Mechanic Tim White en route to Managua. mala averted their eyes as we drove by, a few ventured up. “Explain your journey,” one man insisted. “It’s an act of charity with the people of Nicaragua." “Then you are not a North American government truck?” His friends gathered around, their arms folded, to hear him interrogate me. “No, we’re an unusual mixture of priests, nuns and atheists, just trying to heal a little of what our government has done.” A sudden smile opened his round Mayan face. “Aha! You don’t believe in borders either. This is the illusion of governments. No es por el pueblo. It is good to hear a North American who understands about fronteras. And what is this Puente de Poemas?" As I explained, his friends circled me. One said, “We like poetry. Can you tell us one of yours?” They joined me in singing an anthem 1 had written for the convoy. Animo. “Vamonos cansados, Animo. ” They applauded politely. “We are on this Bridge with you, friend.” One after another, the men shook hands with me. 15. THE BEST LIFE / b n ein E g s q f u ix ip e u d l , a I s w , a w lk h e i d l e t hr Z o o u p g i h lo t t h e e h w il a l s s alone, searching for the Cave of the Black Christ. Along a river bank I found it and walked back into the recesses towards a candle flickering at the far end. This was obviously more than a Christian shrine. This was one of the Earth Mother’s caves, where ceremonies had been performed long before nearby Copan was built. Out again, I was covered with soot, thousands of years of incense and ritual prayer in my hair. Far up on the hillside, I met five little boys. Eight or nine years old, each of them carried a large load of firewood on tumplines held taut by their foreheads. They trudged along in torn tennis shoes and ripped pants, serious small woodsmen. “Don’t you go to school?” “Oh no, we won’t do that. We’ve learned everything we have to know. We did go for three years.” Nobody can fool us with math,” said Eligio. “We take care of our own money,” Balam agreed. “And we are rich,” Platero added. The boys carefully unloaded their wood at the door of a cantina where a few bleary drunks wove against the adobe wall. Carlitos sat down on a patch of dry grass and folded the square of plastic which protected his back into smaller and smaller sections. He looked at me with the sweetest smile. “This is the best life, you know? We have everything we need. We even built our own house, up there.” “But your mothers and fathers. Don’t they care that you are living alone in the mountains?” “Oh,” he smiled with a long sigh. “They were all killed. They don’t know what we are doing.” I walked back through the heavy rain, singing a little song they had taught me: Somos ranas en el rio. Carac, carac, carac. We are froggies in the river, Croak, croak, croak. 16. BEEN UP SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE DOWN TO ME August 10-12 1 1 7 e recovered the use of our C.B.s as ” we traveled through the midnight hours on a zig-zag path across Honduras. “Whoops! There goes the road again.” Groups of men were sitting on the verge of the pavement. We had to be very careful not to hit anyone as we surged down one steep slope and tried to slingshot up again, before our momentum faded. Headlights searched the blackness, above and below, with Oso Ruidoso, suspended between. “Is it a parodox,” a voice incorporated, “that some of us keep going up and some of us keep going down? Do you think we’re in parallel universes?” Jim Barnett’s rich, angry drawl issued forth. “You boys are too damn silly to survive. I’m going into radio silence. Good night.” “Critic!” someone else shot back. “He just can’t stand the pressure below sealevel.” The next day, still without sleep, we drove out of barren Tegucigalpa and headed for the border. We ground down steep grades, with extraordinary vistas before us of more mountains to cross. I was exceedingly grateful for our working jake brake. We passed the only American vehicle in the convoy. Tom Hansen, the un- restrainable convoy co-leader was riding with Doug Colter, layminister, stock analyst and ex-trucker. They waved to let us pass. Their Pedro Peterbilt was the only truck heavier than our beloved Oso Ruidoso, carrying a 20-ton load of nets and marine paint to the boats being rebuilt in post-hurricane Bluefields. As we climbed the last two hundred mountains to the border, we started hearing something garbled about an accident on the slopes behind us. Pedro had crashed. Pedro had gone into a cliff. Those in the convoy with medical training raced back to help. For a third time, I tugged the red thread, as a prayer for those friends on the mountainside. We all waited, barely breathing, until we heard that both of our companeros were alive and heading for a hospital in the capital. Bob Zimmerman took over and just before dark we pulled into the Comedor Emily, a little truck stop at the edge of a dry, thorny plain. That night was the sweetest time of the trip. The urgency of the great trek was muted. Our trucks grouped like a herd of elephants in the soft, warm dark and the moon rose over people sleeping on top of and under their vehicles. I walked up the dark road to be by myself, playing flute songs I had learned in Zacateleco, Mexico, back in ’63. Long, slow notes flowed from my lungs through the reed and into the silence and blackness. Then I realized someone was standing next to me. “Who are you? What do you want?” “I’m just walking home,”a young voice responded. 