Life Uncut - KIDNAPPED IN SOMALIA - A story of survival with Jessica Buchanan

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

"If I get kidnapped on this trip, will you come and get me?" was the last text that Jessica Buchanan sent to her husband before she was kidnapped by Somali Rebels.In today's episode we were lucky enough to chat with Jessica about her harrowing and heart wrenching story of being a humanitarian aid worker before being kidnapped by Somali land pirates. She was held captive for over 90 days before an elaborate rescue mission from SEAL team six, the same team that found and killed Osama Bin Laden, were sent in to rescue her. In our conversation with Jessica, she tells us what the experience was like for her. the conditions that she had to live in and what played on her mind each day. Jess speaks about the mental and physical battle of survival and the resilience that this unbelievable story has given her. You can check out everything of Jess' here: https://www.jessbuchanan.com/If you're one of our scallywags that loves the podcast but hasn't left 5 stars or a review yet, well, we won't hold it against you but also, like, why you do us dirty.Please, subscribe and tell your friends, tell your mum, your cousin and your dog and share the love, because, well, we love love. xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany.

And holy dooly, it's been a big weekend. Has it? Well, I had a four-year-old birthday party, and we have a new Prime Minister. What a freighter! Guys, it was a big weekend. I was out on the town at a four-year-old's birthday party. I still have a sore back from getting on a jumping castle. Let me tell you, when you're an adult and you get on a jumping castle as an adult, it's fucked.

Dude, everything is fucked as an adult. I feel like it's the criteria for adulthood. It's always something. It's always hard. My knees hurt when I dance now. My back is constantly hurting. It's a real battle. Being old's hard.

It's very, very difficult. You know what else is difficult? It's when your child picks up 475 different types of germs from the jumping castle and they're both now sick. So you're saying they entered the Jumping Castle healthy and they exited the Jumping Castle unhealthy? Literally, they started fine and then they got off and they just had snot pouring out their nose. And I was like, oh, this is great.

This is every single germ from the eastern suburbs coming together, all the different daycares coming together into one super germ. Well, that was my weekend. But aside from the kids, let's just take a moment to appreciate that we have a new Prime Minister, we have a new government. There are so many female independents who are now in Parliament and it is a good day to be in australia what a time to be alive unless you're a liberal and then it's a bad day it's a good day for many people to be in australia yeah and do you know what was

funny keisha and i went out on saturday night now keisha is very political she loves she like this is what gets keisha going well what you guys might not know is that producer keisha also moonlights on the daily oz podcast so the daily oz you guys a lot of you i know would know what that is it's the instagram page where it kind of gives you all the snackable information around politics around what's happening in the news current affairs in a very easily digestible way we've had Sam who is the creator of the Daily Oz on the podcast before but producer Keisha actually edits their podcast episodes each week she cheats on us with them she's sick for it she loves the politics but we were we were out right Keisha and I were like do you know what like let's let's just

go and have a few drinks I was on the lounge in my track pants until about nine o'clock at night you know I had planned to stay and I was not doing anything but Keisha has a way about it anyway she dragged me out we went out she starts having some drinks she's on the dance floor and then i see her when the announcement like when it's announced that they won that anthony won she started crying and started drinking more and she she partied so hard on the dance floor she was hugging people it was like the best day of her life i was like i don't think i've ever seen you so happy imagine someone drinking crying dancing simultaneously hugging strangers it sounds like me in my 20s i'm big yes anyway it was it was a really great thing to watch no but this is

really good news i think i mean this is people are going to disagree with us obviously there's going to be people out there with different political views but something else that i love about election day i was going to say politics day it's politics day it's election day well we also know that nobody comes to this podcast for like deep for deep unpacking of politics like you know the last radio show we talked about the democracy sausage we just like to keep it a bit more light well look you might have seen heaps of people in or you may not have seen you might not it but you guys might have seen it on social media you might not have seen it in in real time but loads of people were voting with no pants on with undies on with like budgie smugglers on

little speedos there were all sorts and I was like why does nobody have like like did I miss something is is it worth two votes if you turn up with no pants on but there were loads of people with no pants now this is an absolutely brilliant marketing campaign because this was by budgie smuggler and they're not sponsoring the pod but we should have got them on but they pretty much said if you go and use your constitutional right to vote with no pants on we will give you a voucher for punchy smugglers now why I don't know why so many people would think that this was a brilliant idea but everyone braced the cold and it was cold I wonder if this was just an eastern suburbs thing or if people were doing it all across Australia like I want to know if you're in Melbourne did

this catch on like was there somebody who who rocked up at the voting poll booths on Saturday morning in the cold in the rain and had well I mean I'm assuming that Melbourne was raining that's a terrible that's a terrible stereotype that I just cast but did they just show up they're not wearing any pants yep well they're saying it was all across Australia it was everywhere there was all locations I would love to know if it was like Tasmania and Western Australia were they doing it in the freezing cold I don't know but I also want to know why out of any constitutional if you could exercise any constitutional right why this was the one to do it without pants it's it's pretty rogue do you reckon that there's any rules like in terms of what you can and can't

because obviously everybody has to show up and vote like we all know it's look at this girl here but wow okay there's a photo yeah that's amazing there's a photo of a girl in a g-string standing at her cardboard booth voting and she's she's loving it she's killing it she looks amazing are there any rules like if you have to show up and vote but you rock up nude are they going to send you home or can you then put in a petition and be like sorry i showed up they wouldn't let me vote because i was dressed inappropriately i think it's like being a public nuisance i think that is actually illegal i don't think because remember not that long ago that man walked in to pay for petrol nude in sydney and it was caught on the cctv did you see that footage i did not

pay for his petrol but he was just nude i think he had a hat on or a beanie on and he was nude and the man behind the teller didn't really know what to do so he just took his money and he just walked out and drove off well it's public indecency is what it is yes wow nuisance indecency we're splitting hairs if we're gonna talk about let's get the details right britney hoffey i mean i wouldn't be voting new but good on these people but this was basically a marketing ploy from budgie smuggler I love a bit of guerrilla advertising I think if you can think outside the box and get yourself some free some sort of free viral advertising there's been a couple of news articles that have picked it up today but also across social media if you if you go on

social media and look up the hashtag smugglers decide that is the trending hashtag that they used for the campaign to get themselves a bit of free advertising in the spirit of politics but I also think this is really great on another level because it is engaging young people in politics when they might not have normally been engaged. Like we all know there are a lot of people that aren't that interested in politics, but I think with the help of social media, a lot of sites like the Daily Oz

that are making this ingestible, they're making easy content for us to understand. And then getting companies like Budget Smuggler, making it a bit fun and putting something, you know, encouraging people to go out there to actually exercise their right to vote, but also putting some sugar on it. I'm pretty here for it.

But something else that came out of the weekend, which is just honestly the most incredibly heartfelt news and look there's been a lot of good stuff that's come out of the weekend but this was something that really touched us and I know it's a story that all of you guys are going to be familiar with and that is the Murugapan family the Tamil family from Biloela and they were taken into detention in 2019 held on Christmas Island they have two little girls named Kopika and Thanika they now will be released under this new government and be allowed to go back to Biloela to become part of the community again and I just think when you look at the story and I don't know

if anybody else saw the video that they put together of them getting the news that they were going to be released. Just the most incredible, incredible moment. It gives you absolute goosebumps to watch that video. And if you guys haven't seen it, it's a really quick snippet, but it was just such a beautiful moment. And Labor has promised to grant the family a permanent visa through ministerial intervention. This will allow them to resettle into a place that they should have never been taken from. And what that family has gone through, and it's just one family a lot of families are going through that but this is the best result that can come off the back of this weekend well I guess also sometimes when we look at these things you can

look like big picture when it comes to politics you know because it's quite hard to kind of think how is this going to affect me personally in the long term and then when you see how much this one change has affected this one family it's such an incredible thing and to think that these two little girls have spent the majority if not the entirety of their lives in detention they were the only family the only people being held on Christmas Island for so long until Thanika got really sick and she was taken out of Christmas Island and they were deported over to Perth this is a life that no children should have to live like no child should be held in detention for their entire life they have missed out on their education they have missed out on their

friendships they have missed out on stability they've missed out on community you don't have to be a mum to look at that and just think like what a horrible life they've been subjected to but it's just incredible that they're going to now be going back to Biloela and be part of that community and I guess the last thing I wanted to say on this is kind of highlights the news cycle and how when something really bad happens it's all over the news for like two weeks three weeks there was this really intense period where this family was held up across the news and there was so much advocacy that was done to try and petition to get the family to stay but over the last four years that news cycle that exposure across the news has become less and less and I think that's

