Amanda Lindhout
Amanda Lindhout
Amanda Lindhout is a Canadian humanitarian, public speaker and journalist. On August 23, 2008, she and members of her entourage were kidnapped by Islamist insurgents in southern Somalia. She was released 15 months later on November 25, 2009, and has since embarked on a philanthropic career. In 2013, she released the New York Times bestseller A House in the Sky: A Memoir, in which she recounts her early life, travels as a young adult, and hostage experience. In 2014, the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth12 June 1981
CountryCanada
My captors were definitely aware that what they were doing was wrong. It came out in small ways - occasionally through a show of guilt or compassion. One of the boys bought me a gift. Another used to sneak me acetaminophen tablets.
It was a slow understanding that my kidnappers really are a product of their environment.
It's difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.
I must try desperately to absorb all information I can about the Middle East. I want to excel. I want to speak articulately about the politics of the Middle East and its religion.
Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I'd gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.
I've realized that the world is, in essence, full of banana peels - loaded with things that may unwittingly trip an internal wire in my mind, opening a floodgate of fears without warning.
Friendships that don't fit my life anymore have faded away, and new ones have come in.
Every day I have many choices to make about who I want to be.
Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.
Contemplating Christmas when you are isolated and far from home brings its own unique pain.
I'm not afraid of IED's, bullets, mortars.
Forgiving is not an easy thing to do.
We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.
The road to recovery will not always be easy, but I will take it one day at a time, focusing on the moments I've dreamed about for so long.