Turning Poison Into Medicine
For a beautiful and confident woman like Amanda Lindhout, former Canadian journalist, motivational speaker, and founder of a not-for-profit organisation called Global Enrichment Foundation (GEF), it is a rude shock to know her past. In 2009, she was found with scars all over her body, a hollow-like feeling inside her mouth with seven of her teeth missing, hair that was falling by the dozen, sunken cheeks, and a body that was malnourished beyond explanation. The dreadful state that she was in was a result of the 15-month-long period of physical and mental abuse she was put through by her kidnappers while being held hostage in Somalia.
Holiday Gone Wrong
If you’re wondering how she landed in the country infamous for kidnappers and pirates, here’s your answer – her love for travel, adventure, and curiosity. The stories she’d heard about Somalia led her and her Australian traveling companion, Nigel Brennan, to visit the country in 2008. Three days into the trip, the duo was kidnapped by a bunch of Somalian teenagers who were armed with guns and other weapons.
What started as a one-week travel plan was an ugly experience for the two. For most of their kidnapping, Nigel and Amanda were separated, kept in two different dark rooms with no means of communication with each other, let alone with family and friends. For the perpetrators, the duo and their skin colour represented the capitalist world that had failed them. To seek revenge, they would kidnap ‘Whites’ like Amanda and Nigel and ask for ransom. In Amanda’s case, they asked her family to pay $2.5 million. “I was not from a well-to-do family, and we struggled for food for most of my childhood. My mother worked as a cashier at a grocery store to earn a living. For my family to pay such a huge ransom was next to impossible. Besides, my country had a strict policy against paying ransoms. The hope to be free someday seemed almost bleak then,” she says.
The Failed Jailbreak
After a couple of months, when the two couldn’t take it anymore, they decided to find a way to escape. They tried escaping via a small window in their shared bathroom. Brennan realised there was some weakness in the mortar that held the security bars in front of the window. Both tried hard to chip away the mortar with nail clippers, finally creating a hole the size of a basketball. “Unfortunately, we fell on the ground with a huge thud that signaled our kidnappers. We knew we had to run as fast as possible because it wouldn’t take them long to catch up,” Amanda explains.
While running, the two of them heard calls of prayers and figured there was a mosque nearby. They thought it would be a safer option to enter the mosque. However, the kidnappers, who were not far away, followed them to the mosque and started firing in every direction till there was utter chaos. The duo was re-captured and what followed was worse.
Upon being captured, they were once again separated, and the ill-treatment of Amanda by her captors became more severe. She was tormented more than Nigel, as women in Somali society are considered inferior of the two sexes. She was chained up in a dark room for several days and was allowed to go to the washroom for only three minutes, beyond which she would be physically abused. She was prohibited from laughing or speaking, and her name was changed to Amina. “Surviving through the day was getting increasingly difficult. I had always believed in goodness and humanity, but being locked up in a dark room where I was tormented day in and out was making me slowly approach a point where I could no longer bear it,” she says. However, in that moment of complete helplessness, she remembered a verse from the Bible that reads – My power is made perfect in weakness. For when I’m weak, then I’m strong.
Gratitude and Forgiveness Against the Tide
It took her a lot of courage to keep hope alive. “I realised that my kidnappers are a product of their environment – an environment where there is no governance; where young children are handed weapons instead of books, where they see their family die and their sisters raped at a very young age. What I was suffering was only physical abuse, but what they have been suffering was a result of years and years of mental and emotional torture,” she said.
Gradually, she developed a practice that she called “gratiude time”. At the end of each day, she tried to appreciate moments where her captors had shown some humanity towards her, no matter how small. “If they left the room door slightly open, although accidentally, that let a ray of sunlight enter, I felt gratitude. We often take small things in life for granted, but I was stripped bare of everything when I was in that dark room. Light and fresh air to breathe were a luxury that I could no longer afford,” she says.
In 2009, Nigel and she were finally released after her parents pooled in the money with the help of various charities. On release, Amanda was immediately hospitalised as she was unbelievably malnourished. “When I looked at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t recognise the girl who looked back at me. At that moment, I felt a great amount of anger for my kidnappers. It took me a long time to let go of the anger,” Amanda reminisces. She realised she had two options to choose from—-continue to hate the people who caused her the pain or find it in her to forgive them. She eventually chose the latter.