An update from Josh in Gamboula

I made it to CAR safely but my nerves were a little rattled. We had just heard that the General who was keeping Gamboula peaceful(unlike the entire rest of the country) was moved back to Bangui. In his place an unknown new guy who had just taken office that day. I along with 3 other missionaries drove the 11 hours from Yaoundé to Gamboula. When we got to the border crossing we hid our vehicles on the Cameroonian side. We took a taxi and filled a local ag truck with the rest of our stuff. I along with Timothy rode in the back of this pickup along with one of our local friends. We picked up a plastic 10 ft piece of pipe to carry back to Gamboula for a fish pond and mounted it to the truck, unfortunately much resembling a missile launcher. Needless to say we didn't look all that friendly as we crossed the border into CAR, especially me holding on to said pipe to prevent from falling off the back of the truck over the bumpy roads. The day was absolutely gorgeous though and as the wind blew through my hair and the warm sun gently peeked through the trees, I felt totally content with life. Even if things went horribly wrong at the border with my bazooka-look-a-like, I was at peace. I was fully expecting to be greeted by the 40 turbaned AK47 wielding "new government" that is now normally present, but luckily we had just missed them. One nice, armed border crossing gentleman let us in, not even checking our passports. I did shake hands with the new guy but it was just a pleasant "hello" and "how are you" as we passed through. We left a few cokes with them for good-will. I'm living in my old house now all alone.

The looting wasn't too bad all things considered. They didn't get anything I hid in the attic and all that I noticed was missing was the 2 laptops and the desktop. A bunch of stuff was broken needlessly like our floor fans and all our dishes are new but most of that was replaced by Aleta before I even got here. New stuff is kind of nice really. Most everything that I think is important is still here. I'm not sure about Lori or Charlie's stuff though.


Things are a bit elevated here. We had a mission wide meeting yesterday to discuss all the unpleasant details of being in a torn country. Evacuation, where to run and hide, rendezvous points when things settle, etc, etc. It is a little nerve-racking to sleep but I'm so tired from all this work that I don't have time to think about it too much before nighty-night. Timothy and I along with Bonard and Fredoline have lunch together each day. Even though I've lived here longer than Timothy his Sango is at least 10 times better than mine. I have made improvements though, I can tell already. It is lunch as usual with Bobo and Fifi. Lots of laughing. Today I explained that I taught high school kids how to dance. They were a little confused so I showed them a video. They LOVED it. They got up and tried to do some moves. They said "it is so fast!!" We talked about starting a ballroom dancing class here but after a few minutes, the obvious became clear...No way.

Yesterday Fredoline explained how she and Bonard fled when the rebels broke into our house. It was pretty frightening but she was able to hide in Charlie's room until she heard them actually get in. Bonard had already fled to the Ag building but kept an eye out for Fredoline. When she heard them enter she made a run for it to the back door and got out. Bonard and she caught eyes and Bonard said "Loro fadeso hio hio!" or "run now quickly quickly!". She made a bolt for it and made it without being followed.

All the CAR people remember me and greet me enthusiastically. I never knew so many people knew my name. They really love having me back but immediately the where's Charlie question comes up...I can tell the whole story in Sango now, I've told it so many times!

I got the internet working here after a "Feed Horn Assembly Cross Polarization Adjustment", also known as hitting the satellite dish with a hammer a few times and hacking some Linux root passwords. (Side Note: just saw that 6 inch rat/squirrel thing in our living room again. Just waved hello and went back to typing.) The internet is now wired all the way to the furthest houses now after doing some troubleshooting. Marus is helping me again full time. Today we dug a trench to the chateau (when I say we, I mean Marus) to run a line for our Gamboula 2 side antenna pointing towards our "tree relay" (working on it). I'm working non-stop on getting all this tech stuff working. A month seemed like a lot of time to get it done but I'm concerned about having enough time already and I'm only a few days in! Tomorrow we brave climbing the tree. We need to get some measurements then hopefully by the end of the week we'll get it mounted. -Joshua