NicaDayz - America!

Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 10:07:46 -0300
From: jberman@xxx.xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Subject: America!

So it's 6:00 on a Sunday morning and I'm awake. By choice. Shit happens when you go to sleep at 9:00 on a Saturday night. Actually, there was a fiesta in town last night and everybody who's anybody was dressed up and out at the Centro Recreativo, dancing to the Spice Girls, Air Supply, the Titanic love song and the same five damn merengue songs that have been playing on the radio since I got here. As you can imagine, it gets old after the first 15 times or so. I woke up with e-mail messages running through my head, and figured I'd better act on it. Lisa's still under the mosquito net with a mystery pain in her big toe, Cobi-Dos and Pesadilla are chasing each other around the house and just made it up on top of my corrugated 'zing' roof, and I'm wearing the scrubs Rob left me and drinking tea at the table in my dark bluegreenblue dining room.

Y'all here with me yet? No?

Okay, it's cool out, having rained again yesterday. Birds yell and scream and sing from all sides, there's some kids playing out in the dirt street, and the sounds of a dog growling at one of the big pigs who in turn is grunting like a Schlubb. My fridge is humming. It smells like cool rain, mixed with smoke from the firewood burning in my neigbor's kitchen, mixed with my spice tea, steaming beside me. Now Cobi has decided to lay down, eyes squinted shut right next to my computer.

Eye-ite, welcome to the room.

I have no new news on the turmoil in the country. As far as I know the transportistas are still striking , and I hope they're done by the end of the week so I can go to Managua, do my banking, and maybe catch a movie (I think Shakespeare in Love is still playing). I haven't heard of any new violence, but then again, I haven't been watching the news.

Yesterday at the farm was fantastic. You know that feeling when you meet someone who is so obviously going to be a good friend? Well, Lisa and I had that feeling all weekend after dinner with Rodrigo and Zaida on Friday and then going to their finca yesterday to check it out and swim in the river. They're that gringo couple, living permanently in San Isidro, and farming organic veggies for export. I'll get to them in the next message, as they're amazing people with a bitchin' hardback library of classics and about a thousand stories to tell. They also like beer.

Now to the subject at hand.

I had originally wanted to write about the third "D" in my trio of best Nicaraguan friends: Daniel, Darwin, and Donald. It's something I've been thinking about all week, since he left early Monday morning. It's kind of an exciting story, but more than anything, it's a sad one.

A week ago, I think it was last Thursday evening, Donald showed up on my porch, as any of my friends are wont to do pretty much every day of the week. He was freshly showered, and wearing one of his many brightly-colored, shiny, striped soccer shirts. Donald is a polite, neat, religous person, a member of the 7th Day Adventist Church. Everyone knows him as El Chino, because of his kind-of-Asian features, but I still call him by his name (pronounced DOE-nall). We've been great friends since he came by with his guitar over a year ago, introduced himself to me, and then sat down and started singing. We were immediately excited by how much we had to learn from each other musically, and our friendship grew stronger as we sang together, and planned childrens' clown shows and soccer tournaments together. He told me about his days in the war, when he was 17 yeas old and his friend's face got shot off right next to him while fighting the Contras. He played for me some of the songs he wrote about peace, children, love, and goodbyes.

We also were connected through a magical coincidence (I hate to sound fruity, but this really is nothing short of magic) to a mutual friend in Boulder, Colorado. Annie Sirotniak had taught me a song in Spanish called "Siluetas de Cristal" right before I left Boulder for Nicaragua. It was her goodbye gift to me. A Nicaraguan friend had taught it to her when she was here four years ago. By some amazing cycle of events, I ended up getting placed - unknowingly - in the same town where she had worked, and as Donald and I were sitting on my porch last year, picking and chatting away, we realized that he was the one who had originally taught "Anita" the song.

Anyway, as Donald came into my house and sat down in a rocking chair, I automatically started opening my guitar case, ready to sing for "un rato." I saw that something was up though, and then he started speaking.

