What was going on when I was born?

A semblance of calm rested uneasily on this East African country today, a week after a military coup brought a wave of looting and a plague of uncertainty. Soldiers, many of them very young, are stationed throughout this tattered capital city, carrying automatic weapons and positioning themselves around antiaircraft guns on grassy knolls. Mounds of empty shells suggest that some of the artillery has been put to heavy use in recent days. The soliders' ubiquitous and makeshift checkpoints are represented by lines of beer bottles in the streets or rows of tires and garbage cans, some decorated with slashes of colorful flowers.

ERIC BYLER'S degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University could have landed him a job almost anywhere in the country. But like hundreds of students emerging from engineering schools last year, he settled on Long Island. The Island is attracting young engineers, despite high taxes and housing prices, because the large, established engineering concerns here offer steady long-term employment with starting salaries averaging $25,000 a year. Business is especially good now because of Navy and Air Force contracts tied to the Reagan Administration's defense buildup. That boom in turn has spurred growth at local engineering schools. Native Long Islanders say that familiar surroundings and familiarity with local companies influenced their decisions to stay here.

A design with a distinctly residential look is planned for an office building proposed for a midblock site on East 55th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. ''A main objective was to maintain the street's residential nature,'' said Hany Hassan, an architect with the Eggers Group, who designed the 19-story building planned for 110-114 East 55th Street.

There were 36,775 witnesses in Wrigley Field today, and they may still not believe what they saw. The Chicago Cubs wrested the lead from the Mets in the eighth inning by scoring two runs on a suicide-squeeze bunt by a pinch-hitter for a pinch-hitter. But the Mets tied them with two down in the ninth with two hits off Lee Smith, the Cubs' best relief pitcher. And the Mets finally won by 5-4 in the 10th on a two-out home run by Howard Johnson, who had been given the day off three hours earlier.

Like the settlers of the American West, the white Afrikaners who trekked north from South Africa's cape to settle the interior in the 19th century drew wagons around their camps against hostile forces. The wagons were circled again last week, as the white minority Government defied increasingly critical international reaction and continued its crackdown on black protest. In Washington, the House voted 380 to 48 for a mild package of economic sanctions on South Africa, including a ban on the import of Krugerrand gold coins and on the export of goods for use in nuclear facilities and computers. Bank loans to the South African Government were also banned, although most banks had suspended such loans seven years ago. (In New York, the Chase Manhattan Bank was reported to have taken the lead in halting loans to private borrowers.) The Senate put off action until after the August recess because of a filibuster threat by Senator Jesse Helms.

Preliminary examination of the flight recorders aboard the Delta Air Lines jumbo jet that crashed here Friday registered no alarm among the crew that anything was wrong and no warning from ground controllers of hazardous wind shifts, according to Federal investigators. Moreover, ground-control tapes showed no sign that computerized sensors had been tripped by wind shifts while the jet was trying to land in a thunderstorm at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The flight data recorder and voice recorders simply came to a ''sudden stop associated with impact on the ground,'' said the head of the investigation, G. H. Patrick Bursley, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board who spoke at a news conference here. No Unusual Findings ''There is nothing in the cockpit voice recorder preliminary readout we have made that suggests any concern,'' Mr. Bursley said. ''There is no suggestion of anything unusual.''

Although scientists have yet to find a treatment for AIDS, much less a cure, they have apparently eliminated one of the ways in which the deadly disease is spread. According to studies reported last week at the National Institutes of Health, a new test has succeeded in screening AIDS-tainted blood, leaving only the remotest chance that transfusions will continue to spread the disease. Transfusion-associated AIDS accounts for about 2 percent of the cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, or 202 cases as of last week. The number will probably continue to rise for a time because the incubation period of the disease is sometimes six or more years, but the rate of increase is expected to go steadily down, thanks to the ability to detect the HTLV-3 virus thought responsible for the disease.

BY the time Earth Angel rolled into the parking lot with Eddie Staib, his hair slicked into a ducktail, behind the wheel, Cruise Night was in full swing at the Sycamore drive-in restaurant in Bethel. Dan Mulvey, a Danbury police officer, was there with his 1964 Chrysler Newport, a pair of fuzzy dice dangling from its rear-view mirror. So was Richard Altieri, an insurance agent from Fairfield, with his pride and joy, a 1951 Ford Custom painted midnight black. Russ Choma, an engineer from Brookfield, brought his 1949 Willys Overland. ''It was considered a nerd car in the 50's,'' he said, laughing.

THE United States and the Soviet Union put on affable faces in Helsinki last week, as Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze took initial steps toward a successful summit meeting in November. They were small steps to be sure but what counted most was the positive mood surrounding their meeting. Even the jockeying for advantage, such as the proposals by Washington and Moscow on nuclear testing that each knew the other would reject, was kept within bounds. The occasion for the Shultz-Shevardnadze get-together was the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, by which 33 European states plus the United States and Canada sought to promote security and human rights in Europe. While Mr. Shultz and Mr. Shevardnadze argued publicly about the record of the past 10 years, their main task was to begin to make sure that President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev would have something to show for their labors when they meet in Geneva in November.

In looks and in feel, there is not much that is obviously special about the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Hospital. The low-lying building, across the street from a bicycle shop, could be any hospital anywhere, its facade streaked with dirt, its rooms in need of fresh paint and new wallpaper. Corridors bear the familiar stale smell of illness, only mildly disguised by antiseptics and scouring cleansers. Patients offer a mosaic of despair, hope, pain, relief and resignation. From the name alone it is evident that this medical facility is unlike any other, except perhaps for the smaller Atomic Bomb Hospital in Nagasaki. To qualify for admission to either, a patient must prove that he or she lived through the blast and the aftermath at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It is an exclusive, if undesirable, club, limited to 367,000 men and women who carry official certificates attesting to their survival.

As a chorus of katydids began to serenade the fall of night from the mountain laurel beyond the cabin porch, Tobe, a ''white likker'' man, held a glass of his host's homemade wild fox grape wine. All things considered, he said, ''I'd rather have my old moonshine.'' Behind the cabin, the mountain rose into the Chattahoochee National Forest. ''Back in the 50's I'd have three or four stills going at the same time,'' Tobe said. He cooked his mash into the 1960's, and in hidden gullies near clear streams in the vastness of the woods here, other men still do, selling 'shine by the gallon jug. It remains a staple of these hills. But, as Tobe said: ''Lot of the people I used to sell to, they died, because they older than I was. You just can't make money at it.'' He rose, spat a stream of brown tobacco juice toward the darkening woods and poured himself some more wild fox.

IF it happens, Lance Parrish of the Detroit Tigers will ''go home and cry.'' David Palmer of the Montreal Expos will go home and go fishing. Dennis Eckersley of the Chicago Cubs will ''go home and stay in shape.'' The umpires will go home and collect for 45 days, regardless. Harvey Kuenn, who scouts for the Milwaukee Brewers, will drop down to their Beloit (Wis.) farm club and ''work with our young players.'' Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner, who broadcast for the Mets, will drop down to their Tidewater farm club and broadcast some Tides games back to New York. Ed Lynch, who pitches for the Mets, will find a field and a catcher and start throwing. The Yankees will already be home, opening a series with the Cleveland Indians, so they will have no place to travel. But the Indians and the 12 other ''away'' clubs in the big leagues will be on the road, and they will have to find a way home. The Mets will be in Montreal, and it may be every man for himself.