Nairobi, Kenya - A B.C. couple who traded their quiet mountain community for missionary work in Kenya were in critical condition Thursday after a brutal assault with machetes in an attack friends say may have involved the guards hired to protect them.
John Bergen and his American wife, Eloise, who moved to Kenya from Vernon, B.C., to volunteer for the group Hope for the Nations, were attacked Wednesday night at their home in the town of Kitale. Police believe it was a robbery.
A group of attackers wielding machetes and clubs first attacked John Bergen, 70, leaving him for dead in the bushes before turning their attention to his wife, said Steven Pippin, another volunteer with the missionary group in Kenya.
He said they then tied up Eloise Bergen, 65, and attacked her, leaving her trapped under a mess of furniture while they ransacked the couple's home on the outskirts of Kitale, a municipality of about 200,000 in western Kenya.
John Bergen's injuries - which included fractures in his legs and arms, a broken jaw and a concussion - were the most severe, said Pippin.
After the brutal attack was over, Eloise Bergen crawled out from under the rubble, used scissors to free her hands and pulled her husband into their vehicle.
Her face swollen and still bleeding, she drove through the dark to the group's offices 10 kilometres away.
"She was able to find our place, came up to our gate, honked her horn," Pippin said in an interview from Kitale.
"We were all just getting ready for bed, I hear all this noise, so as I came running out, I see them helping her into the house and when I met them at the door, her face was just a mess."
They were rushed to hospital and later airlifted to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
As of Thursday night, two of the couple's guards and five others had been arrested, said Pippin. Police were still looking for at least four other suspects.
The couple arrived in Kenya with Hope for the Nations just four months ago, primarily to help women and children made widows and orphans by the conflict in the African country earlier this year.
It was their first overseas trip with Hope for the Nations but they had been involved with other organizations in the past, said Ralph Bromley, president of the missionary group, a faith-based, non-denominational missionary group with projects in Africa, Asia, Russia and Mexico.
"Typically grandparent, the good-Samaritan kind of people, love-your-neighbour kind of people," Bromley said of the Bergens from his office in Kelowna, B.C.
"Helping with community development, just loving of people - that's how they are. They are just very, very good, solid folks."
Canada's Foreign Affairs Department said consular officials were providing support to the couple, but couldn't discuss details of the case due to privacy laws.
"Our officials in Kenya have been in contact with local police to seek additional information and to press for a thorough investigation into this senseless act of violence," department spokesman Alain Cacchione said in an email.
Bromley said other than the fact that robbers tend to target foreigners, who they assume are wealthy, he doesn't believe the couple's nationalities or involvement in missionary work would have motivated the attack.
He said Kenya is a relatively safe country.
"If you look at the number of incidents throughout the whole country, this is really very, very unusual," said Bromley. "When there's political violence, it's tribe against tribe - it is safe (for foreigners)."
Still, he said the offices in Kitale are highly secure, surrounded by walls and protected by guards and dogs.
Bromley praised the local Kenyan police for their quick work on the case, and he expected the attackers to be swiftly punished.
"The Kenyan police are very sensitive to people being attacked," he said.
"They will be very severe in their punishment of these people, because they send a message: Don't you ever do that again. Part of that is an expression of their appreciation for the humanitarian work that comes into their country."