what happens with everything we become a bit tired and a bit jaded by the news yes there are times where their story has come back into the limelight and I think for a lot of us we're like oh wow that family that's still happening but it just shows that you know these things that people who are held in detention can be there for so long it can become part of just like institutionalized in their life and this is just so amazing that finally that's coming to an end for this family It's been a great weekend but let's get in to what this episode is actually about. Now this episode I am just so excited by and I was so excited to interview Jess. We're interviewing a woman named Jess Buchanan. Jess was a humanitarian worker in Somalia in her 20s. Her husband was over

there and she went through something no one should ever go through. She was kidnapped by Somalian rebels for 92 days the story is just insane and Jessica I mean it's been many years since this happened and she has definitely worked through or I mean I don't even know if you can ever work through the trauma of what that does to you I think she's still working through it but she she talks about the resilience that she built through that experience but how she's gone on to put her life back together what it was that got her through that imagine being kidnapped away from your family away from your friends not knowing if there was ever going to be an out and wondering every single day if you're going to be murdered or what was going to happen

it's just the most harrowing story but also an incredible tale of survival of strength of courage and jess is an incredible storyteller as well and i think that that is what makes this episode all the more engaging and this interview all the more like we could have spoken to her for hours. There's just so many fine details to this story that we think you guys, you're going to love it. Like it's a really, really great episode. But before we get into the chat with Jess, there is something that we do on every episode and that is accidentally unfiltered slash confessional. Well, I know that you have a confessional for today, but I am going a little bit rogue with this segment. And that is because something happened yesterday when I was at a

girl's lunch and I need to, I fuck, I need to unpack this. Okay. You always worry me when you come in rogue with this so here's my question for you there were five of us sitting at this lunch and this is my question for all of you listening there were five of us sitting there at lunch yesterday and one of my beautiful friends told a story about how she lost her tampon and I'm going to get into that story in just a second but my question is have you ever been in a situation where a tampon would just slip out of you or you would lose a tampon what well hang on what you mean lose it like you don't leave it at the cafe you're like oh my god when i left my keys and my tampon somewhere where i'm like you can't find it after it's been inserted but like has a tampon

ever fallen out of you i mean yeah like occasionally if it's really full and maybe you're on the toilet it might like start to slip out but you're not walking around making breakfast and you're like there goes my tampon but could your tampon just fall out into the toilet yeah i think if you okay we're getting into period talk you didn't see this coming i think if you had a really heavy period so it's happened to me probably a few times if you've had a really heavy period maybe you've got a smaller tampon in that's not suitable for that time it's been in for a long time you go to the toilet it might start to slip out a little bit that's a hundred percent a thing like but like slip out yeah yeah yeah let me producer keisha come over here let me ask producer keisha

have you ever had a tampon fall out yeah a hundred percent i can't believe you haven't had this happened for the one who is like so open about her toilet talk and it's never happened to you it's not like the table's just like flopping around in the hallway of your canal it's not like having a disco up there so like i'm gonna exit stage left yeah for me i think it's happened mostly after i've like if i've been swimming have you not sneezed and like being like oh guys so mine doesn't do it with a sneeze mine doesn't mine would only be and very occasionally I could probably count the number of times but yeah it's only if it's very very full been too long and on the toilet not when I don't just like I'm not lunging at the gym and it's like

push shoots out I'm not like shooting boards out there I am seriously I have my mouth open I am shook to the core so there were five of us sitting at the table yesterday two of them sounded like you two of them were like I don't however you guys not experience this okay so two of them were normal that's what I'm hearing three of us were like we have never ever ever had a tampon just fall out I used to be a swimmer so I used to go to swimming training twice a day every single day every single week and I've never had a tampon be so full of what will happen though is like if I cough or sneeze or need to go to the toilet like it'll squeeze like a sponge this is too much information wow the tampon won't come out yeah have you never been like this is very graphic

have you never done a poop and been like oh no like the pressure yeah so I feel like they're I'm going to put a poll up. But like I said, I don't think that this is a case of like strong pelvic floors or wide-set vaginas or whatever it is. Like I don't think that that's what it's got to do with because like I've had two babies. And we haven't and we're on the other side of the fence. I would like this on the record. I have a great pelvic floor.

Everything is very tight down there. Also, she's been told. This is like the new gold, black, blue, black dress or the Yanny Laurel thing. Like which side of the fence are you on? i don't know but i'm gonna put a poll up on our instagram because i feel like there are gonna be some women out there who are like yes absolutely you're i feel like there are people listening to this who are one disgusted but also two just as shocked by this conversation on either side of the coin as what i was i think it would be in all honesty i reckon this would probably be a 50 50

thing but i think most people would have experienced this at least once on like a heavy flow for sure i'm i'm shook that you have never even come close to experiencing that never okay this is the story that i wanted to share with you and this is the accident yeah that's right where did this even come from I'm gonna go make an Instagram poll to put up and find out what the audience thinks so okay the story goes like this like it's a myth story the legend goes many years ago so okay she was sitting out on the balcony with her boyfriend and her mum when she remembered oh crap you know when you've you forgot your period and you've just kind of forgotten and then your tampon's been in there for too long and you had that moment where you're like I have to go change my tampon that

literally happened to you last week yeah like I mean I feel like it happens to a lot of people so she ran inside to change her tampon and she couldn't reach it she couldn't find it like it was too far up it had gone too far up so she ran outside to her boyfriend and was like dude I can't reach it I need you to come and so she laid down on the bed and she got her boyfriend to try and fish it out and he couldn't get it he was like I cannot find the tampon so then she went back outside and said to her mom mom I cannot find my tampon I can't find it it's like not there so her mom goes and gets some gloves puts the gloves on my god she lays down on the bed and her mom tries to fish out the tampon this is like sex in the city all over again can't find the tampon so at

this point she's freaking out and she's like I'm gonna get toxic shock syndrome I need to get this tampon out of me it's so far up that I'm it's like I can't get this by myself so she goes to emergency they wait in emergency for five hours to be seen by someone who has some sort of gynecological experience or some tongs or some tongs so finally there's a woman she comes in she fishes around and she's like there's no tampon there like you don't have a tampon inside you by this point in time my girlfriend is beside herself hysterical she's like nobody is believing me. It is so far up there. Like I'm going to die. Why won't anyone believe me? She knows she's put a tampon up there. Where else is it going to go? So anyway, they call the head obstetrician who

was working on the ward at that time. And he comes down, he gets gloved up and he gets in there, but really gets in there. First it's with the tongs. Can't find anything with the tongs. Then gets his hand in as far as he can get his hand in. And there's no tampon in there. no tampon at all anywhere so of course she's then like i need to have an ultrasound it's gone so far up and they're like no no this is medically impossible it can't go that far there's nowhere else it could go it's we've checked there's no tampon in there hidden cavities so then she goes home really distraught thinking i'm gonna die from tss and nobody's taking me seriously she gets home and then a couple of hours later she goes to the bathroom and there's the tampon

in the bin of course it is it's definitely not inside her that she took out when she'd had a few too many wines the night before and hadn't been in her for this entire period my god but the reason why we got on this entire period get it but the reason why we got into the conversation was because she left the hospital thinking maybe it had just fallen out when she'd gone to the toilet what in a dress with no undies on and she know like when she'd sat down to go to the toilet maybe it had fallen out and she hadn't realized I mean yeah that's a thing that is a hundred percent a thing but you know you don't not know it's slipping out like you can use this problem if you don't even feel it slip out there is a real problem but didn't she didn't she like when she

went to the hospital if she had a period didn't she notice there were like blood or no undies or anything like that well marriage maybe she's at the end of it I don't know there was definitely I think that is so funny I think that a hundred percent you were gonna get a 50 50 poll I think more people than not actually no actually I'm going to change it let's guess I think more people than not have experienced this than never ever having to even slip out remotely I'm going to say that like based on the fact that there were three of us who it had never happened to and two of us who had happened to I'm going to make a guess that like 60 percent of people instead of it slipping out their body acts like the pelvic floor little clincher and it just squeezes it out

see that's weird that's weird to me because mine has never squeezed it out like it doesn't rinse like a sponge that's what mine does but isn't that funny it just it just goes to show you that everyone everyone's just obviously different we know that we're built differently but obviously our bodies do different things because i have never wrung mine out like i'm like i'm like i'm emptying it and it's like we're good to go again like that literally no it's definitely not good to go again if you're at that point in time it's it's just a disaster anyway that was a lot okay i have a confessional hey ladies this one was buried in the archives of my brain and just came to light again today about five years ago i was in a situationship with a guy who had a girlfriend

now long story short this is not my proudest moment but yes i did it one day he gave me his password for ticketech to access some tickets that he had bought for us and i randomly decided i wonder if this password would work for his instagram too oh no i tried it and it did success so for months i would log into his instagram and delete photos he had uploaded with his girlfriend i would unlike all her posts and delete his comments he eventually changed his password but to this day he has no idea he couldn't work out why every one of her photos with her kept being deleted no brilliant oh like a way to control the situation that you don't have control on is to stick it to instagram

but how funny like obviously she's trying to start fights with i mean this shouldn't have been happening anyway just like we don't condone cheating we're not laughing about that but i think that that is so funny of her being like well I'm the side piece so I'm just gonna go and make sure make a look on Instagram like you guys don't have a relationship surely he would have known that somebody else was in his Instagram deleting like surely you would start to think that but also doesn't this just make you think how many of us have the same password for every single thing online that we use okay now you've just told everyone how to identity theft you because nobody knows my password except for Matt. I'm sure that's guys. That's not what it is.

