AP News, May 6th, 2007
Kezzia Musimbi Kadurenge clutched a crumpled tissue and wailed for her youngest child, who was a flight attendant on the Kenya Airways flight that crashed in a foggy and remote central African rainforest.
"Oh my last born, my last born, where am I going to go?" Kadurenge said Sunday of her son Cyprian. "I'm finished."
Relatives in Kenya huddled at home or crisis centers while searchers struggled to reach the area in Cameroon where Nairobi-bound Flight 507 is thought to have crashed Saturday. In Cameroon, some made their way to the search area, which has few roads and is dotted by small villages.
"I don't know what to do. I'm just terribly confused. My younger sister boarded this plane that is supposed to have crashed. I hope we can still find her alive," said Innocent Bonu, a lawyer from the southwestern town of Buea in Cameroon.
Late Sunday, aviation officials announced they had located the plane _ more than 40 hours after it disappeared _ in a dense mangrove forest on the outskirts of Cameroon's commercial capital, Douala. But there was no word on survivors or details about the condition of the plane.
Dozens of rescue workers and journalists walking through the swamp at night reached the edge of the crash site but did not immediately find survivors. Reporters said they had found only small, scattered pieces of wreckage before they had to abandon the search because of darkness and deep water. Teams said they would resume searching at first light and follow the debris trial in hopes of finding the main part of the wreckage.
Cyprian Kadurenge's brother, Bernard, said he was frustrated with the slow pace of the search.
"Perhaps people on that end may not have moved as fast as it should have been required to mount the rescue operation," he said.
The family of another flight attendant, 22-year-old Lydia Mocheche Nyakweba, was struggling with the uncertainty, said her brother, Mark.
"But I can tell you Lydia is courageous and a fighter, and if she is not injured, then she will surely survive," he said from the family's Nairobi home, which was packed with dozens of family and friends.
Lydia won beauty pageants during her years at Moi University, he said, where she majored in sociology and graduated in August.
"We grew up together, went to the same university, and partied hard together every time she flew down to Mombasa," a city on Kenya's coast, he said.
Lydia Nyakweba's father, Samson Nyakweba, said he refused to give up hope.
"We are praying for a miracle," he said.
Cameroonian Louis Roger Ouandji, whose son, 27-year-old Pierre Christian, was on the flight, said he was preparing for the worst news.
"I am a staunch Christian and people have been telling to believe in miracles," he said. "But I do not want to deceive myself."
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Associated Press Writer Tom Odula contributed to this report.
