Life Uncut - Kidnapped in Somalia A story of survival with Jessica Buchanan - from the Archives

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Hey Lifers, During our summer break we wanted to revisit some of our most impactful conversations that you might have missed at the time. This episode was originally from May 2022 and Jessica Buchanan's story is one that we still think about often! "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.   You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Laura Byrne Produced by Keeshia Pettit Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany and I'm Laura and this is one of our walk down memory lane episodes. It's one from the archives. So I'm taking you all the way back to the 24th of May 2022. Now this was an episode with Jessica Buchanan. She is a humanitarian worker and she was kidnapped in Somalia by Somalian land pirates. Now, as much as that sounds like an absolutely untrue, unfathomable, wild tale, it is very true and it gets more unfathomable. Not only was she kidnapped for 90 days, she was saved by SEAL Team 6, which is the same team that found and killed Osama bin Laden. I remember when you brought this because like obviously we talk about who we're going to interview and you know I bring

ideas Brit brings ideas and Brit was like I have this interview I want to do and it's around me it's around a kidnapping in Somalia honestly it was very left to field for us but it was one of the most interesting conversations I think we have ever had on the podcast when we released this episode the feedback on it was incredible and whether you missed this episode at the time or you were just revisiting the story because it is one that is truly worth revisiting. We hope that you enjoyed the episode. 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 traveled 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. 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 a 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 anything goes this one's a good one so a couple years ago I was skiing with my family we went to um 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. And 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 am 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. So 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 like 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 was 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 I was, 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 we, 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 dangers 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 land mines 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 they're migratory people they're 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 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 they don't have access to like google so they're not gonna like google this shiny object that they found and so they stockpile 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, you know, 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 like 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 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 Thustad. He was based down there and we had worked together up in Hargaisa, 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. And I felt really bullied. So I called my boss and I'm like, what is,

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. I'm a school teacher from Ohio, like a Midwestern 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. Do it. So despite the fact that I didn't want to go, I could get on a UN plane on October 22nd or something and I head down to Gaokao. 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 it's not hard for them to stop you. And 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 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 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 you're gonna 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 there'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 like 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 in, 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 gonna 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. Like, let's get moving. And then I hear the crack of the butt of an AK-47 on the car hood. And I start hearing all of this angry screaming. men screaming in Somali and some other language I don't understand. And then my door is pulled open. Abdirizak 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 just take off like, you know, bats out of hell. You know, we're up on two wheels. We're down. We're up, you know, on these really rugged, rudimentary roads. And then we're heading south, which does not make me feel good because south, like the further south in 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 passport. 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 is 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 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 to like check on me. And I whispered 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 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 know, you just take things incrementally. That night was just so massively bizarre. We would stop and we would change, if you will, personnel. More people would get in the car and they would change out. And then we would stop and be forced into other vehicles and then change direction. And we're just in the middle of the desert. And when I say in the middle of the desert, there is nothing. There are no

towns. There are no roads. There's no ambient light. There's just in the middle of the desert. and I think probably after driving six or seven hours we finally stop 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 the car so the window's down and he's you know they're hanging out of the 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 we're not doing 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 you know 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, you know, 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, okay, well, I think I'm 32 years old. I have no idea what I did to deserve this. But this is it. This is the end. 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. Lay down in the dirt and go to sleep. And it's so interesting how our bodies and our minds work.

Our minds know that we have reached our limit and 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. And then a week later, he'd pop back up. So 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 company. And then when we didn't have that, 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 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 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 like 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 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, touching me, their hands all over me in the middle of the night. How do you try to bathe yourself out in the desert when you're 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 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 like have a purpose right when you get up in the morning and so I didn't have any like paper to write on or you know any 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 like a year before all of this happened and we lost her really suddenly and very unexpectedly 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 and not, 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, 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 at 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 5 foot 11 I came out of there at 119 pounds so for me that was really really thin 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 that's an extraordinary amount of weight and I imagine there probably wasn't much of you to start with I mean I was you know this

is 10 years ago so my body was very different than pre-kid but yeah I mean I was 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, I mean, I look 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 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 I 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 NIV 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 um 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 because I was shot or yeah no not because of the terrorism but because of a urinary tract infection yeah 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 you generally look 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 like 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 driven back and you have no idea when it's going to happen again and so this process that 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 US 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 tied up 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 6. Yeah. SEAL Team 6, very famous for killing Osama bin Laden. Like this is, this is the team you want on your side. 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 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 and cause I was sick. And I remember like 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, you know, 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 because 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 this 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 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 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 u.s 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 US 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 gonna 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. Cause 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 had never, that wasn't my plan. Right. Like I felt like then something else had been taken away from me. I've lost my career. I've lost my home. Like now what do we do? Where do we go? We come back to the U S my husband's not from the U us, he's Swedish. And so he'd 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 just was so petrified after

what you'd been through and you just wanted to get back to the safety of American soil? Well, I'd lived in Africa for so long. I'd 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. 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 US, 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 Rezac 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 U.S. and in the U.K. and who knows, probably Australia, like, all over the world. And so I know I've heard conflicting stories about Abdirizak 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 in distress perspective, like 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 just 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, 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 should.