us, is thirty; he and his wife were fifteen and sixteen when their first child was born. Teresa is currently pregnant with number eight. I also discover that Doña Juana has several rooms that she rents out to international volunteers: political exiles, socialists, artists, adventurers, idealists from around the world. And she has a room for me if I want it. I do.

  Finally, Marco drives his yellow taxi into the yard. Two of the doors are wired closed, the car has no grill, and he tells us later that only one headlight works. He’d been standing in line all day long to get a used carburetor. When he finally made it to the front of the line, they were out of carburetors. His car is a Chevy. Ever since the U.S. closed all trade to Nicaragua, no one can get parts.

  Marco is swarthy, with a belly that hangs out over his pants and a shirt that is buttoned wrong. The seams of his sneakers are split. When he hears that we have been waiting for more than two hours, he bursts into an uproarious, contagious laugh that is hard to listen to without laughing along. Marco agrees to take us around the country for a week.

  Jennifer and I go back to our motel, hoping to find two more people to join us. But two days later, on the morning we are due to leave, it’s still just Jennifer and me. We are meeting Marco in front of the motel at 7:00 A.M. By 8:45 we have given up. He arrives at 9:00, with no apology; but we are so happy to see him that we say nothing.

  We load our bags into the trunk and are about to get in the car when a tall, lanky guy with a British accent comes running down the street shouting. “Stop, wait, don’t go!”

  His name is Graham and he wants to join us.

  “Hold on, I’ll get my bags,” he says, and he runs off.

  Ten minutes later he’s back with two monstrous duffel bags. Jennifer and I are each carrying a small book bag. We squeeze his bags into the trunk, wire it shut, and take off.

  An hour later we arrive at a plaza in a small town. It’s buzzing with people, and American rock music is coming out of loudspeakers. Graham, who hasn’t said much during the hour we’ve been driving, asks Marco to take out one of the duffel bags. Except Marco doesn’t understand; he doesn’t speak English and Graham doesn’t speak Spanish. Jennifer translates. Turns out her Spanish is near-perfect. From that point on, we address her as Translator. “Hey, Translator, come here,” we call when we need her. She is Jennifer no more.

  Marco takes the bag out, and Graham carries it to a crowded spot in the market. None of us has any idea why.

  Then he unzips the bag, takes out four leather juggling balls filled with coffee beans, and begins to juggle. A crowd gathers, mostly mothers and children. Graham brings his audience into the act, tossing a ball to someone as he juggles and catching it when they throw it back. More and more kids shout to be included. Then, after five minutes of balls, he calls to me. I am standing next to his duffel.

  “Rita, catch.” And he throws me the juggling balls. One, two, three, four. “Toss me the bowling pins.” And a juggler’s assistant is born.

  “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro,” he counts, except his pronunciation is so bad that Marco, hysterical off to the side, mimics Juggler’s sound.

  Juggler, his name from then on, had been the headmaster of a school in Canada; and after that, he started a successful macadamia nut butter business in Hawaii. He made a lot of money in macadamia nut butter, but his dream was to travel around Central and South America, communicating with the people. He studied Spanish and failed miserably. He couldn’t get the pronunciation. No matter how hard he tried, his Spanish sounded like British English.

  So, four years ago, he took up a different form of communication . . . juggling. Unlike languages, juggling turned out to be a natural talent. By the time he caught up with us on the street in Managua, he’d entertained thousands of people throughout Central America, and he’d even done a stint in a circus.

  Translator and I (now officially known as Writer) spend the next week as Juggler’s assistants in plazas throughout the country. We fetch, we toss, we count, we carry. We make people happy. What a glorious experience. Juggler even teaches us to juggle three balls.

  Over the next years, I will meet many street entertainers (called buskers), in airports, on street corners, in markets. And because of my brief stint as Juggler’s assistant, I have a whole new respect and appreciation of the joy they bring to the world. Where once I hid in the back of the crowd, after Nicaragua, I move in close to the entertainers. I talk to them, buy them a drink, and share stories of buskers I have met (the international ones often know each other). All of the street entertainers love making people happy. So do I. From time to time I find myself wondering what it would take to become a clown. Maybe one day.

  The climax of our whirlwind traveling show is Marco’s idea. Late in the afternoon of our final day, our yellow taxi swings down a dirt road, and he stops the car outside a tan-colored stucco building.

  “This,” he announces, “is a home for deaf and dumb children.”

  Two Franciscan nuns in crisply ironed blue-and-white habits answer the bell and invite us in. Just inside the door, in a large entrance hall, ten girls, ages ten to sixteen, are sitting around a big table with huge piles of rice in front of them. They are picking out the bad grains.

