On Sunday, as president of the building’s board, I organized an emergency meeting. Everyone was there. My neighbors’ faces were somber, but there was no animosity. We were all the same under fire. It was a question of survival, which superseded all political division.

Some days earlier, looters had invaded our parking lot. We watched them from our windows, hidden behind our curtains, powerless. They were intent on stealing our cars: all the windows were broken, the interiors pillaged. “Give us the keys!” one shouted up to us. “If we have to go in there, you’ll be sorry!” They tried several times to drive off with my car, but as stubborn as its owner, it refused to start and they had to give up. Three other cars were taken, but thank heavens, the bandits didn’t try to force open the door to our building.

By the end of our meeting, we had decided that in case of an attack on our building, we would give the alarm by beating on our pots and pans. We also set hours for taking out the trash and going out to look for food when it was possible.

The days are long because, obviously, we are confined to our homes by the gunfire. When the shooting is heavy, I yell at everyone to lie flat in the hallway. My little granddaughter is terrified. Some of my neighbors have bullets in their walls.

I am on my computer all day and well into the night talking to friends around the world by Skype and trying to find out scraps of information about what’s going on in my country. We depend on news from Paris, New York, Stockholm, because state television tells us only propaganda and lies. Fortunately, a new, pro-Ouattara station has sprung up to tell us what the president-elect is doing.