5 Safe After Kidnaping in Africa : California Girl Among U.S. Missionaries Who Were Robbed, Drugged

A 10-year-old California girl was among a group of five American missionaries in Africa who were kidnaped, drugged and left in the Tanzanian brush by armed bandits before being rescued early Sunday, authorities said.

Joanna Giddens was in a car traveling through Mikumi National Park, a game sanctuary 111 miles southwest of the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, when three men armed with rifles seized the vehicle, a church official said.

“I kept my faith,” Joanna said in a telephone interview from Tanzania. “My heart was beating really fast, though.”

The three men ordered David and Millie Moreland of Monroe, La., to lie down in the car and told Joanna and her best friend, Christine Harrington, to sit with Christine’s mother, Sandy Harrington, Joanna said.

A sixth missionary with the Southern Baptist Convention, outside the car when the abduction occurred during a rest stop, hid in the brush and later reported the kidnaping.

After driving them through the brush, the kidnapers ordered the five Americans out of the car and fed each of them a powdered substance.

“It made me feel real nauseated,” Joanna said. “Then they left us on a big mat. We made sure they were gone, and then we tried to throw up to get rid of this medicine stuff.”

A pilot working for the mission spotted the five Americans in the bush Sunday morning, said Mark Kelly, spokesman for the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond, Va.

All five were in good health, shaking off the effects of the drug, with the exception of David Moreland, who had been beaten by one of the gunmen.

“But there were no serious injuries,” Kelly said. “They were roughed up a little, but they’re none the worse for wear. This sort of thing happens a lot in Africa. It happens to a lot of Americans and the great deal of the time the motive is robbery.

“Still, it was a terribly frightening episode.”

The group’s vehicle was found Saturday, crashed by the side of the road, with one of the bandits dead inside. Tanzanian officials said the vehicle appeared to have been driven at high speed by the bandits.

Joanna’s parents, Ed and Nancy Giddens, are California natives who have been working in Africa since 1980. The couple were on their way to meet their daughter, who had gone on a trip with the Harringtons, when they got the news.

Ed Giddens grew up in the San Fernando Valley. His father, Don Giddens, a pastor in Elk Grove, Calif., near Sacramento, pastored at various churches throughout the Valley area.

The Morelands have been in Tanzania since 1990 and the Harringtons since 1989, Kelly said.

Joanna, who was born in Sacramento but considers Africa her home, said she would not hesitate to make other trips around her adopted home, she said.

“It’s where I live, so I’m not scared,” she said. “I was just thinking even if I get killed I’ll go to heaven and it won’t be so bad. I didn’t cry.”

Times staff writer Richard A. Serrano in Washington contributed to this story.