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Sick of the Revolution.By Deb Olin Unferth- - - - - - - - Part Four I more or less had a bad attitude from here on out. I didn't want any more guns in my face. I didn't want any more Marshall Law. There had been some confusion on this point. Before we went to Central America, my boyfriend had told me that San Salvador was under martial law. He said it several times and it comforted me every time because I thought he was saying Marshall Law and that it referred to a restructuring program that I messily confused in my mind with World War II and the Marshall Plan. Imagine my surprise when we arrived. I don't want to tell about our time in San Salvador in the first weeks of our engagement or about getting out of El Salvador, the hiding under tarps in the back of trucks. Our visas expired before we could make it to the border and we had to sort of smuggle ourselves across with some guys taking black-market gym shoes to Nicaragua. Finally, we made it to Managua on a chicken bus. We pulled into the station amid the usual bus-station chaos. I stepped into the doorway of the bus and saw a North American a few yards away. He was waiting to get on. He had two cameras around his neck and was a foot higher than the Nicaraguan people around him. I hadn't seen any other North Americans since Guatemala. He seemed so tall and white and bald and fat, I was shocked for a moment. It was my first internacionalista. Hey, you! he yelled over the crowd. You can't be older than 14. What are you doing here? I'm 18, you old dog, I said, and I walked into the revolution. - - - - The revolutionary internacionalistas knew where to go every evening at 6 o'clock: Comedor Sarah. They came in by plane, by bus, car, boat, van, bike. They came on foot. Thousands of lines on earth and in sky diving into Nicaragua, landing in Granada, Leon, Estelí, Managua. The internacionalistas: struggling with their luggage, their backpacks and suitcases, their hoes, books, cash, cisterns. If you showed up at Sarah's at 7 the food was gone. If you showed up at 8 the beer was gone. Anyone who showed up at 8 had to drink Rojita and sit in the back. El Salvador made Nicaragua look like ping-pong. And helping the Sandinistas was like joining the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps with guns. We were called internacionalistas and we were from all over the world. We had poetry readings and story time. We did tricks for the kids. We looked for air-conditioning. We would make this revolution, we swore. We would help our team win. There were theater groups, Mennonites, herds of journalists, all of them trooping around. At night they drank rum and got into arguments, called each other capitalists or fascists. Then they all became friends again and sang revolution songs until 2 or 3 in the morning. - - - - We talked about city zoning, South Africa, the bridges blown in Jalapa. We talked about God and the economy. Ben Linder, Oliver North. We sang the "Internationale" in many different languages (Völker, hört die Signale, auf zum letzten Gefecht ...). At one point, I recall, the place was full of jugglers. Yes, a group of jugglers had come—from Canada, I think. The idea was they would go to the north and walk across the war zones, performing. Imagine: We were walking across their war, juggling. We were bringing guitars, plays adapted from Gogol, actual elephants wearing tasseled hats. I saw it myself. They wanted land, literacy, a decent doctor. We wanted a nice sing-along and a ballet. We weren't a revolution. We were an armed circus. - - - - Since I was the youngest and spoke Spanish, they could tell me to do anything and I would. Nearly every day there was something for us to do. On the weekend, we went to the U.S. embassy to protest. My boyfriend and I were very good at chanting. We did our share everywhere we went. In Guatemala we had gone to many protests and we had chanted along heartily. The ones in Spanish were easy and rhymed: Pueblo, escucha! Tu hijo esta en la lucha! The Mayan chants were much harder. Even the ones that had been translated into Spanish were a paragraph long and included images of flying people and growing plants. Each Mayan chant ended with a cry against the landino, a thank-you to friends, a prayer to the corn and the sun and a long list of saints. My boyfriend and I started out bravely along with them but were mumbling and shuffling by the end. - - - - At one point we were given a job building bikes. Bikes for the revolution. Because of the trade embargo, there were fewer and fewer cars and trucks. The soldiers would ride bikes, the internacionalistas decided. China donated some 6,000 unassembled bicycles. My boyfriend and I were going to assemble them. We reported to the mechanic the first morning. He taught us long and hard. He really taught us. He went on and on and he used many words and gestures. He was very good at teaching and serious about it. I was so busy watching him teach me how to put on the electrical unit that I forgot to listen to what he said. Finally, he stopped and handed me one of the electrical units. Give it a try, he said. I gave it a try. Later, we thought it was funny how angry he was getting. He kept looking at what we were doing and then saying, Honest to God! and grabbing it and doing it like he told us to before. - - - - I had jobs finding food, cutting soldiers' hair, showing around the new arrivals, what else? There were so many jobs I could do badly ... - - - - Now it is years and years later, so many years later it seems crazy that I'm still here, that I'm still me, that I haven't died and been reincarnated and returned to Nicaragua as a turtle. But, no, I'm still me. I've found another former internacionalista—in fact, a European. We just can't keep away. We come back and come back and come back. He and I sit around Managua shaking our heads. Old Nica, Nica of the revolution, those were the days, we say. It's sure not like it used to be. Remember Comedor Sarah? Sarah! You know, she's not around anymore, trying to sell the place. We shake our heads. Remember the water? How they turned it off one day a week? The fun we had. Oh, yes, the water, it smelled like chlorine. Remember the Russians? The uniforms, the tanks? And the cordobas! You had to carry a bucketful everywhere you went. Remember Molinitos? What? It was a pension. No. Sure, you remember, right around the corner. The Danes stayed there. Danes? Sure. I don't remember any Danes anywhere. Well, they were here. He and I sit in the Hotel Santos, where there are two sets of water pipes, one line beside the other in every bathroom, over every sink. One line doesn't work, but nobody bothered to pull the dead one out, so two pipes run up the wall and there are two shower heads in every shower. You have to try both faucets. The entire hotel is built with this philosophy. The rafters are a mess of metal and wood. Wooden beams hang loosely. Half-finished paintings sit on the floor. Projects start and are deserted. People strip off the pieces they need and leave the rest swinging half-attached, like a rejected thought, no longer in use but still there. The electric wiring hangs in a jumble from the ceiling, strings across the wall. It's held together with bits of black electrical tape, here wrapped around a curtain rod, there forming a spider web on the ceiling, suspended like a trapeze net. Remember Nicaragua of the revolution? we say. The shining eyes? Everyone was so excited. The people at home, he says, I tell them: Nicaragua is still beautiful. You shouldn't abandon old friends.
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