Imagine living in a country where you can’t access the Internet, watch television, read newspapers and even receive mail. Except for Bangui, the capital city, that’s what life is like for most of the Central African Republic’s (C.A.R.) 4.5 million residents. Their lifeline to the rest of the world is radio.
In 2007, Dan was part of a team from the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Indiana, that spent three weeks installing a shortwave radio station for HCJB Global’s partner, ICDI (Integrated Community Development International).
This past April, Dan and two other HCJB Global engineers from Elkhart returned to C.A.R. to install new regional shortwave radio stations in rural Boali, and the capital city, Bangui. These two installations are similar to the one they installed in 2007.
One of the new stations will help extend the broadcast hours of the existing Christian station into the shortwave bands for nighttime use. Each station only works well during a portion of each day because of how shortwave signals travel through the atmosphere.
The other station was set up in Bangui, the capital of C.A.R., for the national government on behalf of ICDI. By assisting the government in the name of the ministry, we hope to ensure that the door will remain open for Christian broadcasting within the country. In fact, while Dan and the team were in C.A.R., an incident involving a lawsuit against ICDI was dismissed —partly because the presence of the HCJB Global missionaries working on the government station demonstrated that ICDI really cared about the people.