I'm in a hotel with a laptop I seldom use. I'm bored and began going through old files. In the files I found a solicited response I sent to church security back in 2006 regarding the political/military problems where I was stationed. It directly involved the LDS missionary couples there because in three bouts of violence, they were in grave danger during the first. They took it too lightly and had to be evacuated by some UN forces. I'll try to clean it up and obfuscate it a bit. Many apologies for it being so long.

More background: The LDS church sent one of their security guys out on a fact-finding trip to my location to check out safety. He interviewed the regional security officer at the US embassy, and then interviewed an LDS co-worker. The co-worker was blunt if not rude, and told him that the church needed to pull out all the foreign missionaries (almost all from various African countries), fold up the mission, or run it from a safer location. The security guy flew back, and then because he had missed me during his visit, contacted me and had me tell my side. There was a back-and-forth, which finally culminated with me coming back to SLC when I was on leave in Sandy. It was a bit surreal, because I was wearing a beard and was in an African shirt, and the security dudes met me underground and took me up into the building. All the employees were staring. I think they all thought I had just been apprehended. They showed me around their 24-hour watch office, and we ended up going out to eat together.

Enjoy--

Dear security guy:
I’m just now getting back to you regarding your big question about the telecom(1) building. You asked if it was now safe there because //bad dude's// guys(2) are no longer in the immediate vicinity. My answer is that it’ll never be safe. We fully expect more rounds of violence to flair up regularly if not frequently. Each time they do, the telecom building will remain a big target. Any future fighting is destined to occur there or close by it. It sticks up some eight or nine storeys, and becomes a place where many bullets and RPG rounds hit.(3)

I am alarmed more than ever by local missionary attitudes here. We had dinner with them last night, and they were showing a slide show of the scenes of violence that they witnessed //in the first round of violence while standing on their balcony cheering and laughing while live bullets and RPGs we're flying//. I said that you and your office needed to see the pictures to get a good idea of what happened and how dangerous it was, and they actually said that they couldn’t tell your office EVERYthing, and you didn’t need to know how bad it //actually// got. This means, of course, that they are willfully withholding information from you because of what the information indicates, namely just how dangerous it is here. Anyway, you need to just casually ask them if they wouldn’t mind sending you any pictures they have of the activity.

I don’t know if you have heard, but the mission president’s home (in the telecom building) took four bullets and two RPG rounds. The RPG’s didn’t make it inside, fortunately, but one hit the balcony, and one hit next to the laundry area. If they had retreated to the mission president’s apartment as they did last time, someone would likely have been killed. The building is a total wreck, even if the mission office was spared.

I also don’t know if you know that the //mission couple 1's// apartment building, located right in the midst of the worst fighting this time, was hit by an RPG a couple of floors above the /their apartment//, and a mortar round hit the parking shed and destroyed a vehicle. The worst part is that a man was killed in the apartment above //mission couple 1//, and no one picked up the body. So they aren’t going back to their place until the body is disposed of, and have been in the //mission couple 2's// place for over a week now. Today they are staying in the //mission president's// place, but they would not allow me up there to see it because they don’t want me photographing it and sending you the pictures.

I find all this alarming, and I want to get the word out to your whole office. I would like, therefore, to get your E-mail alias that will go to the entire staff. That’s where I’d like to begin, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just go higher. Someone has to get the missionaries on track here regarding their own safety, and it doesn’t look like they are going to do it themselves. Of course, you could forward all this info for me, too, but you need to promise me.

Everyone also needs to be made aware that the American Embassy cannot do anything for non-official people living in whatever country they are responsible for. That is not the job of an embassy, and Americans can find no refuge or help during any times of civil strife by turning to the embassy. Many or most do not seem to know this. //Missionary couple 1 wife// was completely unaware, for instance, that she could not come to the embassy for routine medical help from our small staff whose job it is to keep us in malaria pills and to send us to South Africa when we have any real problem. Apparently many people, including the missionaries, are naïve and not armed with enough information to keep them safer

The truth is, no one can be safe here. In addition to a long history of regular political and military strife, there is no medical care, no hospital transport, and nothing to help you in case of accident, heart attack, head trauma, or any severe medical trouble. If the missionaries were injured in a car accident, the only thing they could depend on would be that bystanders would steal them blind, taking even their shoes and clothing. If the bystanders thought that the missionaries were at fault for injuring or killing someone, they would beat them, perhaps kill them, and set the car on fire. This is what happens here. I am safer because I have diplomatic license plate, but there is nothing to save them from injury or death caused by excited bystanders and onlookers in the case of an accident where they seem to be at fault.

In short, there is no kind of guarantee of any sort of safety here, most particularly with the missionaries’ current situation. They need to be moved to a safer place, and begin operating under a different set of rules if they are to stay. It’s really best to move them, whether or not it means shutting down the mission. The mission can be run from somewhere else.

