In the morning I prepared my daily outgoing message and saved it to a disk. There was no hurry about sending it since there wouldn’t be another download to the Iridium telephone until that evening. Meanwhile, I was surprised to see how many telephone calls had already come in, which Cheyenne and Mr. Thomas were handling. Apparently, a number of people in other non-governmental organizations were panicking over a rumor about the volcano erupting. Cheyenne and I were a bit skeptical. I returned to my office to get to work.
Soon I heard an unmistakable rumbling in the near distance. I stepped out of my office, stuck my head in the door of the Operations Center, and asked Cheyenne if she heard the rumbling. She exited immediately, and we stood stock still, listening to the distance. With another deep rumble, we looked at each other and there was no need for discussion about evacuation; we invoked our evacuation policy immediately. I headed for the safe and withdrew all U.S. dollars very quickly, then disconnected the laptop containing our financial information. Loading laptops in my briefcase, I stuffed the money into its side pocket.
Exchanging a few words with Cheyenne, she said that she would stay behind to gather up essential items, but told me to round up any expatriates and to get across the border into Rwanda. We agreed to meet up again in the capitol, Kigali.
Finding the only off-duty pilot on the premises, we commandeered a driver and vehicle, loaded our bags, and fled the coming lava. Little did we know that we would get trapped at the border...