August 11, 1998

I was working very late, half listening to the news when the announcer stopped, and began on a totally different story than he was talking about. A bomb had exploded near the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya and another had gone off in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. My first thoughts jumped to good friends who are missionaries in Nairobi, the former mayor of my town, Placerville, California, and a popular local Church leader, Allen Tuttle and his wife Carmen. When daylight came, I called their son, Greg, who had not heard the news and he immediately began to try to find out if they were O.K.

It was obvious that Americans were the targets. Who would plan such a thing? It was immediately obvious to me that the perpetrators not only hated Americans, but also had such contempt for black people that killing a few hundred, or thousand, was of no consequence to them.. To me, that pointed to fundamentalist Muslims - probably from nearby Sudan or perhaps sent by Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian multi-millionaire who lives in exile in Afghanistan. He has devoted his life and fortune to terrorism and had boasted as recently as in June that he was planning major attacks against American civilian and military targets.

People like Osama Bin Laden still have pretty much the same view of black people that Arab slave traders had down through several thousand years . In fact, slave trading by Arabs still takes place in parts of Africa.

After a few hours, the family received a short fax from them announcing they were OK. Yesterday, I finally was able to get through to them by telephone. My telephone call startled Carmen, she told me. It was the first time the phone in their home had worked since January of this year.

Allen gave me a first person account of what had occurred. They are serving a mission in Nairobi for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were in the Church office on the fourth floor of a building about a half a kilometer from the Embassy. They had a bird's-eye view of the mushroom shaped cloud that arose from the bomb site. Allen Tuttle, who retired as a Brigadier General from the Army, immediately recognized that a bomb had hit the downtown area.

"The bomb broke every window in the 21 story building near the Embassy. In fact, it took out all glass within 500 meters. The building that was totally demolished was a six story building. It just crumbled.

"Generally, one of us from the office (there are six American or Canadian couples in the Church office) are in the downtown area for one reason or another. It was just a coincidence that we were not there. We had others things to do because we were meeting the Area President that day at the airport. "

"It was horrendous. Bloody people were running out of the building. Drivers were just going crazy. So far 5000 have been treated and 164 are reported dead. (The dead are now estimated at over 200.) The Kenyans had no training in responding to a the problems created by a multi-story building collapsing and were grateful for the support offered by 174 trained people from Israel arriving as quickly as they did."

Prudence Bushnell, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, who was injured in the blast, appeared on TV and apologized to the nation for the "hardship caused" to the people by whoever had targeted the American Embassy. Americans living in Kenya are organized in groups with a warden for each group to communicate warnings from the Embassy. Tuttle, one of the wardens, was told to tell his group to stay out of the downtown area, to maintain a low profile and to not go where there were large groups for safety reasons since Americans were the target, not of what Tuttle called "the loving Kenyans," but from those outside the country.

Carmen Tuttle was startled by the telephone ringing on Monday with a call from America after the blast, because it was the first time their telephone had worked since January. However, there was "no cause for alarm" Allen Tuttle said, "Riots, election violence, bombs -it's just another day in the life of Africa. Every day is an adventure." The Tuttles have also served missions in Zimbabwe, Trinidad, and Barbados, since Allen retired from his second career as a school administrator.

Allen Tuttle felt the Ambassador's apology was a good way to handle what could have been an explosive situation. While eleven Americans were killed in the Embassy, twenty-two native Kenyans were killed. Unfortunately, much of the media has treated the story as if the only people important enough to mention were the presumably mostly white Americans.

The injured Ambassador, speaking directly to the Kenyan people who have suffered the most in this incident, has set a good example. It's unfortunate that the American media did not seem to feel her comments to the Kenyan people and were worth reporting.

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