  Juggler grins and drops his bag. Translator and I open it up, toss him the balls, and he begins. At first the nuns and the girls are stunned. Then suddenly, the girls jump up and surround him with strange sounds and laughter. Kids of all ages pour out of classrooms to join us. They stand there mimicking Juggler’s movements, like a mime chorus in a silent musical. And then Juggler brings them into his act by tossing the balls to them. There is magic in the room . . . and communication. Juggler can’t speak a word of Span
ish, but it doesn’t matter, because his audience can’t hear. Everyone, including the nuns, is glowing.

  Juggler calls for the bowling pins, then the rings, then an assortment of objects, big and small, that he juggles together. Translator and I, his loyal assistants, toss him whatever he wants. Marco, meanwhile, pulls up a chair and sits near the door, bursting with pride.

  The nuns interrupt the show briefly to give us drinks and Ritz crackers with a squiggle of honey. When we’ve finished the snacks, they won’t let us go. Juggler performs some more and gives some juggling lessons to the kids. Finally, he signals that he is finished, and he hands out balloons to everyone.

  Translator and I pack up his bag and carry it out the door, followed by the whole school. It is already dark when Juggler slips behind the yellow cab and siphons some gas from the tank. Then he calls for the bag that has never left the trunk. Marco unwires the trunk and Translator and I take out the bag. Juggler hides behind the car as he prepares for the final act.

  “Get in and be ready to take off,” he tells us. Marco jumps in behind the wheel and starts the car. Translator and I climb into the backseat and leave the front door open for Juggler’s getaway. And then, in the dark, Juggler takes out a cigarette lighter and performs his grand finale: flaming torches.

  When the flames go out, Juggler gathers the torches in his arms and jumps in next to Marco, who guns the engine. We screech off, shooting dust into the air and waving to our screaming and jumping audience.

  When we get back to Managua, I move in with Doña Juana. Marco lives two houses down. We all share a big yard filled with cast-off car parts and used paint cans that occasionally become drums under the energetic banging of Marco’s seven children from age one to age fourteen. Ramón, the oldest, will be drafted into the army when he is seventeen.

  Marco and Teresa argue a lot about the war, the one that the U.S. is sponsoring. She wants to send Ramón to the United States instead of to the army. Marco, an ardent Sandinista, who is proud of the revolution that he fought in, asks, “Who will defend our country if not the youth?”

  Teresa tells me, “All I can think about is Ramón in the mountains, cold and hungry, and in constant danger of being killed. I don’t want my son to come back in a box.”

  After two months of living with Marco’s family, I leave Nicaragua briefly for a visit with my parents and my kids. I also meet with Frank Sloan, an editor friend in New York. Over breakfast at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, to the live piano tunes of Strauss and Mozart, I tell Frank Nicaragua stories. He stops me midway through a story and asks if I’ll write a book about my experiences.

  I’m excited. What a great chance to present another perspective to American youth. I’ll write it from the perspective of young people in Nicaragua.

  A few days later I load up my book bag with a tape recorder, a pile of tapes, and a bunch of pens and notebooks. It’s great to be going back to a place where I already have friends. Marco is meeting me at the airport.

  As I walk outside the modern air terminal, I look for him. Thirty minutes later, I am still waiting.

  Nicaraguan time is different from time in the United States; it’s much more relaxed. En punto, on the dot, never is. A two o’clock appointment often means that you’ll meet at three or four or five. “Later” can mean days. “I’ll stop by tomorrow” can sometimes mean weeks. So I wait.

  An airport bus comes by and the driver asks if I need a ride. I shake my head and wait some more. Another half hour goes by. The bus does three more swings before it stops again and the door opens.

  “Come on,” says the driver. “We’ll take you to the Intercontinental Hotel.”

  The hotel is closer to where I’m going than the airport is, so I climb in.

  As we speed down the road toward the Intercontinental, the driver asks if I am here to work; he’s used to picking up volunteers, mostly Europeans, who have come to help Nicaragua.

  “I’m writing a book about young people in Nicaragua,” I tell him.

  “Oh,” says the driver. “I have kids. Would you like to meet them?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Nicaraguans are the friendliest people in the world. Sometimes, when I ask directions, people walk me to where I’m going. Strangers on the street invite me into their homes. Others just walk alongside me, wanting to talk. And now, a bus driver is taking me to meet his kids.

  He swings off the highway and begins maneuvering his monster bus through narrow streets. He turns down dirt roads and winds around shack-like houses on what appears to be more a footpath than a road. As we move, we kick up swirls of dust in every direction. People rush out of their houses to stare. I feel as though I am on board a runaway bus in a TV cartoon. Then, finally, he stops and we get out.