It's definitely not that one, two, three, four, five. I think exactly the same thing. And I had, I got a really stern talking to from my brother who's like big on security. And I had to go and change every single password that I had. Cause I was one of those people that has one password for 27 things, my bank, my everything, everything was the same password and it wasn't that hard. So I changed everything and now I forget them and I get logged out perpetually. I know. That's why like every second message I receive from Britt is how she's been logged out of something that we have a shared account on.

I'm like, hey guys, I just need to reset the password because I can't remember. For the 400th time this year. But anyway, guys, that is it for us for now. We are going to get into the chat with Jessica Buchanan. We really hope that you guys love this episode because honestly, like we said, it was one of the most incredible conversations and stories that we've ever had the privilege of doing. In 2011, Jessica Buchanan was an aid worker in northern Somalia helping to raise awareness about how to avoid landmines.

The north was the relatively safe section of the country. That October, she travelled to the more dangerous southern region for some training. The night before she left, she texted her husband, Eric, also an aid worker in Somalia. She asked him a question. Eric, if I get kidnapped on this trip, will you come and get me? Jess couldn't have possibly known that this message was about to come true. That night was the night that things changed forever. Jess, I am so excited to talk to you today.

Welcome to Life Uncut. Thank you. I'm just happy to be here. Jess, when I originally stumbled across your story, I mean, it was my sister and I that were just reading about you somewhere. I don't even remember, but I was just so blown away and I was so hooked. and we just said to each other, we need to speak to this woman because this is absolutely mind blowing.

And I was, I needed to constantly know more. And then I did a very deep dive into you. I feel like I know everything about you, but I'm really excited to bring your incredible story to our listeners. So before we get into it, do you have an accidentally unfiltered story? It's an embarrassing story that we kick off every episode with. Oh man. So I do, you know, I was like, I don't really get like super embarrassed.

very often. So it took like a little bit of thinking to come up with something. I came up with three. Two, I just are probably not super appropriate. So I passed on those. Oh, anything goes. Anything goes. This one's a good one. So a couple of years ago, I was skiing with my family. We went to like next to the resort. There was like these tube things. I don't know. You probably don't do a ton of snow skiing in Australia, but there's these like big slopes where they tunnel out the snow and you can ride on these big, huge inner tubes. And it's super fun. And then you take the little escalator back up and you just go over and over and over again.

And we'd never been. They had the group assemble for instructions. And I have a nine-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl. And I thought my nine-year-old was standing next to me while they were giving out directions. And the guide says, how many of you have been here before? and the kid who I think is my son raises his hand and I look over at him and I'm like, Augie, put your hand down. We've never been here. And the kid goes, yes, I have. And I'm like, no, you haven't. Don't be ridiculous. We've never been here before. And so the guy goes and asks again. So now this kid puts his hand up in the air and I, I literally, because I'm so sure it's my own child i slap his hand down and i'm like put your hand down stop it we've never been here

before and then all of a sudden i look in his eyes and i realize this is not my kid because you know everybody's like all the nine-year-old boys have like black like ski masks and you know everybody has the same ski uniform i look across the circle and i see my kid standing there my husband is behind him and he's been watching the whole thing and he is dying and i'm like oh my god oh my god i'm looking at this kid i'm like i'm so sorry i'm so sorry where's your mother i need to explain i'm like in my head i'm freaking out because i'm like i just like i like assaulted this child yes like why is it so important that i that we have never been here before like why did that fucking matter and i was like the whole rest of the day like just looking down every and

i had to like ride the tubes with this kid and his family and i like i just couldn't even like look at them it was horrible and like i have no idea what came over me but um i learned a lesson did he tell his mom i think he did because she just kept giving me like the side eye like because as she should, because I was this like literally crazy person slapping her kid's hand out of the air. It was mortifying. So there is my, my story unfiltered. I feel like we've never actually had one like that before. Usually they're all to do with bodily functions. I think that this is my favorite, most PG version of an accident. Yeah. Usually someone's like, I shat myself every second one. Yeah. I mean, I've done that. I lived in Africa for 10 years. So yes, I have, I have

shot myself many, many times. I'm telling you what, this one took the cake. Like I was just mortified. So yeah, I don't know. Somehow crapping my pants doesn't seem to be that big of a deal compared to this. It doesn't even level up. Well, speaking of Africa, that is exactly why we have you on the podcast. I wanted to start off by asking you, what was your life like before this huge turn of events? What was your life like when you were living in Somalia? How old were you? Just a little bit more information and context around why you were there. Yeah, that's a really good question. So I, let's see, I would have been, well, before this happened, let's see, I was like 32, but I went to Africa when I was 26, right? Fresh out of college. I actually did my student teaching in Nairobi, Kenya, an international school. I'm a teacher by profession. and I met my husband shortly after I took on a permanent like position at the school that I was

student teaching at. And we fell in love and got married as people do. And he was stationed up in Northern Somalia, which is actually technically referred to as Somaliland in Hargeisa. It's a self-declared autonomous region of Somalia. And I, you know, we got married and I followed him up there to start my newlywed life up in Somaliland as newlyweds do. And then I left my job and moved up to this compound in the middle of the desert and started tutoring. We had a bunch of Ethiopian refugees living on our compound and they were being trained how to work with some of the different organizations that were working on our compound. And there was a little Ethiopian girl. Her name is Muslima. She was about eight years old and she had come over with her dad.

they were refugees. And so I'm good with kids and she didn't have anything to do and I didn't have anything to do. So I started bringing her into the house and teaching English. And before I knew it, I had an entire dining room full of refugees who wanted to learn English. So I did that for a while and it was really fun. And then I just started doing some work for the UN. And then I eventually got a job with the Danish demining group, which is the mine action unit of the Danish Refugee Council. And I worked in armed violence reduction, community safety, and conflict management education. So I used my educational skill set essentially to help get our messages across two villages that we were working in. My portfolio included all of East Africa. So

I went up to South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, all over Somalia to do all of this work. And it was really just super it was really hard but really interesting dangerous i mean no i didn't feel like it was dangerous it was just like adventure yeah you know like we we didn't have any kids we were like you know and i want to be careful to stay away from this whole like white savior picture because africa didn't ask me to come and help it and save it and people you know like I was just I was doing a job at the end of the day but it was really interesting and it was fascinating and the people such rich cultures and tapestries and food and colors and smells and like just experiences it was a feast for the eyes and every single day you had no idea what to

expect so it was just really exciting in a lot of ways. So was part of this job correct me if I'm wrong literally to educate the villagers about landmines and the possibility of what did the role entail was it how to detect if there is one how to avoid them because this is what really interest this is what's fascinating me that it's so easy for us to be ignorant and so far removed that this is something that is other people's reality and it's their day-to-day that they're you know we wake up we get a coffee they wake up and they're like how do we navigate the landmines today. Yeah. So it is interesting that that is a lot of people's realities and what you'll find in a lot of countries that are still considered to be developing is that even 20 plus years after

civil war, they're still dealing with ramifications and not only like psychosocially, but also just their areas, their migratory people, their nomadic people. So they cover large distances. And here I'm speaking about Somalia in particular, but I mean, there are lots of countries all over the world that this would apply to. You know, they're herding camels and their goats. That's what they do. And so there are large swaths of areas that have not, I don't know what the statistics are about Somalia, but at the time there were large areas that had not been cleared from landmines. And so oftentimes what would happen is that kids would be out running around or they're herding goats because they work from, you know, seven, eight years old and they see something shiny.

