Nightmares still haunt Amanda Lindhout

Nightmares still haunt Amanda Lindhout

Isabel Teotonio Staff Reporter 
Toronto Star

A year ago, an emaciated Amanda Lindhout was locked in an animal shed, with chains around her ankles, desperately clinging to hope after being beaten, tortured and held captive for 15 months in Somalia. She was so badly malnourished that her toe nails and much of her hair had fallen out.

Today, nearly a year after her release, the 29-year-old Albertan who travelled as a freelance reporter to the war-torn nation, still wakes from nightmares kicking her legs to feel if they are shackled.

But she forgives her teenaged captors, one as young as 14, who kidnapped her and Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan at gunpoint and held them until a reported $600,000 ransom was paid by their families.

“It’s something I work toward every day,” Lindhout told the Star, while in Toronto over the weekend.

Yet as the anniversary date of her release approaches – Nov. 25 – forgiveness is “especially challenging.”

Curled up on the couch at a friend’s house, Lindhout spoke of being held hostage, her recovery over the past year and about life today, which is largely dedicated to the Global Enrichment Foundation that she started to help improve the lives of Somali women.

Lindhout refused to speak in detail about some of the violence, saying she has yet to tell her parents and friends about it. She would not comment about reports in the Somali media that she was forced to marry one of her captors and gave birth to a child.

Yet some of those experiences will find their way into the book she is working on when she isn’t attending classes at St. Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia, where she is doing a post-graduate program on leadership development.

Her torment began on Aug. 23, 2008, when Lindhout and Brennan, along with a driver and translator, were seized on the outskirts of Mogadishu by Islamic fundamentalists while returning from a refugee camp.

Lindhout, who has no formal journalism training and travelled to Somalia at a time when large media outlets refused to send seasoned reporters, admits, “I did take risks.”

“I think we all know what it’s like to be young and feel like you’re invincible, and perhaps that was part of it. That was also combined with believing very strongly that the story in Somalia needed to be told. Perhaps I wasn’t the best person to tell it, but it doesn’t change the fact that I did believe in it.”

During captivity, every second felt like “100 years,” but conditions worsened after the pair attempted to escape five months into their ordeal. Because of that daring attempt, Lindhout was repeatedly punished and tortured for the next 10 months and never saw Brennan again until they were freed.

Only after hiring a British security firm to negotiate the ransom, which cost the families almost as much as the actual ransom, were they released. Her parents were left in financial ruin and are still paying back money they borrowed for her ransom.

As part of her initial recovery, she spent up to 15 hours a week seeing a psychologist, but that has decreased since starting school. Surprisingly, she says, her sense of security hasn’t been shattered.

Lindhout is also broke and makes money doing paid speaking engagements. Benefactors contribute to her education, which she hopes to further at the University of Toronto next fall.

She also keeps busy with the foundation, which provides university scholarships to Somali girls who have expressed an interest in becoming community leaders. It is currently awaiting charitable status.

Right now, a key part of getting through the day for Lindhout involves forgiveness – forgiving herself as well.

“It’s very, very humbling to think that your actions have had this massive ripple effect. Going into Somalia I didn’t anticipate how many people’s lives would be affected by it. In hindsight I certainly wish I had taken more time to think about that but I can’t change it.”

Source: Toronto Star

Courtesy: Wardheernews.com