(April 25, 2014 - by Harold Goerzen)  While civil unrest continues nearly unabated in the Central African Republic (CAR), leaving thousands dead and prompting tens of thousands more to flee the country, a Christian shortwave radio station in Boali (outside the capital) is beaming a message of hope nationwide.

“Our staff there has developed programming focused on peace and reconciliation, and they’re bringing in special speakers and religious leaders,” said Jay Hocking, communications director of Water for Good (formerly ICDI), Reach Beyond’s partner ministry in the war-torn country.

“The radio station was offline for a month or two, but it’s been back online for a while now and doing very well,” added Hocking, whose father, Jim Hocking, is the founder and CEO of the community development and broadcasting outreach. “Our radio station is the most-listened-to station in the country (outside the capital).”

“Our radio staff just attended a big conference at Yaloké where there had been significant violence by the Christian community against the Muslims of the area,” Jay Hocking related. “The conference focused on encouraging Christians to love their Muslim neighbors—take care of them and protect them.”

“Our staff did a report on the conference, encouraging people in area towns and villages to think about how they could demonstrate Christ’s love to their Muslim neighbors,” he continued. “There were several important men from Bangui who spoke at the conference, so we’re hoping respect for those men will result in people actually paying attention and making some changes at Yaloké.”

CAR exploded into conflict more than a year ago after Muslim rebel leader Michel Djotodia seized power in the mainly Christian country, leading to violence and revenge killings that have fallen along religious and ethnic lines. Both President Djotodia and the prime minister resigned in January 2014 amid diplomatic pressure, but atrocities committed by warring militia groups have continued. The U.N. estimates that 1.3 million people—a quarter of the country’s population—are in need of aid.

Some 5,000 peacekeeping troops from the African Union and another 2,000 troops from France are working to end the conflict. The U.N. Security Council has voted to send an additional 12,000 troops to CAR as U.N. Chief Ban Ki-moon warned of “ethno-religious cleansing” in CAR with lynchings, decapitations and sexual violence going unpunished, reported the BBC.

“The situation is still very difficult,” lamented Hocking. “Even in the capital city there are killings almost daily, although the large-scale conflicts seem to be pretty much over in Bangui. Outside of the capital, anti-balaka militia groups are still causing many problems, and most Muslims have been run out of the country with many others trapped and looking for a way to escape.”

The term “anti-balaka” (meaning “anti-machete”) refers to the Christian/animist militias formed after Djotodia’s rise to power. In September 2013 he announced the dissolution of the Séléka coalition of rebel militia groups, but most refused to disband, and anti-Muslim elements have been engaged in a cycle of increasing violence.

Despite the ongoing unrest in CAR, prompting Water for Good to close its main office in Bangui and forcing many staff members to leave the capital and move to outlying communities, the work continues. Neither the organization’s well-drilling center nor its agricultural center have been looted.

“Although we had to halt operations for a while, most are back online,” Hocking said. “All our maintenance teams are back out maintaining [clean water] wells, and we’ve been receiving reports back from them. We have one well-drilling team on the road finishing up a string of new wells that they had been working on in December before we had to pull them off the road due to security concerns.”

Well-drilling efforts, however, have been hampered due to the fighting, causing many businesses to close, making it difficult to find and purchase basic supplies and fuel.

“We’ve implemented several projects,” Hocking added. “We’ve built 400 latrines to serve 100,000 people in the largest refugee camp and we’ve hauled garbage to help with urgent sanitation problems in that same place. We’re also in the middle of distributing 17 tons of seeds that we purchased in neighboring Cameroon to help farmers who lost all their seed in the conflict, and have nothing to plant, meaning they’re going to face serious food shortages in the coming year.”

In March 2013 machinist Stephen Peacock of the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind., spent two weeks working on a community development project to install two prototype water well pumps at Water for Good’s Mercy Care Center in Bangui. He also designed and built satellite-based monitoring systems for those wells. His scheduled return to Indiana took him out of the country just before the fighting erupted the next day.

Staff members with Water for Good are taking extra precautions and often carry satellite phones to improve communications, especially since an employee, Jean-Baptiste, was kidnapped by Séléka rebels in January 2014 and taken to neighboring Chad before managing to escape his captors.

“He feels that having [a satellite phone] saved his life since it allowed him to communicate with us, and we figured out how to get him back from Chad,” Hocking explained. “He was one of the few on our staff who actually had a satellite phone, so we’re thankful he had it.”

“CAR isn’t the same country it was 18 months ago,” he said. “We’d appreciate prayers for wisdom as we have many decisions to make as we adapt our operations to meet the new situation in the country. “

“Pray also for safety for our staff on the road,” Hocking concluded. “They’ve demonstrated a lot of courage, and a lot of passion to continue to drill new wells, and repair broken pumps—even during a war. The water crisis is very real, and they realize that people are dying from lack of clean water and sanitation. We’re pretty proud of these guys, and we’d appreciate your continued prayers for them.”

Sources: Reach Beyond, Water for Good, BBC, AFP