They're bored. They don't know what it is. They pick it up. It could be in an unexploded ordinance or it could be a landmine that no one ever stepped on and boom, it'll blow up. It'll maim them. It'll blind them. It could kill them. Sometimes what would happen is people would stockpile them because they didn't know what these objects were because it's not like, you know, they have access like these nomadic like outlying areas and have access to like Google. So they're not going to Google this shiny object that they found. And so they stockpiled them in their homes. And you would often come upon these little huts that were full of explosives and their babies are sleeping next to them. So my job in particular, because I'm a foreigner working for this INGO, this International

Non-Governmental Organization, was to train our staff so that they could go out and help educate these peoples and get our messages about safety. And if you see something, we had phone numbers set up that they could cook because everybody still had like a phone and or they they could access help in town or whatnot and so because my concentration or my specialty really is with children and developing those materials I was really able to help develop materials that really educated and spoke to kids and connected with kids but yeah so that's what I did so you said that part of your job was going all over Africa and part of that I mean you were in what was a relatively safer part of Somalia up in Somaliland in the north but you did have to go

down to the south to spread this information as well as part of your job as part of your job criteria can you talk us through when it was that you actually like engaged in that trip down south and how that all unfolded and were you frightened about going and doing it when there was so much conflict between the north and the south at that time yeah so I was based up in Hargeisa so like if you're not familiar with Somalia on a map, it looks kind of like a seven. So I was at the top of the seven. And then I was being called upon to conduct a staff training down in the lower part of the seven, down towards the bottom, just like a little bit too close to Mogadishu, which is what everybody knows in the headlines. For my comfort, we did have a field office there. And Galkayo

is divided in, well, at the time it was divided into north and south because it was inhabited by two different clans that were basically in conflict over resources and other things. So we had to have a North office and a South office. We had to have Northern staff and Southern staff. We had to have Northern vehicles that were licensed in the North and Southern vehicles that were licensed in the South to be able to conduct our work. And my colleague, who was a good friend of mine, an older Danish gentleman named Paul Thiested, he was based down there. And we had worked together in hard cases, so we knew each other pretty well. And he says, hey, I think it's time to do this staff training. I want you to come down here for a couple of days

and work with my staff. We'll figure out how we're going to transport from north to south. We scheduled it twice. I canceled it twice. The second time I canceled it because a bus full of women and children had been bombed by the opposing clan. And while I would never have been on that bus and I was technically not the target. I didn't feel comfortable about that. And it's not like I was handing out like, you know, food or like administering medical care. Like the work I was doing was important for sure, but it wasn't like emergency. So I just didn't see the urgency and going down there at that time. And so I called him the third time that we scheduled it. And he basically was like, look, if you don't get down here, I'm going to tell your supervisor

and you're going to lose your job because you're not doing, you're not fulfilling your role. And I was just like, well, that's not fair, you know, and I felt really bullied. So I called my boss and I'm like, what, like, what is like, I just don't know what to make sense of this. And she was like, well, if you signed on to this, then I guess you got to go. So I'm like, okay, well, here's the deal, right? Like I'm a, I'm a school teacher from Ohio, like Midwestern, you know, school teacher. I grew up in the church. Nothing bad happens to girls like me, right. I'm just doing my job. I'm following all the necessary security protocols. My security advisor in Nairobi says, yep, good to go. Like do it. So despite the fact that I didn't want to go,

I could get on a UN plane on like October 22nd or something. And I head down to Gaokaio. We do a couple of days of staff training in the North office and it all goes great. And then the third day I have to leave the office and get to the Southern part of the city, which is what I was the most afraid about because we were in vehicles and we had to travel a bit. And whenever something happens, it usually happens while you're in transit because you're kind of like a moving target or you're an easy target that's moving, but that's not, it's not hard for them to stop you. And, you know, I don't really, I don't know enough about this area to really know what I'm afraid of. Other than I remember walking into the guest house and putting

my bags down and Paul saying, don't go sit out on the veranda because that house over there, which I could see it was far away, but it was still within earshot or whatever. He said, there are pirates that live over there. And when they have gotten a ransom or gotten money, they shoot their guns off to celebrate and the bullets fly by and they hit the veranda. Wow. And I remember sticking my head to look out at the veranda and there were bullet holes all over the place. And I was just like, I feel like that's information I should have had. why didn't anybody tell me that there are pirates living 500 yards away from us? I feel like that's definitely something that you, yeah, you need that information to make

an educated decision on, hey, do I want to go and stay in this neighborhood if I could be shot? Yes. But just so everyone knows, Paul was who you were traveling with at the time. He was another aid worker. Yep. Yep. So he worked for the same organization. He was just based more permanently in that office in Galcao. And he was the one who told me I needed to come down. Okay. And this was the night that you, is this where it all unraveled? Is this the night that you texted your husband? And I guess, were you making a joke when you texted him saying,

if I get kidnapped, are you going to come get me? Or was there a real fear that you thought you could be kidnapped? Yeah, it was a really badly timed joke. I mean, I think I was joking, but I also think it was my subconscious like freaking out. October 25th, 2011, I get up that morning, I'd had nightmares all night long. Like I didn't sleep all night. And I kept having these nightmares that pirates had scaled the walls of the compound. They were like trying to drag me out of my room, like very vivid. I can still remember them. I woke up in Somalia, like Muslim countries, you're woken up with a call to prayer at daybreak. So it's, you know, and I wake up even before the call to prayer, which is unusual. And I'm sitting on the side of my bed and I'm just

like drenched in sweat and I'm almost shaking. I remember getting up and going to the bathroom and looking at myself in the mirror and just saying like, Jess, do you really want to do this? And I knew the answer was no. Like I did not, there was not one part of my being that wanted to leave that room and get in that convoy of vehicles and drive to the Southern office. But all I could think was like, I'm already here and my staff is expecting me and I'm going to lose my job. And what am I supposed to do? Go down and be like, hey, listen, I had these nightmares all night long about pirates. And so, yeah, I'm not going to go. And I know now I've been conditioned as a woman, especially to do stuff like this my entire life, to just reason and

pragmatize and logicize my way out of trusting my own voice, my own intuition. And when I turned around and I walked away from myself in that mirror, it was the most important decision I think I've ever made in my life. And it was a very active choice to abandon myself. But for you in that situation, I guess it's almost like you didn't really have a choice because if you decided not to go with that convoy that day, what was the alternative? Did you stay in this shack alone across from pirates that would shoot at you? Or you lose your job. Did you have a choice though? Would they have taken you back to where you deemed safe?

what were the options well i was staying in the guest i was staying in a guest house and it was a guarded compound so you know like i mean i'll never know would i have been safe there i yeah i think so i don't think that anybody would have come after me in that compound because what i know now like i have the clearest of hindsight right yeah maybe i would have lost my job i sure would have been up for a fight but it's hard also to say of course i would never want to go through all that again, but you know, where I am now and how my life is like, I wouldn't have it the way it is now if I hadn't gone through all of that. Um, I think that it was just the universe's way of shaking me up and saying like, no, yo, you can't do that anymore. Like you can't

live your life like this. Can you tell us a little bit about like that day after you woke up, after you went against your intuition and you got into the car how did that day unfold so I mean as I think is usual for these kind of situations right it unfolded normally I went I did my staff training it went well we had like a lunch at the end and I remember feeling so much immense relief that when we were done and like let's get and we're getting in this convoy of three vehicles and it's going to take us back to the guest house and I'm leaving tomorrow. I'll get back to my husband and I will have made it through. I'm like, I'm almost there, right? I can see the finish line. And the convoy took a little, it took like longer than it should have to get organized, right? And we had a Somali

guy, his name was Avni Rezak, who was the security advisor who was organizing the whole convoy. You know, Paul knew him. I didn't really know him because it wasn't my field base, but Paul knew him and it just seemed like he was on the phone a lot and then you know waiting and oh it's going to take a few you know but it's fine everything's fine and so you know that's when i sent that text to my husband like how ironic and crazy is that like just ridiculous right like if i get kidnapped are you going to come and rescue me ha ha ha finally we're ushered into these vehicles there's three land cruisers there's armed guards in the front we're in the middle and then armed guards in the back. There's some local staff in our vehicle and in the third vehicle as well.

I'm sitting next to the security advisor. And then we start driving through Galkayo. This town, you know, it's more than a village. It's a city, but you know, it's pretty primitive and the roads are rutted. So, you know, but we've got these big four wheel drive vehicles so we can get through and not paying attention. Like I'm checking my email, thinking about what I'm to have for dinner. And if I can get my workout in and, you know, stuff like that, just normal things that you do when you're on your way home from work. And about 15 minutes into the ride, somebody comes up along the right side of us, another vehicle and cuts us off so that we can't proceed and splashes mud up all over the windows and the windshield. And I'm just like, you know,

I'm used to like crazy driving and stuff in this part of the world, but I'm like, God, what a jerk Who drives like that? Come on. Let's get moving. Then I hear the crack of the butt of an NK-47 on the car hood. I start hearing all of this angry screaming, men screaming in Somali and some other language I don't understand. Then my door is pulled open. Abdi Rizak is dragged out. This man dressed in a police uniform gets in and he has an NK-47. He puts it to my head and he starts screaming at the driver to drive. And we, uh, like just take off like, you know, bats out of hell. Uh, you know, we're up on two wheels, we're down, we're up, you know, on these, these really rugged rudimentary roads. And then we're heading South, which does not make me feel good because

