Caroline Zentner
lethbridge herald
czentner@lethbridgeherald.com
As the keynote speaker at the South Western Alberta
Teachers' Convention Thursday, Amanda Lindhout's message to teachers was
straightforward - educating youth is what's going to change the world.
She encouraged them to help students become agents of
peace, whether in their local community or across the world. Lindhout said she believes
everyone has a responsibility to create positive change in the world and she
hopes her own efforts can be an example for others.
Growing up in Red Deer, she spent most of her life
thinking there wasn't much she could do to solve world problems, but being
kidnapped and held hostage in Somalia for 460 days changed her perspective of
the world.
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| Amanda Lindhout, who spent 15 months as a hostage in Somalia, speaks with a teacher following her keynote address at the South Western Alberta TeachersÕ Convention Thursday at the 1st Choice Savings Centre at the University of Lethbridge. Herald photo by Ian Martens |
She discovered sources of strength within herself that
have helped her transform a very painful experience.
"There are so few visible reminders of that experience,"
she told the crowd.
She had no mirror during her captivity and said she
didn't recognize the woman staring back at her the first time she looked into
one after her release. Patches of her hair were gone, seven teeth and a couple
of toenails were missing and she was weak and very thin from starvation.
In 2008, Lindhout was 26 years old travelling the world
with a backpack on her shoulders.
As she heard their stories she concluded people have more
in common than not. They want to be safe, get an education and provide for
their families. She pursued a career as a journalist to tell those stories.
That summer she was in Baghdad, Iraq working as a freelance journalist covering
the war.
"I had Somalia on my mind," Lindhout said.
With no functioning government for 20 years, Somalia was
called one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, a photojournalist from
Australia, decided to go together. They were kidnapped while on their way to
film one of the camps for displaced people. The kidnappers demanded contact
information for their families and her father soon received a voice message
telling him his daughter would be beheaded if he didn't hand over $2.5 million.
Neither of their families had that kind of money.
She and Brennan were moved from house to house, always at
night. They had no access to information but Lindhout learned her captors were
all between 14 and 18 years old. Most were orphans who had witnessed horrible
scenes from bomb blasts, they saw families being killed and their siblings die
of hunger.
"None had experienced peace in their lives. Hunger
and disease are part of their everyday existence," she said, adding
extremist groups often give these children a job for a couple of dollars a
month.
After two months Lindhout and Brennan were separated but
they hatched a plan to escape through a bathroom window. They worked at the
crumbling mortar until they had a hole large enough to slip through and fled to
a nearby mosque filled with about 200 village men. Their captors soon found
them and opened fire. The small group of villagers trying to protect them ran
from the bullets but one Somali woman tried to help her. The kidnappers grabbed
Lindhout by the ankles and dragged her away.
Things became worse for the captives after their escape
attempt. They were separated and Lindhout was locked in a pitch black room,
chained to the floor. She couldn't sit up or lie on her back. She was allowed
to use the washroom five times a day, three minutes at a time. She wasn't
allowed to speak or make any kind of noise, sometimes for weeks at a time.
"I never knew if I could make it through the day so
I'd ask myself if I could make it through the next minute," she said.
She was starving, in pain, oppressed and abused and
filled with anger, self-pity and resentment. One day, as one of her kidnappers
was abusing her something snapped.
"Time seemed to stop and the world seemed to
stop," she said. "Total peace washed over me in that moment and I
felt calm."
She said she felt detached from her body, like she was
watching from another place.
"I began to understand who that boy on top of me
was," she said. "I realized something - this boy's suffering was
greater than my own."
Although it was difficult, she decided to focus on
forgiveness and compassion.
She and Brennan were released following a ransom payment
by their families. Lindhout's father remortgaged his home and her mother
fundraised to get the ransom payment together. Taxpayer money went toward
government negotiations and she faced criticism in the media for going to
Somalia in the first place.
"I felt enormous guilt," she said.
After a few weeks of feeling sorry for herself Lindhout
said she decided she would put the truths she learned in Somalia to work.
"From that day I refused to be pigeonholed as a
grim-faced victim," she said. "I realized my process of forgiveness
had to include myself."
She vowed to do something to help Somalia and started the
Global Enrichment Foundation. It has since raised millions for education
programs and now operates six programs in Somalia, including food aid, school
meal programs, running schools and female leadership initiatives.