"Josue, remember what we talked about last December?"
"You mean, about going to the States?"
"Si. Well, I'm leaving on Monday."

This was a surprise. Last December, Donald's friends living in Milwaukee (friends from here in La Trinidad) had told him to come up and stay with them and they would get him work. I lent him nearly $150 to try to get a Visa to go legally. He was turned down. Then he began talking about going "mojado," or wetback. He would hire a guide, called a "coyote" who would get him all the way to Texas where his buddies would meet him and take him north. Then he found out that his wife, Alba Luz, was pregnant, and he abandoned the plan. It was a dangerous undertaking, a risky investment of cash, and he had said he would at least wait until the baby was born. That's why I was surprised by what he was telling me.

"Everything is arranged. A coyote from Sebaco is taking me. We leave at four o'clock in the morning on Monday in a rented car."
"How long is the trip to Texas."
"They tell me we can be there in 12 days." Then I saw his hand tightening on the arm of the chair, and he began looking uncomfortable and clearing his throat. I knew this meant he was about to ask me for something, and his discomfort at the situation spread immediately over me.

"The coyote is charging me $2000."
"Dolares?" I asked increduosly.
"Si, dolares. I pay half now and half after I arrive there and get work. My friends lent me the $1000. Now I have a big problem, Josue."
"What is it?" I said.
"They say that to get from the crossing point at the river in Texas to Houston is very dangerous and I need to hire another coyote to take me. This will cost another $600. My friends have promised $200 each, but I need $200 more."

As he spoke, my mind raced from one extreme to the other. Goddamnit, I thought, everyone here is always asking me for something, even my best friends. I'm drawing a line now - I've already given him money for the Visa, and I cannot do this anymore. Then the desperation in his face hit me, and everything about our friendship swelled up in me and I swung to the other side - how can I deny him? Then I realized how much money this was, and was once again against it. Then anger - damn him for putting me in this position. Plus I remembered how Darwin's band, Los Mokuanes had offered him steady work as a singer and he had refused. With Los Mokuanes, he could've made as much as a doctor here. The reasons he gave were mostly dealing with his church - it was the devil's work, the parties and dances where they played, said his fellow adventistas - but I knew that he himself didn't really believe all that. I was angry at him for not taking the singing job. Was he really as desperate to go as he made out to be?

The next day Jaime, my Peace Corps sitemate, showed me the March issue of International Newsweek. The cover story was entitled "MITCH'S MIGRANTS: After the Hurricane, Tens of Thousands Head for the Border." The photo was a Honduran woman in prison. I showed the article to Donald, translating how the U.S. has put pressure on Guatemala and Mexico to fortify their borders. I explained to him about the misunderstanding of thousands of Central Americans who believe that Clinton promised to let all flood-affected Hondurans and Nicaraguans into the country, when in fact all he did was put a moratorium on deporting those who had been detained in the US before December 31, 1998. There was no free entry. Still, Donald was confident in his coyote. The woman on the cover of Newsweek, he pointed out, had gone on her own, without a guide. Also, his friends had forged an ID card for him, claiming his residence in the country extended back before the December 31 date.

"What exactly are you going to do when you get there?" I asked.
"My friends have it all set up. I'll be working from 7:00 in the morning until 5:00 packing vegetables in a supermarket, then from 7:00 to midnight washing dishes in a restaurant. They say I can make over $500 a week. All my debts from the trip will be paid off in a few months, and the rest of the money I can save and send home."
"How long will you stay?"
"Until they catch me and send me home."

Then it was Sunday afternoon and Lisa, Jaime and I were sitting in Donald's home for his despidida, his goodbye party. Alba Luz served us cacao con leche and cake, obviously fighting to maintain a happy hostess face. Rudy and Harold were there with guitars, and I had mine and everyone was singing. They were singing strongly together, a song I had never heard. Donald was putting everything into it:

America! America!
Todo un imense jardin
Esto es America
Cuando Dios hizo el Eden
Penso en America!

