Some of you have been following the news from the Ivory Coast this week, both from our e-mails and now, today especially, from the network news. Once again, we want to assure you that we are safe, and unlike reported on RFI (a french news station here in Africa), our campus was never bombed.
But Bouake, and the rest of the north, has been. Altogether in the last 3 days, there have been probably as many as 50 bombs dropped here in Bouake alone. We were told a few days ago that we were safe since the last thing the government forces would want to do was hit the French. Well, today they made that mistake.
It\’s 8:30 pm now. We\’ve just come from the dining hall where we all ate together again so we could discuss what\’s going on. As our director said tonight, we have no idea why we\’re here at this place at this time, but there are people here on our campus to whom we can minister. We are told that ICA may be the only safe place in all of Cote d\’Ivoire, and as such, it is serving as the evacuation point for all foreign nationals in Bouake and points north. The phones and electricity have been cut in the north and there is no water, but here at ICA, we have our own generator with plenty of fuel provided by the French, and recently we completed our well which is now providing our water. French soldiers from the camp down the road are moving on campus since there is so much damage to their camp from the bomb that dropped there this afternoon. Tomorrow\’s service will be open to all, with most of the service in French. Tonight, while I keep the e-mail going, some are making beds or heating up the food from French-provided ration packs. Cathy, our nurse, has treated injuries, some to two men who were seated on either side of the American who was killed. I want to say that we are all exhausted, but then I think of others around us who are facing so much more than exhaustion.
We watched it happen. We saw the plane bank, make a turn and drop the bomb. If hitting the French was an accident, it may have cost the government the war. The French immediately destroyed their airforce, which upset the Ivorians in the south so much they started attacking the French down there. In Abidjan tonight, there is no law; no one is in charge. There is widespread looting and attacking of non-Ivorians. France is trying to secure the airport and enough land around it to be able to fly in planes to evacuate some 10,000 foreign nationals. At this point, they are afraid of being shot out of the sky. Essentially, the rebels have become the good guys. We\’re not sure when (or if) we\’re leaving; right now we aren\’t in the \’hot spot\’ anymore. Our friends and co-workers in Abidjan are.
When their airforce was destroyed, the tankers and soldiers headed here to Boauke turned around and are headed back to where they came from. But the French are on the way, too and will probably meet somewhere in between. We are told that Cote d\’Ivoire is at war in every sense of the word…
I remember being thankful that our son Dave wasn\’t involved in Iraq. Little did I know that we would be the ones in the war zone.