  I meet his kids and his wife, and I drink a fresca (tastes like Kool-Aid) while sitting in a rocking chair on a dirt floor.

  “OK,” he says half an hour later. “Now, where can I take you.”

  Ten minutes later, my private runaway bus pulls up in front of Doña Juana’s house. The family, the neighbors, and everyone passing by swarm around us, as amazed as they are impressed by the giant bus that has delivered me.

  Marco’s yellow taxi is a few meters inside the gate. The hood is up and half the parts are on the ground. Marco is stretched out in a hammock.

  “Rita, hola. Cómo estas?” he says, greeting me warmly, as though I am a wonderful surprise. Then he guffaws his endearing and boisterous laugh. No mention is made of our missed airport date.

  I give him an angry look and walk inside to hug Doña Juana. He could have sent a message. For two days I refuse to talk to Marco. Then I forget about it. It isn’t the first time he’s been late; and it isn’t the last time he stands me up. I know it isn’t me; it’s Marco. I learn to accept him as he is. It ought to be an advantage to share a yard and family with a cab and driver. No such luck.

  As part of my research for the book, I decide to go to Quibuto, a village in the war zone that was attacked three months ago. But I don’t want to go alone. Marco is unavailable. He’s still working on his cab.

  While I’m trying to figure out what to do, I meet a photographer from Spain who has a friend who has a car. It’s a business deal. I pay expenses, he drives and takes pictures. And if there are some good photos, we’ll try to sell them to my publisher.

  The first day we drive to a town about two hundred miles from Managua and an hour’s drive from Quibuto. We decide to save the drive to Quibuto for the morning. At 8:05 we arrive at the army post with our letter of permission. (It took days of standing in line to get the proper documents.) The soldiers study the letter.

  “Your permissions are in order,” we are told, “but foreign journalists can’t drive the Quibuto road until after 10:00.”

  “Why is that?” asks the photographer.

  “If the road has been mined overnight, the mines will be triggered by military vehicles or Nicaraguans before you get there. We don’t want foreign journalists getting blown up.”

  For the first time since I came to Nicaragua, I’m scared. Mines that are planted at night by the Contras become part of the thousands of bumps in a dirt road during the day. We have been told to look for bumps as we drive; but it’s the rainy season and the road is nothing but ruts and bumps and holes and rocks and tire tracks. There’s not a chance we’d be able to tell the difference between a mine bump and an ordinary bump in the road. So we settle for trying to maneuver our low-slung car without scraping its bottom.

  It is nearly 11:00 when we reach the turnoff to Quibuto. The road is blocked by more soldiers with guns slung over their shoulders. They inspect our permission letter and wave us on.

  The photographer looks off into the tree-filled hills. “This kind of terrain is the perfect cover. There’s no way you can tell if there are Contras in those trees or behind those hills.”

  One eight-inch-deep river and thousands of bumps later, we see the village. As we get closer, we notice a jumble
of men, women, dogs, chickens, and kids about twenty yards from the road in an open field. We get out of the car and walk toward the crowd. There is a bright red mass of color in the center of the activity.

  When we get closer, we realize that the red mass is a slaughtered steer that is being cut up for meat. The animal has been skinned, and the skin is spread out on the ground like a bloody leather blanket. The trunk of the steer, still warm, is resting on the skin. Only the head looks as if it was once alive. It is still attached to the carcass, the eyes staring out at the crowd. Off to one side is a giant, white misshapen ball, three times the size of a basketball. I ask what it is.

  “The stomach,” says a man. “It will be cleaned and the lining will be used to make rope.” He shows me a braided rope made from stomach lining.

  Two men are cutting off hunks of meat and sending them up to the porch of a house where they are being sold. Every eight days, we are told, they butcher two steers for the two thousand residents. In Managua, buying meat means standing in line with your plastic bowl, sometimes for five hours. In Quibuto, it means hanging around, gossiping, flirting, talking while the steers get chopped up. There’s definitely an advantage to country living. If it weren’t for the war.

  A woman named Marisa comes over to talk to us. When we tell her why we are there, she takes us around to show us the damage the Contras did when they attacked three months ago. During the five-hour siege, they killed one man and destroyed fourteen houses and five public buildings, including the health center and a meeting hall. They shot up the school and blew up a brand-new truck that the community had just bought. They destroyed a food storage warehouse that had just been stocked. And they raided and machine-gunned the walls of the children’s dining hall that had been inaugurated only a few days earlier, the project of a group of people from Spain that was to have provided milk and a balanced meal once a day for the children of the village.

  As we wander around the village, Estela, a teacher, and her seven-year-old daughter, Geysel, join us. When Estela discovers that we are planning to be there for several days, she invites us to stay in her house. We accept.