South, like the further South and Somalia you get, the closer you get to Al-Shabaab, Islamic extremists. I don't know who these guys are. I don't know what they want. I don't know where they're taking us. I'm thinking at this point, maybe they're just carjacking us, right? Like maybe here, like take my wallet, take my password. Here's all my rings, like take everything and just drop us out on the side of the road and we'll walk back to town. So you're still feeling optimistic at this point. You're still feeling like, okay, I'm just going to be robbed and it'll be over soon. I mean, I'm hoping, I don't, I would not say I'm feeling optimistic. I'm like trying really hard

not to have a panic attack because really all I can think is like whatever this is even if they do just drop us off and we walk back to town like everything has changed from this moment on and then the other thought that keeps going through my mind is just like this is bad this is bad this is so bad this is so bad can you explain to me in this moment who was in the car so it was an armored guard a driver yourself and who else was in there so it's paul and the front passenger and then i'm behind him and then now at this point it's the armed individual who has the kidnapper and then there's a very strange little man in the back going through all of my stuff it was like in my memory i don't i think it's just because everything was so like traumatic that you

know that like weird like circus music you know like a scene from a movie where it's like everything's going weird and wacky and like all everything's spinning. Like that's what it felt like, right? Like he's sitting back there. He's like going through all my stuff, like throwing it behind him, my passport, my lovely wallet from Ethiopia, like all this stuff. And I'm just like watching my whole life be like emptied out in front of me as I'm being driven through the desert. And I'm thinking like, what the fuck is happening? And Paul finally turns around and to like check on me and I whisper to him what is happening and he looks so sorry for me like gives me this look oh my god you haven't figured it out yet and then he just says we're being kidnapped I've got

goosebumps all over my body uh and I I mean what do you say to that like there's nothing to say I mean had you had it registered that that could have been or was it happening too quickly that you just couldn't even get your head around it. Yeah. No, no. And that's why like the thoughts going through my mind are just so basic. Like this is bad. This is bad. This is bad. Like I have no frame of reference for how bad this is. I have nothing to compare this to. Nothing in my life has prepared me. No training I've ever been through. I do not know what to do. So you hadn't had any level of kidnapping training or like traumatic event training, even though you're living in one of the most dangerous politically corrupt countries yeah so I have I've been through

hostile environment awareness training heat training for short I actually teach at heat trainings now but the one that I went through I would I would say it was lacking it was internal I believe they spent about an hour talking about kidnappings and I do remember the things I do remember them saying are that if you stay alive for the first 48 hours, if you've been abducted, then most likely they're not going to kill you and you're going to live. And the second thing I remembered is that you need to have a phone number memorized because they're going to take everything away from you. And we don't memorize phone numbers anymore, right? So I didn't have my husband's phone number, any phone numbers memorized, but I did have my dad's memorized.

so I think I kept thinking okay like if I can just stay alive for like the next hour like you you know you just take things incrementally that night was just so massively bizarre we would stop and we would change if you will personnel like more people would get in the car and they would they would change out and then we would stop and be forced into other vehicles and then change direction and you know we're just in the middle of the desert when I say like in the middle of the desert. Like there is nothing, there are no towns, there are no roads, there's no ambient light. Like there's just like in the middle of the desert. And I think probably after driving six or seven hours, we finally stopped. And now I'm sitting next to a guy who's got a big

turban on his head and he's got a huge machine gun. It's so long, it doesn't fit in a car. So the windows down and he's, you know, they're hanging out of the vehicles with machine guns so that they can shoot at anybody who starts shooting at us and he forces me out of the vehicle and tells me to walk into the desert and I'm just like yeah I'm not doing that like no nope I'm not doing that wow were you with Paul so did they keep you and Paul together at this point in time or did they separate you so together for a while this is at the beginning this is like this is just the first few hours into the whole thing. We went back and forth like this, walk, no, walk, no. We do this whole thing a couple of times. And Paul comes over to me and

he actually takes my hand and he says, Jessica, we have to walk. And so we do, I don't know, maybe 10, 20 minutes or something. And then they finally stop us and they force us onto our knees. And I'm like, OK, well, I think I'm 32 years old. I have no idea what I did to deserve this. But this is it. Like this is the end. Right. Like I put off having kids. Wow. I had no idea it was going to all end this way. And then one of them says, sleep. Just like that. Like lay down in the dirt and go to sleep. and it's so interesting how our body like our bodies and our minds work like our minds know that we have reached our limit we can't take anymore and so everything in me just shut down and I passed out for like I don't know a few hours and I was able to sleep and then I woke up the next morning just surrounded by guns and men and then that would be what would you know begin my 93 days of hell. So yeah, like we were together for, I don't know how many weeks,

probably a couple of weeks together. And then they would take us apart and then they would take one of us and then start firing off their guns and come back to the other one and say, oh, well, we shot her because negotiations weren't moving in the right direction or we sold him to Al-Shabaab. so you'll never see him again. Then a week later, he'd pop back up. The times that we were together were my lifeline because there was no one to talk to. There was nothing to do. I did not have a pen. I didn't have a piece of paper. I didn't have any books. I didn't have a bed. I slept on the ground for the entire captivity. We lived outside and we only had each other's stories to keep each other sane and and company and then when we didn't have that um it was really hard did you ever get a

chance to talk to paul i mean i feel like he would have some sense of guilt or responsibility that he had almost pressured you to come down and do this trip against your will was there ever that conversation that played out oh yes that would be that would be day 27 specifically specifically yes i will never forget that day because he told me so i feel like you should know that there was a direct kidnapping threat on the organization that i didn't tell you about oh my gosh and i'm like well what am i supposed to do with that now like you might be the last person i ever talked to like you very very probably will be the last person i ever talked to in my life and so i'm going to have to shelf that for now because I need you. Like I can't be mad at you, like sit

here and be mad at you about this because I need you too much for my own survival and my own sanity. So I was not able to process that during captivity. And I'll be honest, I don't think I started processing that until just a couple of years ago. And once that Pandora's box was opened, there was a lot in there to deal with for him to be that deep and just want to get that off his chest he obviously I mean it's almost a bit of a selfish thing to do in that point isn't it because nothing can come from that other than relieving himself of maybe a little bit of guilt that he feels but yes I imagine for you when he's the literally the only person there and do you at this point do either of you understand any Somali or can you converse with the people that have

kidnapped you at all? I would say I knew a little bit, like not much. It's a really difficult language. So, and then there were a few, like the leader of the group, he was a man that called himself Abdi. He spoke pretty, pretty good English. He was also like mentally ill. So that was difficult to communicate with. Several of them knew like a little bit of English and I, you know, we knew a little bit of Somali, so we could like make it work. You know, most of the time they were just screaming at us. So we weren't like sitting there having like long drawn out conversations. It was like something to the equivalent of like fucking shut up and, you know, sit down or get in the car or, you know, stuff like that. And every once in a while there could

be a conversation. We made a few friends, if you will, throughout the course of the time there, But they were also like not really allowed to like be nice to us. So you just had to be like really careful about who was around and like you were always watching and observing and trying to connect in any way that you possibly could, even if that was just through like eye contact or a gentler way of motioning to something. it was like the most important experience for me in terms of like learning how to humanly connect for my own survival in saying that you made some friends in there now with these people who were also somali pirates who had shown you some compassion are these the people that you connected with yeah i there were a couple of guys that were really guards i mean and they called themselves pirates but who knows like i don't think any of them had ever been on a ship before. So we were never really taken to a ship or anything. But there was one in particular. His

name was Dyer. He was a driver and we got to know him pretty well. He had sympathy for us. This is not what he wanted to be doing. This is not what he wanted for his life. I think he was genuinely a good man. I think he was a weak man. And I also think that he didn't have any options. Somalia is a country where people live on less than a dollar a day. At the time, the average life expectancy he was 46 years old. The man had eight kids, you know, I don't know if one of his kids was medically fragile and needed, you know, like, so if you go and you're not hitting me across the face over and over again, and you know, you're earning your 20 bucks a day, I could see how he would justify something like that. Okay. So it was 93 days in total. Let's talk about where you're

at now and how deep you were into this kidnapping experience before you realized what they were after did you think you were going to be sold into a sex trade did you think you were going to be raped did you think that it was a ransom and they were going to let you go do you think you were just going to be murdered for fun what was going through your head and when did it all start to make sense that okay there is a purpose this is what they want and I just need to hang on I mean I think all of it and I we knew you know pretty well like pretty soon in that they weren't al-Shabaab. So it wasn't an ideological thing, particularly being an American in that kind of situation is super scary. The ransom demand was $45 million. Wow. Which is ludicrous.

Right. Again, the people that I'm interacting with are guards. They don't have any say in any of this. They're just being paid like 20 bucks a day, given cigarettes and chat, which is like a narcotic type leaf that they chew. It's a, it's a big, huge cultural practice. Yes. Afraid I was going to be raped every single minute of every single day. Men were sleeping next to me on my mat, like touching me, like their hands all over me in the middle of the night. How do you like, try to bathe yourself out in the desert when you're like given maybe a liter of water every couple of days and trying to protect myself, trying to take my clothes off. I mean, it's just like it was a whole thing. Yes. Being sold to Al-Shabaab or whoever, another group,

constantly being threatened with that as in your people are not offering enough money. So we're going to just sell you, we can get $5 million for you if we sell you to Al-Shabaab and they're just going to cut your head off, like constant, constant. And I have no reason not to believe them. So there was never a time when I was not afraid of what was going to be next. But in saying that, how did you stay so strong? Like, how did you, I mean, I think, you know, when I think if I was in that situation, I would just like pull up stumps. Like, I don't think I could do that.

