A Volunteer in Africa Watches Attack From Afar

D A K A R, Senegal, Sept. 18 -- The information came to us on short wave radios. It was delivered by men riding horses, holding transistors to their ears. It was passed along by word-of-mouth in Wolof and Mandinka and Pulaar and Seereer and we thought surely it was the vocabulary we didn't understand.

But really the words were very simple. "America has been attacked."

One by one we emerged from the bush, American volunteers living in African villages without running water or electricity, without televisions on which to watch the news. Instinctively, we gathered in cities throughout Senegal — Kaolak, Kolda, Dakar, St. Louis — to call home at payphones, to check e-mail at cyber cafes, to sit in restaurants and stare mutely at screens that played the same images over and over.

Two small planes. Two tall buildings. Death on a weekday morning. The broadcasts were in French but for the group of us watching the twin towers collapse from a restaurant in downtown Kaolak last Wednesday no translation was necessary, the footage spoke for itself.

"I thought the villagers were joking," one volunteer said, stunned. "I wasn't even going to come."

A Day Behind

We had all traveled for miles on mountain bikes, horse-drawn carts and packed-to-overflowing-public-transport (and sometimes a combination of all three) to be among other Americans, but we said little during the first few hours. We were a day behind in our shock, still assimilating yesterday's news.

By mid-afternoon the group had grown to about 10 people and with every new arrival the same questions were asked, "Have you called home? Is everyone OK? Do you think we'll go to war? Do you think we'll get sent back?"

In one day the world had turned upside down and suddenly Africa seemed safer than the States.Most people were relieved to be in Senegal, saying they'd be more afraid at home.

My friends in New York who had watched the towers collapse live from various vantage points in the city — the Brooklyn Bridge, an East Village rooftop — wrote in e-mails that for once I should be glad I was stuck in the bush. But truth be told, I envied them their firsthand view of history. I wanted to be with the citizens of the world's most ambitious city as they washed each others' wounds. I knew New Yorkers would be rising to the occasion.