America!
All an immense garden,
This is America,
When God made Eden,
He was thinking of America!

Then Harold started a song about mojados, a fast ranchero called La Jaula de Oro (The Golden Cage) by the Tigres del Norte, and again, everyone else knew it as I followed the chords and tried to understand all the lyrics:

Aqui estoy establecido Here I am established
En los Estados Unidos In the United States
Diez anos pasaron ya Ten years since I crossed mojado
En que cruce de mojado
Papeles no e arreglado I still have no papers and
Sigo siendo illegal Continue here illegally
De que me sirve el dinero What good is money
Si estoy como prisionero If I'm like a prisoner
Dentro de esta gran nacion Inside this great nation?
Cuando me acuerda hasta lloro When I remember, I cry
Y aunque la jaula sea de oro And even a cage of gold
No deja de ser prision Is still a prison.

It was all very happy and sad at the same time. People were laughing and smiling because of the music, but there was something about the songs they were singing now. Was this a common ritual for anyone about to make the trip? Now they were on a new song about wetbacks, and there was a serious, spoken part where Harold was talking seriously over the now-soft guitar chords. He was the only one playing and everyone listened intently:

"En CentroAmerica damos la situacion tanto economica como politicamente. Ya para otros no hay otro solucion mas que abandonar su patria, tal vez para siempre. El Mexicano, damos pasos. Hay lo hechan y el siguiente dia esta de regreso. Eso es un lujo que no me lo voy a dar aunque me maten a me llevan preso."

In Central America, the situation is as much economic as political. Now for some there is no other solution but to abandon their homeland, maybe forever. The Mexican, takes steps. They make the trip and the next day are turned back. That is a luxury that I will not take, even if they kill me or take me off to jail.

This was heavy, but still so hard to accept. Then Donald announced he had written a song. It was called "Adios Pueblo Querido." Goodbye Dear Town. As he sang it his eyes closed, his neck veins tightened, the guitar went soft then stronger then soft again. Most of the friends in the room were listening, except for the ones attending to the kids running around. "This is my saddest goodbye," he sang. "I'm leaving and I have to march on, I carry my soul in pieces for your love and it will be with me when I am far from you. I'm leaving you dear pueblo, I'm leaving and I don't know if I'm returning, I'm leaving you with sadness in my soul, I'm leaving to an unknown place, where never never will I forget you, My dear pueblo I carry you here in my soul and where I am I will always remember you."

Well, he certainly knew how to lay it on. Everyone was serious now, but I couldn't help feeling that everything was being somehow artificially romanticized. I mean, he could've taken work from the band, maybe he could've found something else, or maybe the situation really was as desperate as Donald was making it out to be. How could it not be if he was willing to risk so much? Later as he walked us home he said, "I only hope that if they catch me, they don't take my life." I hope not too, I told him.

Then in my doorway, "Josue you are not just a friend to me, you are a brother." In a blink, the tears gushed over his cheeks in sheets and we were embracing, backs warm and sweaty through thin cotton. It was an impressive display of emotion from a Nicaraguan, usually much more reserved about real feelings. (The only other Nica male I've hugged [besides the various hairy-legged transvestite prostitutes-chicas con dicas] is my longhair musician buddy in Managua, Richard, who embraces me and all his friends as we walk into the bar, or as we step down from the stage after jamming with him).

So Donald's been gone for nearly a week, and everything here lags on as usual.

As I was writing this, Alba Luz came to the door. She had just heard from Donald who called her from Vera Cruz, Mexico. Lisa hugged Alba and said oh, she must feel so relieved. Si, she said, almost crying. She asked if I was going to be home today because Donald said he was going to call me. Of course, I said. Como no. Three borders down, one to go until that immense garden, America.

Monday morning as I'm preparing to send this and the phone rings - it's Donald calling from Igor Pass in Texas! The trip's not over yet - he still has to get to Houston and then hook up with his Milwaukee boys and make it up there, but I think his biggest worries are over. I guess he had reason to trust his coyote-dude.