How did you get up each day and continue on not knowing when the ending was coming? 93 days is such an incredible amount of time to be put under this sort of trauma. Well, I think the thing people don't understand is that 93 days is really short in comparison and to most hostage takings. I actually volunteer with a nonprofit that's based here in DC. It's called Hostage US. And we just had a big, huge, a bunch of stuff that we did this past weekend. And I heard another former hostage share her story. She was held for 16 months in Yemen, underground in a prison. And so I say the same thing to her, right? Like, I don't know how you could do it for 16 months. I think when people say that to me, I'm always like, well, you would do it

because you would have to. And that's the incredible thing about these experiences, about these traumatic events in our lives, in whatever capacity that they show up, is that they are our proof of what we are made of. And I now know, and sometimes I'm like, just like anybody else. I hope to live a long life. I hope my children live long, healthy lives and my husband, but I don't know what's coming. We just don't know and we don't have any control, but I know that I'm strong and that there is nothing special about me. I am just an average woman living an average life who just wants the same thing that everybody else wants. I think you're underselling yourself a little bit there I think there is something very special

about you because there's not a lot of people that could have gotten through that with the mindset that you did and the strength that you did and one thing I wanted to ask there's a part of me that's a bit ashamed to say that I had a preconceived idea of something that would have happened and something I expected to happen but I did the whole way I just thought when are they going to start the part where she got raped she this woman is and I was mortified the whole time I thought there is no way that a group of men, all male pirates, have taken a young, beautiful woman, American woman, into the desert for months. There's no one else around. There is no way that they are not going to rape this poor woman.

That's what I thought the whole time. And one of the things I was most surprised about was the fact that no one did. Why do you think that is? Why do you think you were so lucky that to be – because obviously they're rebels. Maybe they do have some sort of level of moral compass that we don't know about. But that was just so shocking to me. So what was that like for you? I can say that I believe it was coming. I think that it was going to be used as a last resort for negotiations. I think that in general, culturally, Somalis are,

well, you know, they're very religious. And while I would say that many of the men that were there were not super religious, at least from what I could see, there were some. And the one friend that we made, Dyer, we called him Helper. He was very religious, prayed five times a day. And every night that he was there at the camp, he slept right next to me. And I believe that he did that to protect me from assault. And I think he had some level of respect. He was older. And I think that I have no way of knowing, but I believe that he kept me from harm to a certain extent, as much as he could. And if I had been out there much longer, I'm not sure that there's much more he could have done. But I think he did what he could do in the time that we were out

there. Going through all of this, what was it that you kept coming back to? I mean, your husband is there in Somalia. You have your family back in the United States. What was it that you were thinking about that was keeping you going and keeping your hopes alive? So I realized, you know, maybe like 45 days in that at the beginning, like the first couple of weeks and like the first month I thought, you know, I'm an aid worker. Like the villages are going to put pressure on these guys. Like they're going to sympathize. They're going to, they're going to let us out soon, right? Like $45 million. That's not for real. And then I realized, you know, we're in this for the long haul. There's not enough pressure in the world. The only pressure that's going to work is the

pressure of $100 bills. And so I'm going to have to figure out how to survive this because something inside of me wanted desperately to live. I knew I wanted to live. And so I decided, I don't know, I think that this is just part of my personality too, and like just my natural inclination. But I have found in interviewing other survivors, kidnapping survivors, that we all tend to do the same thing. So I made a work plan for myself because you need to have a purpose when you get up in the morning. And so I didn't have any paper to write on or any books to read or anything to do per se. So all I had was what was going on in my head. And my mom had actually passed away a year before all of this happened. And we lost her really suddenly and very unexpectedly. And I

was still very much grieving the loss of her. And I was really angry about it all. And I had been contemplating taking a leave of absence from my job and like going to India. And I pictured myself like, I don't know, like an eat, pray, love situation, right? Where I was going to like sit in an ashram. Yeah. Right. Like so cliche, but like that was like, I was researching yoga retreats and I was just going to go sit for three months and not talk to anybody and just cry out my pain, right? And I woke up one morning while I'm out there in the desert and it dawned on me, I was like, you know what? People have to quit their jobs and travel halfway around the world to go out and find themselves. Maybe this is my chance. Maybe this is my opportunity because

God only knows how much time I have. I have no idea how long I'm going to be out here sitting, nothing to do. I have nothing to distract me. I have nothing to preoccupy me. And I did think it was very poignant that I was sitting under a tree all day. And I was like, okay, if you look at all the great religious or like spiritual leaders, like the Buddha reached enlightenment under a tree and Jesus wandered in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. And, you know, the saints starved themselves, even though I desperately wanted to eat, but you know, stuff like that.

Right. So like all started kind of like coming together. So I thought, okay, well, I'm going to take each year of my life and I'm going to remember everything that ever happened to me ever, like in the most crazy detail I can possibly access. You know, so like when I was four years old, my mother took me to the movie theater for the first time and we saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And I remember the color of her dress and what the popcorn tasted like. And like over and over and one by one, I had this amazing transcendent experience of this life of 30, well, 28 years really that I had lived. I mean, I get chills

just like thinking about it and like every single date that I'd ever been on with my husband and what it felt like when we kissed for the first time. And it sounds like, I don't want it to sound like some trope or something, but I really did. I accessed this space within myself that felt so good and so grateful and so content sitting there hour after hour, just traveling through the memories of my life that I got to the, I was like, like high on it. Right? Like Paul would come over and start talking to me and I'd be like, Nope, you go back to your mat. Like I'm in the middle of like, I'm, I'm watching my movies here. And then when I got to that point where I couldn't remember anything else, then I started to plan. And that was super fun because

I'm a I'm a visionary I'm a big huge thinker I love like the creative process and so I was just like well let's go up into the stratosphere like I'm gonna get out of here so what am I gonna do next because I sure as hell I'm not gonna go work for DDG so it was my only escape so what was the day-to-day like for the 93 days just just in general in terms of how what was the treatment like were you starved were you fed rations were you did you just literally sit on the ground and you weren't allowed to wander around the camp what what did it look like all of that and it just depended it depended on where what camp we were at it depended on what was going on I think in the you know outlying areas I had was not privy to that information most of the time I just sat

on my butt on a mat under a tree I developed sores on my rear end from sitting like bed sores from sitting for so long. Sometimes I'd be allowed to walk around my mat. Sometimes even the perimeter of the camp. I have always practiced yoga. So when I had room, like under a lot of times I had to sit under a bush, which was like, did not leave room for much space to do anything. The thing that makes these situations, there's so much about this situation that was hard, but it was the like not being able to anticipate how my kidnappers were going to be that day. So maybe somebody would be in a good mood and let me have like, I don't know, an extra piece of bread. And then maybe I wouldn't get to eat it all that day. Like you had no way of knowing what was coming at

you at all times. I lost 35 pounds, I think within the course of 93 days. I'm five foot 11. I came out of there at 119 pounds so for me that was really really thin well yeah like I ate a small tin of tuna fish with my fingers in the morning and then I would have a can of pineapple in the afternoon before I would go to bed so that's about for all of our Aussie listeners that's about 16 kilos that you lost it's an extraordinary amount of weight and I imagine there probably wasn't much of you to start with. I mean, this is 10 years ago, so my body was very different than pre-kid. But yeah, I mean, I was thin, very tall, very thin. And then I remember coming out and my sister seeing me for the first time in a swimsuit because we were like, I don't

know why we were swimming, but she was just like, oh my God, like could not believe what I mean. I looked like I'd been in a concentration camp. So yeah, no, I mean, I was starving. I stopped, I had one menstrual cycle, I think between the stress and being malnourished, I just didn't have a period anymore, which was also really handy because that's a really hard thing to navigate when you're out there in the desert. When everything started to come to an end, the night that you were rescued, what happened that day leading up to that evening or how did that all unfold? Yeah. So I probably like we were there over Christmas and New Year's. So into 2012, like mid-January, I had gotten a urinary tract infection and it was moving into a kidney

infection. I'd had one before, so I knew what it was like. And I had been hospitalized for a week with it. So I knew that I needed an IV and I needed antibiotics bad from the nature of like being outside all that time and not having proper like clean water to wash with and not even having like proper things to like wipe with. Not even having enough water to flush it out, you know? Yeah. No. To drink all of that. Yeah. So I'm amazed that it took me that long to get sick, but then I started to go downhill really, really fast. And I was in a massive amount of pain and they would not like bring a doctor. They would not, I knew what kind of medication I needed for the urinary tract infection. They couldn't get it. They wouldn't get it. So it just progressed.

