Story and photos by Greg Rust

The stares of the adults -- I could shrug them off. But the pleading eyes of the children will always haunt me. In a country where the per capita yearly income is $475 and the unemployment rate is 60 percent, many children (over half of the 4 million Nicaraguans are under seventeen) are victims of the streets. There, tattered and malnourished child entrepreneurs, dauntless in the pursuit of a meal, swarm like mosquitoes as they hawk Chiclets, cigarettes, and Cokes. Others just wave their tiny hands, grateful for any donation.

I tried to be a cultural chameleon, but the language barrier constantly set me apart. With the verbal skills of an infant, I did find solace with the children. We made paper airplanes and laughed as our inventions careened off the branches of a mango tree. Communication on the stickball diamond was easier; high fives and hugs are bilingual.

I will digest the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of Nicaragua slowly. Flying home, while reading in USA Today of ball players turning down multimillion-dollar contracts and of the sexual appetites of our president, I was distracted by the whining of a dog named Billy seated among the passengers in first class. My definition of obscene changed.

Back home, as I comforted my daughter after a nightmare, we lay listening to a serenade of spring peepers and breathing in a fragrant potpourri of dogwood, redbud, and apple blossoms. I relished life's smorgasbord and felt gratitude for the roll of the die that landed me in my mother's womb. -- Greg Rust