So, I’ve had my say. //Co-worker// won’t write to you because he’s too ticked off about the whole affair, but I though I’d get in one last grab. I don’t mean to set you off, or anything. I hope you’re doing okay. Let me know what you think.


footnotes:
1. Office/apartment high-rise belonging to a major mobile provider. The mission offices were on the ground floor, the mission president and wife on the 4th.
2. Bad dude was actually vice president but major enemy of the president. He kept his own fairly large army that committed atrocities and regularly fought the national army. He hoped to win the presidency by violence, but was eventually chased out in a major round of violence in which hundreds died.
3. In last round of violence, the telecom building was hit by an errant tank round two floors above the mission president's apartment. During the first round of violence, rebel soldiers started rounding up the foreigners who lived there, and I got a phone call from an excited mission president asking for help from the US embassy. Embassies don't do that, but fortunately a local embassy officer was drinking/cigar buddies with a UN guy who dispatched an armored vehicle and team to extract the mission president, two senior missionary couples, and the other foreigners in present danger. The mission couples chalked it all up to Gawd and His Blessings, and didn't learn a damn thing.


In the end, the mission president told the other missionaries not to allow me to take pictures of any damage to the mission home or the mission office. We continued to have movie night with them, but I was supposed to steer clear of talk about what happened. At that point I no longer gave a damn about them, but they were friends of DW, so I could hardly avoid them.

But they have the holy magic protecting them. Unless they're unworthy in some way. And if they're harmed, it's evidence they weren't worthy.

It is definitely dangerous and they shouldn't be in a country with that level of civil unrest.

But I kinda see their point for staying. Nothing makes you feel more alive than a bullet whizzing past your ear.

These folks are getting more adventure than they will ever have before or after their mission experience and for the rest of their lives. They perhaps see themselves as rougher, tougher missionaries than the poor saps in a peaceful town.

Misguided, but kind of understandable.

I am DO glad my kids are very unlikely to go on missions now. Wow. Thank you for posting.

ARE THESE PEOPLE IDIOTS? yeah i am an American ...come save me!!!
YIKES

The missionaries themselves were, in my estimation, all naive and clueless, and generally unprepared for duty in a place like this. Central Africa and Western Europe are not the same thing. But the MP accepted no advice from me or the other LDS employee, who really did think that they were all idiots. Co-worker was not active there, but I recently ran into him and he's all married up in the temple now and everything.

to answer the question about the church's 24-hour watch office: Engh. So they had a watch office. They were keeping a close eye on the unfolding coup in Thailand at the time, and communicating with the MP there. But I don't think they had any kind of special lines to State Dept or other government agencies to get the latest scoop, although State does have a website that updates these situations. I think they mostly just had a big flat-screen TV with CNN and one or two guys who stayed awake with Mountain Dew and games of pinocle.

There was a sort of outcome, so believe it or not, I did have some sort of minimally successful input. They began some kind of orientation training for the incoming senior missionaries in South Africa before sending them up. I have no idea if that's still continuing. And South Africa is more like Europe than anything. Maybe they were just trying to expose them to a black population before dumping them in one. The Sons and Daughters of Cain can be really intimidating to a bunch of provincial Utahns.

A rather comical thing was how the missionaries considered themselves professional and in competition with other American and European missionaries. But they didn't speak the language, did few if any humanitarian efforts (the duty of one couple was only to do accounting for the mission office), and were there for only 18 months--12, if they wanted to go home early. Missionaries from other churches spoke both French and one or two local languages, and many were raised there. They had very good medical and educational initiatives going on and actually made an impact.

Thanks for sharing, that was very interesting. Are you or your wife still active in the Church?

During most of my assignment there I was busy lurking on this site and at other ex-Mo sites. It was during that assignment that I first thought, Hey, I can resign, too, just like these other folks! And I did soon after arrival at my next duty station in the states. Tears were shed by DW, bishop was in the dumps because now he no longer had a new high priest in the ward like he thought he did. As for me, I ran right out and got coffee paraphernalia.

DW is now active enough for the both of us, and does far too much. I suppose it's a form of compensation. She probably actually does have to prove herself to the other members since she has an ex-Mo husband.

the assignment very nearly caused the end of our marriage. It was very rough, and DW (nor I, for that matter) will forget the day we were pinned down by gunfire for three days and had to sleep on dirty tile floors with about 80 unwashed Africans. It was scary and uncomfortable. That was the 3-day period in which the national army finally routed this other guy and his militia, killing hundreds and sending the guy into exile in Portugal.

heck are YOU doing there!?!

This reminds me of when they were going to send my son to the Ivory Coast, at a time when there was "civil unrest" (I checked the news, and found that over the past several months, over 200 policemen had been killed during this "unrest"). I think this was in 2000 or 2001. I had called the Mission President there, and asked him about security for the missionaries. At first, he was hostile to my questions, but soon calmed down. He explained how they paired each white missionary with an African missionary, and - if there were any problems - they were told to stay in their apartments. I asked if they spent a lot of time in their apartments - he didn't answer. Luckily, my son was shipped off to the L.A. mission when he couldn't learn the French language at the MTC.