Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman Page A

in the distance on top of the hills, staring off into the fields surrounding us. They are looking for Contras, the guerrilla army that has been trying to overthrow the revolutionary Sandinista government in what has become known down here as Ronald Reagan’s war. The United States is training and supporting the Contras.
    It is sweat-dripping hot. The women from my bus have towels or rags around their necks so they can soak up the sweat. I just drip, as though someone is wringing out clothes on my head. From time to time, I wipe the sweat with the bottom of my T-shirt.
    “It’s dangerous along this road,” says one of the women. She points to the abandoned customs building where government officials used to check passports and luggage. The building is shot up with bullet holes, and the ground around it is littered with empty sardine cans, old plastic bags, torn wrappers, and some mangled pieces of metal. The reason the Sandinista government had to move the office away is that people were getting killed by Contras who were camped across the border in Honduras.
    The government moved the people too—the ones who used to live in the disintegrating shacks along the side of the road, the ones who used to farm the fields that stretch into the distance. Too close. Too dangerous. Good fertile land that used to feed people has been abandoned.
    After about a twenty-minute walk, everyone stops. We are to wait there for a ride to the new customs office. Some Sandinista soldiers join us, guns slung over their shoulders, smiles on their faces. They are kids in their teens. The people share snacks with them, and exchange greetings. The Nicaraguans from my bus do not think of these soldiers as the enemy; they are treated like family.
    I share a bag of peanuts with two soldiers. When they ask me where I am from, I tell them, but I am nervous. The Contra bullets that are killing them are U.S. bullets fired from U.S. guns.
    “No problem,” says a baby-faced soldier who can’t be more than sixteen. “It isn’t the American people who are doing this to us. It is your government. You are welcome in Nicaragua. When you go home, tell your people we want peace.”
    After forty minutes of standing in the hot sun and fifteen minutes packed upright, like a giant bunch of asparagus, in the back of a pickup, we finally arrive at customs, a bunch of wooden shacks and rusty trailers. Henry and I are sent into different lines. When it is my turn to enter the first shack, the soldier inside asks me for my passport. Then he begins to fill out an entry card.
    “What is your profession?”
    “Writer.”
    The corners of his lips curl up into his mustache. “Me too. I’m a writer. I write poetry. What do you write?”
    “Children’s books.”
    “How nice. Do you have any with you?”
    I look at the long line behind me as I fumble through my backpack. I pull out three books. He turns the pages of
Why Can’t I Fly?
Then he looks up.
    “I have a six-year-old daughter. May I take this home for her?”
    I know that customs officials are always looking for bribes, but everyone has told me that Nicaragua is different. Besides, I am hoping to share my books in classrooms and neighborhoods all over the country. I don’t want to give them to the first person I meet.
    “I brought the books to share with the children of Nicaragua,” I say. “And I haven’t even met any yet.”
    “Okay. No problem. I understand.
Que le vaya bien.
” Have a good time.
    And he passes me on to the other shacks and battered trailers for more questions and baggage inspection.
    Twenty minutes later, I am walking along a dirt path that leads back to the main road, where Henry is waiting for me. As I walk, I watch a group of soldiers behind one of the trailers. They are playing a tape of break-dance music and two of them are dancing. Their guns are lying on the ground. I am so engrossed in this different breed of soldier that I don’t notice the three boys and a girl