1 couldn’t see his face. “My mother does the laundry for the Army base.” “Army base? There’s one near here?” “Oh yes, that’s how I know gringos. Sometimes 1get to ride with Yanquis in their jeeps.” “Are there many Yanquis near here? “Oh sure. All along the border. They bring rock and disco. Do you play disco' on the flute?” “Not tonight. I’m just enjoying the moonlight and the quiet.” “Yes. That is muy dulce—very sweet.” He stood next to me in silence for a long time while we drank in the music of the soft moon. Before dawn, those with empty trucks went back to where Pedro was wrecked, to salvage what nets and paint they could. Apparently, Doug’s skill as a driver had saved at least 25 people moving on foot or horseback along the edge of the highway. Shooting down one of the sudden grades, unable to pop out of neutral, his air brakes failed. His only choice was to avoid people and aim for a cliff to pile into. He and Tom were thrown from the- cab before it was crushed by the shifting load of paints. Tom said he was reevaluating his agnosticism. 17. TIERRA L I B R E - MANAGUA 4 t the Baptist Cathedral in Managua, * * Sixto Ulloa, a member of the National Assembly, asked the group who was their singer. Suddenly, I was pushed up on stage without my guitar and told to sing three songs. When I started singing the chorus, 60 voices came back in close harmony: Vamonos con gritos, Animo, Animo! Siempre adelante, Siempre ya cantante, Siempre por el monte, Animo! Glancing at Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramirez I saw they were applauding. 1 plunged on, forgetting that I was grime covered and smelling like carrion, to bellow “Buffalo Song.” “This is a song about survival, which I have sung all the way down this trip.” I couldn’t remember the word, the whole auditorium helped me out, shouting SOBREVIVIR1! 1sang: The buffalo is very smart. He keeps a secret in his heart. Just when you think that he is gone. He comes back rich, he comes back strong! He’s the BEE-BAW-BOOH-BAW BUFFALO! Look at him stompin’. He never did go. Look at him coming, back through the snow, the mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty NICALO! I stepped down from the stage to hear my companeros tell me 1had really gotten Daniel laughing. Suddenly I flashed on my old NicaTolteca dancer/poet friend from twenty years before. I saw him in the alleys of the country. He was building the power of poetry, imagining a different nation. I hoped he had not been among the thousands killed by Somoza’s Guardia. I felt echoes of him wherever I went. Ortega got up to speak about new policies for peace and reintegration of the Contras. When Lucius received the Order of the Legion of Honor, one of two foreigners to be so honored since the revolution, we all felt the acknowledgement. We had done a good and difficult thing. 18. WHO ARE THE CULTURAL WORKERS? O till energized, I went to a bar to find one of the foremost proponents of the Nueva Cancion, Salvador Bustos, singing so fervently that the veins of his face throbbed. Clutching his guitar, he bounced on the balls of his feet and sang: An absurd frontier, two eyes open to time, burning it out to the roots of history, two roads that have to be traced to when what’s yours and what’s mine is beaten, then, with a stone axe, now, with our new unity. Bustos was one of the young poets who had gone into the neighborhoods of Managua before the triunfo to sing defiance to the dictator. In his undiminished enthusiasm, he considered the Bridge. “You never know where things will go in a country of poets,” he laughed. The next day, at the National Assembly, we went to hear the representative from Bluefields, Ray Hooker. As I stepped into the room, the guard smiled broadly at me. “Oh, El Que Canto!—He who sings!” “Were you at Ortega’s speech last night?” “Oh no, you were on television. All over the country. BOO-FA-LO Siempre. Later, at the Sandinista Cultural Workers Association, a young woman, Esther Crujillo, was editing a poetry contest. Another editor came up with a large The Poet delivering the “Buffalo Song,’’ President Ortega with his Pastors for Peace tee. 26 C linton St. Dec. '89-Jan. ’90
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