ABUJA, Nigeria— Cynthia Andrews of NBC News can sleep soundly tonight with the knowledge that American help is on the way.
The U.S. Department of State has commissioned an immediate airdrop of Band-Aids and antibacterial ointment for Andrews, who, as one of the few international reporters sent to cover last month’s abduction of about 230 Nigerian schoolgirls by armed Islamic extremists, skinned her knee when she tripped over the coffee table in her hotel room.
Incidentally, nearly 200 of the kidnapped high school students remain missing, with reports indicating that they are being sold into slavery and forced marriages for as little as $12 by members of Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates to “Western education is a sin.”
Andrews, who has been happily married to her husband, a successful Wall Street banker, for 12 years, tells her producers that she is managing the swelling anxiety and puffiness around the aggravated area while she waits for the humanitarian first aid to arrive.
“I’m touched to have received so many sympathetic cards and lovely flowers from my viewers around the world,” tweeted Andrews.
Desperate, many parents of the kidnapped girls took to Twitter in hopes that they, too, could gain the attention and assistance of their government, as well as that of the international community. Their #BringBackOurGirls campaign’s message has been retweeted 250 times, lagging far behind #Pray4CynthiaNow, which is currently trending on Twitter.
“My wife keeps asking me, why isn’t the government deploying every means to find our children,” said one relative of a kidnapped girl. “But I am glad that Cynthia is going to recover from her scrape. Mrs. Andrews seems to be the only American interested in our little girl’s plight at the moment.”
Said one Nigerian official, “If countries can help us by way of arming our people through modern surveillance equipment, for defense and all that, it will be most welcome.” But more than anything else, he thought it might be “nice if the world changed the channel for just one minute to consider the plight of some 200 scared, living, breathing girls instead of gawking as millions are spent searching for remains of the 227 passengers of Flight 370.”
At press time, Andrews is said to have received her bandages and reassignment to the Malaysia Airlines story.
