In Honor of Martyrs
Lane, William
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...
...The poles were in place...
...At 12:30 our bus returned to take us back to Managua...
...Whenever anyone would pass on the street our group would call out things like, "Where are you, this morning...
...It was Sunday morning...
...An old mother dog lay down in the dust and sighed...
...The big blocks were almost gliding into place...
...We decided to try to find it...
...How much did we make a month...
...Gradually it began to dawn on me that this wasn't a demonstration...
...We Americans stood still in the courtyard not knowing quite what to do...
...Two doors on one side opened onto a small auditorium, perhaps the hospital chapel...
...I was already feeling the tropical sun in my knees...
...I moved back against the wall to make room and waited to see what would happen next...
...TomBs Borge, the interior minister, and other Nicaraguan leaders came slowly past us stopping to shake hands and talk quietly for a moment...
...Late for church, William Lane is a poet and carpenter living in Orrtanna, PA...
...It was jammed with people, Nicaraguans as well as international health workers, many in their white coats...
...When the jeeps and van in which the volunteers were traveling came to a stop, the contras opened fire...
...Someone, several seats up, was rereading the newspaper...
...Did we like Nicaragua...
...All around as far as the eye could see stretched the streets of simple, mostly hand-built houses of the village of San Rafael in the area of Tipitapa about seven kilometers west of Managua, Nicaragua...
...Many people stood around as if in a daze...
...People would answer, "My mother is calling me," and so forth amidst general laughter...
...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...
...Now we were digging out the perimeter 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...
...We heard the end of a speech and then some singing...
...With so many hands present the job was going quickly...
...A pig, dark red like our American Duroc, hurried by and continued on up the center of the street...
...Others, including the German doctor, were first forced to disembark and then executed on the spot...
...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...
...Over the last two years attacks against civilians, particularly technical experts, foreign volunteers and Nicaraguans involved in community affairs, have become an important aspect of the contras"war against Nicaragua, an aspect all too infrequently reported in the North American press...
...The government had called for voluntary work to honor the memory of a West German doctor and 13 other civilians, all Nicaraguans, killed by counterrevolutionaries in an incident a few days earlier...
...After several false starts we arrived at Managua's main hospital where, in fact, a ceremony was underway...
...Before long a man appeared from somewhere with a bucket ful of frescas, little plastic bags full oi frozen juice...
...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...
...Then, they began to bring out the coffins each raised high on the shoulders of six people...
...We squeezed tight against the wall to make room and the flower laden coffins went slowly past...
...Some German children, having grown restless, wandered through the courtyard...
...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 center...
...Some of us went to work with heavy digging irons, others with shovels...
...A woman beside us was whispering in what sounded like Dutch...
...After getting cleaned up and having rejoined the other Americans 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 doctor and the others...
...backing, had blocked the road...
...More than 400 Nicaraguans have died in these attacks...
...Someone else was talking quietly in French...
...Yet it was very real indeed...
...Everyone tore off the corner of his plastic bag with his teeth and we stood around sucking on the frozen juice...
...Several people were killed immediately...
...Still others readied the blocks and carried water for mixing the concrete...
...The men were full of questions: What was it like in America...
...From time to time I stepped back, rested, and watched while thinking about the 30-year-old German doctor...
...Ernesto Cardenal, Catholic priest and minister of culture, came past without speaking...
...this was a funeral...
...As we drove away I looked out the bus window at the waving residents of San Rafael and at the unfinished building...
...Still others managed to escape...
...After many goodbyes and handshakes and a short thank you speech from a local community leader, we made our departure...
...And here we were...
...On the front page from under a banner headline the West German doctor, young and handsome in the family snapshot, smiled enigmatically...
...I thought...
...The contras, former Somosa National Guardsmen now operating out of Honduras with U.S...
...He was wearing the black beret in which he is often photographed, a personal trademark...
...What did Reagan want, anyway...
...When the singing ended people began to leave the chapel...
...An older man in a baseball 43update * update . update . update cap and armed with a carpenter's metric rule ran around taking measurements...
...Did we go to church...
...According to the local newspaper he had been traveling with other technical advisers and volunteers along a road southeast of Wiwili in the department of Jinotega which is in the nothern part of Nicaragua...
...The article first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Gettysburg Times...
...Did we, like them, believe in God...
...When we started back, I think we all worked a little more slowly...
...They had to move slowly in such a crowd...
...I was glad...
...We were led to an inner courtyard of the hospital...
Vol. 17 • July 1983 • No. 4
