The Foreign Service Journal, October 2018

12 OCTOBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTERS-PLUS About Compensation T hank you for the July-August FSJ highlights on remembering the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa, 20 years after. I just want to express my personal view as one of the many survivors who were not affected physically (bodily harm), but went through a very trying moment and later suffered emotional trauma. Our colleagues were affected differently—the healing process was very long, and some haven’t fully recovered yet, though the majority have moved on through very painful experience. I want to raise the compensation issue. I know it’s a very hot and difficult topic to discuss here, but I want to make a pas- sionate appeal to the private attorneys to finalize all matters of compensation, so that this chapter can be closed (some people are still waiting for compensation). I am aware that no amount of money can replace the loss of loved ones from America, Kenya, Tanzania and all locations in between. From the heart, these are my personal thoughts and opinions. Thank you. Francis Ywaya FSN USAID/Kenya & East Africa Nairobi, Kenya The First Healing Step I was very grateful to stumble upon the article “Reflections on the U.S. Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania” (July- August FSJ ) for the recent 20th anniver- sary of the tragedy. Many times over the years I have searched for first-person accounts by other people who were there on that dreadful day, in attempt to make sense of what happened and move on. I am struck by the common themes and emotions expressed by many survivors, and how they relate to my own. Reading these accounts has helped to somehow legitimize my own emotions. It happened so long ago, so far away from home and for many years felt unreal, almost made up. Thank you for asking me to submit my own story. In the summer of 1998, I was 21 and had just finished pre-clinical medicine at the University of Cambridge. I was volunteering with the charity Link Africa, in a school in Mokomoni, a rural village of the Kisii district in Western Kenya. My fellow project worker and friend, Alice, had a few days in Nairobi to purchase some essential science equipment for the secondary school in Mokomoni. We were staying at a hotel in the River Road area. We were still students, and it was cheap. On the morning of Aug. 7, I ordered poached eggs on toast for break- fast. Scrambled eggs arrived. I sent them back—I am usually fairly laid back about these things, but after existing on a diet of mostly Ugali for months I really was very keen on those eggs. That decision, and the small subsequent delay for the correct breakfast probably saved our lives. We set off , heading to the ExTel Comms office, which was next door to Cooperative House. We were planning on phoning home to the U.K. and were late. I wanted to catch my mother who left for work at about 8:45 a.m. (10:45 Kenyan time), and it was already 10:30. We hurried along Moi Avenue, and were about to turn down a side road just before the U.S. embassy that led past Ufundi House to Cooperative House. We then heard an almighty crack and stopped in our tracks, as did everyone else. There was a banker’s strike on, and my immedi- ate thought was that it was a gunshot, and there was a hold-up at the nearby bank. We later found out that this was a hand grenade thrown at the embassy guard. Suddenly a man sprinted out of that side road and ran toward us. He was run- ning for his life. I instinctively took cover behind a taller Kenyan who was wearing a black leather jacket. The fleeing man got to within a few metres of us, and then the bomb was detonated. Bizarrely, both Alice and I forgot about the existence of this man; only when he (terrorist Mohammed Al-Owhali) was captured and his face was plastered over the Daily Nation did we remember those moments before the Response— East Africa Embassy Bombings 20 Years Later I am struck by the common themes and emotions expressed by many survivors, and how they relate to my own.