We've been enjoying our time back in Abidjan even though a lot of our time over the last few weeks has been hearing the difficult stories of friends from their time during the crisis here. I had wanted to write here some of their stories, but there were some pretty terrible things that happened and so I've decided to cancel that idea. We knew they'd lived through hunger and thirst, fear and gunfire. I was a little unprepared for the torture that happened right in the street.
Our Vridi friends had been glad to tell us that although they suffered hunger and fear, for the most part, they suffered the crisis without permanent loss. This week, loss came to Vridi.
Mike, Ben and I arrived in Vridi Friday morning to visit some people. Ben hadn't made an appearance yet at Vridi and he is a BIG attraction! Soon after we'd gotten there one of the people that passed us in the street stopped us to say that "a bus had fallen in the water". The French at Vridi is always interesting and she was indicating another part of town, so I couldn't figure out her story. Besides that, I didn't know her from the man in the moon and so we moved on. Upon arriving at the stall of my market friends, I was not even greeted properly before the whole story came rushing out. There was a city bus crammed full of people, many of them from Vridi, that had an accident on a bridge and as a result, tipped over the side and plunged into the lagoon. 37 were quickly found dead and 10 survived. The numbers will most likely rise to around 100 men, women and children, as this was a busy time of day for the bus. For me the worst of the news was that the husband of a friend was among those on that bus. She waited around 36 hours to hear the final news. Her name is Marie and she has a daughter just younger than Ben. She is Catholic, but has listened to many of my stories. Pray for her tonight as she deals with her first night of no hope! Pray too that I can be an encouragement and a comfort to her in the coming days, weeks, months.
Heather
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