The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2018 49 being constructed at Gigiri, near the United Nations headquarters. Then we later moved and settled there. This tragedy greatly affected me and my family. I had to go through several counseling sessions offered by the embassy until I was able to regain the strength to continue with my normal life. It was not easy, because my family was also affected psychologically. I had to get counseling for them so they could continue normally. One criminal was arrested and taken to U.S. court, and after being convicted he was sentenced to life in prison. Though some of my colleagues received compensation [from frozen assets of Sudan and others], not every survivor did, myself included. It is my appeal to those who have experienced this kind of tragedy to stand firm and advocate for peace in the world so that something similar does not happen again. I Have the Ambassador Here Rizwan “Riz” Khaliq Commercial Officer on Temporary Duty I met Ambassador Bushnell in her office a little before 10 a.m. We departed to meet with the minister of trade, walking over ground zero just about 30 minutes before the bombings. The location of the meeting was on the 20th floor of the bank building next to the embassy. Dur- ing the meeting, we heard a loud noise outside. I stood up and walked over to the window, and as I looked outside the truck bomb exploded. I learned later that the first loud noise was a grenade, which was designed to draw people to the windows before the truck bomb was detonated, to cause maximum damage. Once the bomb exploded, I was thrown 10 to 15 feet through the air, hit my head on something and passed out. When I woke up and realized I was alive, I went into autopilot. I looked for Gus (August Maffry, the new commercial officer in Kenya) and Ambassador Bushnell. I didn’t find Gus, but I did find the ambassador passed out on the floor. I picked her up and began to find my way out of the building. The stairwell was full of smoke and darkness, people rushing to evacuate, pushing and shoving. I will never forget the smell of death and the carnage caused by the bombing. As we exited the It also helps if your spouse has experienced the same event. We will celebrate our 50th anniversary this year because we understand what happened to us and how to help one other. As a Foreign Service member, there is a strong possibility you will be involved in a terrorist attack. There is literally nothing you can do to fully prepare for it. A Most Difficult Job Mathew M. Mbithi Warehouseman (FSN) On Aug. 7, 1998, I was an employee of the embassy in Nairobi. As a warehouseman, I was assigned to go and clean an embassy property. I had to pass through the embassy building to collect the key around 8:30 a.m. I proceeded with colleagues to the house when I found that I had taken the wrong key, so I had to return to the embassy to get the right key. I grabbed the right key around 10:15 a.m. Remember, the blast occurred at 10:45 a.m., so a delay of 30 minutes would have been a disaster for me. I went back to the house, and just before I opened the door, I heard somebody shouting from the radio in our vehicle: the embassy had been bombed. We stopped everything and went back to see what had happened. On reaching the scene, every- thing was in a mess, with people crowded everywhere. There were people trying to help the injured, and we joined in. First, we removed the dead bodies, loading them into our warehouse trucks and taking them to a temporary container at the warehouse. Then, around 6 p.m., we had to remove those bodies and take them to various morgues, due to the large crowd of people gathered at the gate to look for their next of kin. It took almost the whole night since we were also looking for colleagues who had not been found at the scene. The next day, our work as warehousemen was to remove everything from the building. We at the warehouse continued for at least a month setting up another office for the embassy at a place called Parklands. After some time, the embassy was moved to another place, called Ole Seleni, along Mombasa Road. We stayed there for about five years as the new embassy was President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, left, and U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Prudence Bushnell observe one minute of silence during a memorial service on Aug. 20, 1998, for the victims of the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi. Hundreds of Kenyans participated in the service. APPHOTO/SAYYIDAZIM