And January 16th, 2012, I had what would be, I didn't know what them, but it was my last proof of life call with our family negotiator, like communicator asked me a series of questions and to make sure that it was still me and that I was still alive so that negotiations could keep moving forward. And I said, you know, look, you've got to do something because I, I'm not going to make it out of here alive if you don't here are my symptoms and it's every day it's getting worse and this is going to be on you guys if you don't get me out i'm i'm not going to make it out but imagine being and like i shouldn't make a joke about it imagine being kidnapped for three months by somalian rebels and you die because of a urinary tract infection not because of not because

i was shot or yeah no not because of the terrorism but because of a urinary tract infection yeah i I mean, lack of help, lack of hygiene, lack of support, lack of everything. Yeah. But at this point, so when you say you had this proof of life call, so how often would you have proof of life calls and what did that process look like? So I had six in total. It generally looked like just being ordered into a vehicle, driven out into the middle of the desert, two, three hours away from where we were camping.

Most of the time it was in the middle of the night. And then they would put me on the phone and it would be for the first three, it was another Somali gentleman who identified himself as a guy named Mohammed, who was still working for the organization. And he would ask me security questions like, what was the name of my first dog? What was my mother's maiden names? You know, like your bank check-in questions, like if you're doing stuff like that. And then the last three were with a woman. I don't know what happened to Mohammed. It was a woman who named, her name was Alex, she said, and she would do the same thing. And she kept telling me things were moving in the right direction. They were not moving in

the right direction, I would often think about that and say, why would you ever say that? You can never say that to a hostage. And then the phone would be ripped out of your hand and you'd be stuffed back in the car and driven back and you have no idea when it's going to happen again. And so this process, they've asked for $45 million. That's the only thing that they're going to accept. Now, is it normal for the American government to negotiate down that amount is it normal for the american government to give any amount of money what is the normal procedures and how these things play out so no it's a negotiation so they start high and then our people start low the american government has a you know just an overarching policy that they do

not negotiate with terrorists or whatever you would call these guys so i believe our people's first our side, their counter was $20,000. It's going to take a really long time to find a middle ground between 45 million and 20,000. So it was a little tricky because I was working for a Danish organization and a colleague was Danish and then the U.S. government got involved. And so actually it was really the whole negotiation and research part of the process was led by the FBI because anytime a violent crime against an American occurs, the FBI gets involved. I didn't know this at the time, but an FBI agent named Matt Espenshade, who was stationed in Nairobi. Fortunately for me, his wife was teaching and his kids were going to the same school that I

had taught at. So there was this like major emotional connection because everybody at the school knew me and that man worked around the clock and did not see his family for three months because he was not going to rest until I got out of there and it's not like that for everybody no you're lucky to have those people on your team but I mean okay talking about getting out of there this is the part that just gives me goosebumps it's like a scene out of a movie 24 secret service agents navy seals seal team six very yeah seal team six very famous for killing Osama bin Laden like this is this is the team you want on your side yeah they drop out of the air in the middle of the night and save you and it's literally out of a movie what happened that night did you have

any feeling something was coming was there talk amongst the rebels or did out of the middle of nowhere did these navy seals just rush in and save you so uh that night yeah i pulled my mat out i do my what i normally do i the one thing that was different that night i remember talking to my mom and saying like you know you got to get me out of here like you got to do something like i need a miracle right now. And I fell asleep. I woke up a couple hours later because I was sick. And I remember trying to drag myself up off my mat, but I was really weak and really sick. And I was saying the word toilet over and over because that's how we asked to be excused from our mat to go to the bathroom. There were nine guys on the ground that night, but every single one of

them was completely passed out, which was unusual because there was always at least one guy who had been keeping guard, you know, throughout the night and, but they were all out. I kept saying toilet, toilet over and over again. No one woke up. So I go, I do what I need to do. I come lay back down, wrap myself up in my blanket. And then I hear like, no, we're like in the desert. So we're like, I'm sleeping on sand, but there's like scrubby grass around and stuff. And I can hear something. It sounds like an animal coming toward me. Cause I can hear the brush like breaking. And from time to time we dealt with like snakes and hyenas and things like that. So I was just like, not really in the mood to deal with anything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I really need to

sleep here. Right. So please just universe work with me. And then the night just erupts into gunfire. Um, and I, I can hear the guys like around me, like screaming at each other, get up, get up, something like that. You know, they've got their guns, they're shooting. I'm just trying to press myself down to the ground to get as small and as low as I possibly can. And all I can think is like, shit, I'm not going to make it out of here. Like this is probably another group, like another kidnapping group. It's probably, maybe it's Al-Shabaab. Like I'm really not going to make it out of this thing alive. You know, I'm hearing just horrific sounds all around me. Like guys are hitting the ground, like they're breathing their last breath. And I'm thinking

like I'm going to be next. And then I feel hands on my, like on my feet and on my arms. And they're kind of shaking me, trying to pull my blanket away. And I'm keeping my blanket, you know, I don't know what I think. I'm just trying to protect myself. And I hear this young man's voice and he sounds, he reminds me of my baby brother. Like this is young American man and he knows my name and he says jessica it's okay we're the american military you're safe now we're gonna take you home oh i'm gonna cry i can't imagine the relief and all i can say over and over again is you're american you're american wait i don't wait you're american i don't i don't understand and you know because and then i just start shaking right like shock completely takes over

and then I can see that I'm surrounded by these men and they're in like masks and everything's very dark and one of them gives me water like clean water and some medicine and he says we've been watching you for a really long time and we know how sick you've been and we're going to take you home where were they watching you from how had they been able to to see what was going on I mean people think I know more than I do but I really don't but what I can say is that there are systems and there are people and there are cameras and they're, I mean, they're hearing my conversations. They're seeing my white butt when I take my, like, go sit down to use the bathroom behind a termite hill. Like, I think half of the US government has seen my ass. Like,

you know, like, I mean, they have been watching and they were just waiting, just waiting for the right opportunity. I think that they had actually, like, gotten to the point where they were about ready to launch a rescue mission like three times and then had to call it because something something didn't line up the synchronicity and the like the way all of the stars had to be aligned that night for myself and for Paul and for all of the U.S. Navy SEALs that were on that mission to be able to make it out of that thing alive is the absolute definition of a miracle because there was no moon that night. These guys jumped out of a plane in the middle of the night. They can't see. They don't know if they're falling towards the ground. I mean, it's unimaginable

what they did for me, this girl that they don't know. What was that period like after being rescued and then being reunited with your family, with your husband, reintegrating back into society. What were the following weeks for you like? Well, the following weeks are always kind of like a honeymoon period, right? You're like, oh my God, I'll have all the wine and all the cheese. And like, you know, no one's going to tell me when I can go to the bathroom when I can't. And so, you know, and you're just like back with your family. And interestingly enough, my book is called Impossible Odds, but we always joke that the impossible odds is that I actually got pregnant with my son two weeks after the rescue. Oh my gosh. So I found out like five

weeks after that i was pregnant with my first child well i mean that is it that is a miracle right because you you had lost your period for three months because of stress and illness yeah i mean how does a body like that conceive but then i subsequently threw up for eight months so i went from one hostage taking to kind of another one in a way like it was really difficult and I had post-traumatic stress disorder. And then I had anxiety and, you know, then my son was born and he was beautiful and gorgeous. And I was scared all the time. I had him in Nairobi and we lived in Nairobi for about seven months after he was born. And I started to get like psychotically anxious because I was worried that somebody was going to take him from me,

you know, which I think makes total sense. And then had to like, we had to leave. And it was one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life because that wasn't my plan, right? I felt like then something else had been taken away from me. I've lost my career. I've lost my home. Now what do we do? Where do we go? We come back to the US. My husband's not from the US. He's Swedish. And so he never lived in the States and we had to rebuild and I had to reinvent myself in the middle of babies and anxiety and it was so hard. So Jess that just is really interesting to me when you came back because if I think if I was in that situation I would be like get me the fuck out I would not be wanting to stay but you stayed on for seven more months and you planned

on living there was there not a part of you that was that just was so petrified after what you'd been through and you just wanted to get back to the safety of American soil? Well you know I lived in Africa for so long. I lived there for about six, seven years at that point. So that was home to me. And Kenya is different than Somalia. I mean, Nairobi, my friends were there. I had this beautiful home and generally felt safe there. I was really fascinated. And I think a lot of people don't understand that this is even a thing. And that is the reintroduction of hostages into their normal life. You don't just get picked up, saved from your situation, and then you're like, here's your family. There's a whole structure put in place to get you back to, you don't just go

and see your husband again, do you? Can you talk to us about that reintroduction? Sure. Now I will say that that's not standard for everybody. That was offered to me as an American citizen because I was the recipient of a military intervention. There are hostages and former detainees that are just dropped off. Like they get off a plane and they don't have one single soul who knows anything or cares about them. And that's why my work with Hostage U.S., this nonprofit, is so important to me because we fill in that gap for them. However, I did participate in the Department of Defense's Hostage Reintegration Program, and that was very structured. It's very research-based, and it's a reintegration process that is for your

highest well-being as you are reintegrated into society with your family because it's a very overwhelming experience. I do have two questions which just to kind of complete the story and it is traveling back a little bit but I would love to know what happened to Abdi who was the security guard that was sitting next to you like how did that happen where he was pulled out of the car and was he involved in this at all because you kind of implied that by saying that he was on the phone and he was back and forth with people in the organization of this convoy what happened to him? So Abdi Razak was employed by DDG the same as I was. And my understanding is that he set the whole thing up and he orchestrated it and he sold Paul and I for $100,000 to this group.

