Deteriorating Situation

Sorry it has been so long in putting up another front page! Here is the situation right now with us and the attempted coup d’etat. We are still in Chad, but in Moundou where we live, about 300 miles south of the capital city of N’Djamena where all the fighting has gone on. It all started on Saturday 2 February with a rebel invasion and street fighting in the center of the capital city. Reports we have from church members in the city indicate this time the fighting was more intense, destructive, and random than they had ever seen before. Govt troops and rebels clashed throughout the weekend of Feb 2nd. The fighting continued until Tuesday. There was a mass evacuation of the local population after the lull in combat and we had some church members pass through Moundou on their way to their families in the villages to get away from the fighting. All but a few missionaries remained in the capital, most were evacuated to Cameroon or Libreville, Gabon.

Sonia and I are staying put as the situation in Moundou is not serious. People are nervous and there is definately tension in the air. Our main concern would be if the government falls to the rebels, there will be a following period of anarchy. During this time people take advantage of the lack of law enforcement and begin to loot. The other possibility is the fleeing members of the existing government have in the past stolen vehicles at gun point so our main concern is to avoid this kind of a scenario by leaving when it is priudent. We are only 75 miles from the border to Cameroon on a paved road so we have our evacuation route planned out.

One complication is the absence of our passports. They were in the capital city getting our residence visas renewed when the fighting broke out, so right now we are looking for someone who has them and a way to get them to us. The Cameroon govt. has announced they will allow anyone to cross their border in this time of difficulty even if they do not have a passpoort or an entry visa so this is less of a burden to us. It would be nice to have our passports in hand should we have to leave. The other challenge is the national cell phone system has not worked regularly so our means of communication has been very limited and access to the internet very spotty. In this case, kindly assume that “no news is good news.”

The situation is calming down right now but the rebels have threatened to attack again. Banks have stayed closed since 31 january so we are running out of cash but making do. The constant stress does make it a bit harder to concentrate on our daily lives as you never know when things are going to erupt. I was down in the market buying vegetables on 3 Feb, and as I was negotiating the price of carrots with our “veggie lady” people all around us began to stampede, leaving the market in a rush. Merchants began to hustle their wares into their shops and shutter them away, other veggie ladies bundled their produce into their bags and disappeared, teenagers were running around laughing, but hey, I was going to get a good price for those carrots! As I loaded my purchases into the truck one of the street kids I know told me a policeman had shot and killed a woman in the market so that is why peole panicked. On the way home I saw no evidence of this but it shows how nervous people are.

Go to our webpage on Chad’s history (in the left column of buttons, titled “Chad, A Study of Tragic Hope”) and you can see a map to know how far we are from N’Djamena, the capital city and to read up on how often this country has gone through this trial by fire. I was taliking to Percisse, a widow woman with several children that Sonia and I are helping with a small scale business project (real small scale- like $60 of investment so she can at least feed her chldren!) and I said that this current coup situation may continue indefinately and her reply was quite sobering. Without blinking and quite matter of fact, she said in all seriousness to me “Pastor, if this fighting continues for very long, I and my chldren will simply go home and die of starvation.” What do you say after hearing that?

In spite of it all we are continuing the construction at the Bible Institute. We are not yet free to travel to N’Djamena to asses the situation and see where we can be of assistance. One positive report was that although government buildings in the area were looted, the FM radio station was not. They have been off the air but hope to be back up and running this week. We certainly covet your prayer and concern. Once we can get with our church leadership in N’Djamena we will know better what can be done to help relocate and re-establish the refugees.

Our intention is to remain unless the situation deteriorates. We are scheduled to be stateside from May to mid July to attend Bethany’s graduaton from Northwest University and to raise awareness and funds for our Bible institute project. We will base out of the Seattle area during that time. We will also try to keep this webpage updated as things happen but we never know when we can have access to the internet.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

• Home