August 4, 1985

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.