So if you could like picture them like the American mafia, that's essentially what this group was. It had like, it was a web. They had financiers in the US and in the UK and who knows, probably Australia, like all over the world. And so I know I've heard conflicting stories about Avdi Rezak at one point. His wife was killed because I believe he used her as a human shield. I think he was in jail for a little while. I don't know if he's alive or dead. I mean, he's a bad person. A bad, bad person. And whatever happened to Paul and do you still have a relationship with Paul? So Paul and I do not have a relationship. We tried to make amends, I guess you could say. I never felt like he took appropriate responsibility

for his part and how all of this played out. So I said, I can't do this anymore. And so I haven't talked to him in years. My understanding through social media is that he is still working for DDG. Wow. And did you ever, this is a big one. Did you ever get to see the seals, the special forces that saved your life? Did you ever get to see them and speak to them? And I don't want to say hang out with them, but thank them and converse with them and talk about that night? So a couple of years ago, I actually did have the opportunity to go and it was very quiet and it was very, it was not publicized. I didn't tell anybody about it. Only my immediate family knew. I drove down to Virginia Beach and I met several of them that

had been on my mission. Some of them have retired, but they knew I was there. And that was, I had no idea how much I needed that to be able to hug them and to tell them thank you to their faces and to let them know like that I was doing okay. And then I, I have this little boy now and this little girl. And it was the full circle that I think I just never thought I would ever get to have. And you know what happened? I think until then I had not been telling my story. Like I hadn't been telling the right version of my story. I had been telling it kind of like from a damsel and distressed point of view. And after I had that meeting with them, I realized that a story has room for more than one hero and that I can be a hero too. And that really set me off on a

trajectory that I've been on for a while that has just been awesome. Jess, you're incredible. And I know you say that anybody would react in the way that you did because they had to, but I just think Like to have the, to have not only the strength to go through that, but to be able to be where you are now, to speak in the way that you do, to share the message that you share. It is truly incredible. And you should be so, so deeply proud of that. And we're so grateful to have you on the podcast. We're so grateful for you sharing your story with us and giving us your time.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. I really, really am grateful. Like this is, you've, I really wanted to speak to you and I'm so glad that we got the chance for you to share your story with all of our Australian listeners. And for our Australian listeners or anyone listening, where can people find you a bit more? I know that you're literally a Google search away, but in terms of social media or speaking your book, just give us a little rundown on everything that we can read about you. Yeah. So my website is www.jessbuchanan.com

and I hang out on Instagram a lot, which is how we connected. So I'm Jessica C Buchanan. and then let's see I just started my own publishing imprint a soul speak press so any women who are looking to write a book come and check me out and then you can catch me every Monday with my co-host my podcast co-host Jessica Kidwell we're the two Jesses and we have a podcast called we should talk about that and we talk about all the things no one is talking about but really you should you're an incredible woman you're very inspirational and I I'm just blown We could literally talk to you for two hours. I could talk to you for hours.

Thank you so much. I could too. Thank you so much for taking the time. Everyone go and check out Jess and her incredible story. Thanks, ladies. You guys know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our lowlight of each and every week. Now, Brittany Hockley, you can kick it off.

What was your suck? I will come in with a suck this week, which was I went out on the weekend. I said that at the start. I went out, had a, you know, I was having a really great time. It was pumping. i don't know if it was because it was election day i was getting loose after lining up for voting all day but it was pumping and i for the first time in a long time i got hit on and i was like oh i can't believe someone's actually approached me like this is great we're having a great time

out in the wild as well not on a dating app yeah and then someone told me that he actually has a wife at home and this is if you guys know my history i seem to get hit on a lot by people that are married and i don't know why and it just kept left a sour taste in my mouth i actually went home i was like fuck you all every single man like i was like you're just giving a bad reputation to every man and just put a sour taste in my mouth did you say anything to him did you say hey i just found out you've got a wife no i just smoke bombed right in all honesty like my sweet was the fact that someone hit on me for sure but like i wouldn't have hooked up with this person anyway he wasn't my he wasn't my type but we're having great convo for sure but then told me that he

had not he didn't tell me someone told me he had a wife and i just thought how how are you doing this how is this still a thing that every second person I feel like every second person is evil great so your your suck of the week is that there's no good men today because they're all I had one of those yeah but you know when you have one of those moments where it's like I feel like every every girl that is on the dating scene or has ever been on the dating scene everyone has been through that moment where you're like it's like when you drink too much you're like I'm never drinking again I was like I am never going out again I am never dating again I'm done anyway go home download the app again about 20 minutes later that's a vicious cycle laura what dating

apps are you on at the moment or like how frequently are we swiping on the apps i okay yeah let me just let's unpack this let me just show you what i'm okay if there's if there's a dating app i have it no i am on raya the one i met jordan on let's check out britney hockley's screen time for dating apps and which ones she's using the most not really so i'm on raya the one i met jordan on but you don't really use it and then i have hinge and bumble i don't have tinder but i don't really use them to be honest i i use them for like i reckon if you looked at my screen time i reckon it'd be five minutes max a week not even a day no way give me your phone i don't believe this for one fucking second i do not believe it either and i have to say britney i

keep on getting screenshots from my mates around the eastern suburbs of sydney and them saying is this really britney or is this a fake britney and i'm like it's it's really her this is and this is we don't need you on hinge okay we don't need that type of competition okay this makes also you're 34 not 33 oh my god i forgot i did that i shaved a year off when i i remember i did it as a bit of a joke i was like i'm just gonna be a bit younger i shaved a year off and i forgot i'm so i'm younger on my day now okay what is your sweet for the week my sweet for the week would probably be Delilah learned a new trick and yes Delilah is my life everybody she's she's all I have right now okay she learned a new trick um I'll try and make her I'll put on my Instagram

it's sit pretty that is her trick she sits on her hind legs and she puts her front two legs up in the air and that's about it and that's what she went to military camp for she and and to be honest she only does it half the time that you ask her to do it yeah it's selective we're getting there I mean don't knock her down Laura all right give me your suck Laura Byrne so my suck is that both of my kids are well they're not really sick they're just like daycare snotty and coffee and blah jumping castle yeah they just like you know leaked a jumping castle on the weekend so now they're a bit gross and feral but they are not sleeping so they've both been up all night for the past two nights and it's like a it's like a rotating hit wheel one minute it's marley and then

she goes to sleep and then it's lola and they never do it at the same time it's always at 30 minute intervals and it's one after another so a tag team yeah all night long um so yes absolutely no sleep that is my suck and my sweet for the week though my sweet for the week is that over the weekend I got to have a beautiful lunch with my girlfriends the five girlfriends who went and had lunch with and talked about tampons oh the great tampon debate 2022 tampon debate of life uncut and my my besties having a baby in a week and a half maybe three weeks who knows it's out there for when the baby decides to come but she's due in a week and a half so we got to have our last little like hurrah as friends down my last hurrah before she goes before that you know we

said goodbye we said we said we'll see you in a couple of years I've sent her on her way it'll be her second child so I probably won't ever see her again uh and then that's it yeah life is over as we know it no it's not having two kids is the best thing ever so if anybody out there is pregnant and having their second don't let anybody tell you I think that sometimes we when you are pregnant and you're having your second kid, people are so quick to tell you how hard it is all the time. And sometimes people forget to tell you just how awesome it is at the same time.

Well, I did just read an article by Manny J saying how hard parenting is the worst thing, not the worst, the hardest thing of his life. And I did just say that I get no sleep. But apart from the no sleep and the challenging times, it is the best thing that's ever happened to us. But anyway, guys, that is it from us. We hope that you loved today's episode.

We will be back on Thursday with Ask Uncut. So if you have any questions, slide on into the DMs. You guys know the drill. It is Life Uncut Podcast, and that's where you can send in your questions for Thursday's episode. And if you've loved today's interview with Jessica Buchanan, please jump onto Apple Podcasts, leave us a review, and tell us what you thought of the whole episode.

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