- 6 minutes ago
Jessica Buchanan is an author, humanitarian aid worker, and kidnapping survivor who spent 93 days held hostage by Somali pirates.
Originally a schoolteacher from the United States, she relocated to Africa to work as an education advisor for a nongovernmental organization. While finishing a routine field mission on October 25, 2011, she was abducted at gunpoint and held for ransom. Forced to live outdoors in brutal conditions, Jessica's health deteriorated until she was rescued in a highly classified raid by SEAL Team Six authorized by President Barack Obama.
Buchanan speaks with Business Insider about her abduction and the mental fortitude she needed to develop to stay alive. She also details the high-stakes rescue by SEAL Team Six and the realities of what she terms "surviving survival" — navigating the complexity of PTSD and challenges of reacclimating to normal life after intense trauma.
In 2013, Buchanan coauthored "Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six." She is also the author of 2025's "How to Survive Survival."
For more from Jessica Buchanan:
https://www.jessbuchanan.com/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPHZ6BZP?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_FTS3T7ZWVRDHAVVS4JQR&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_FTS3T7ZWVRDHAVVS4JQR&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_FTS3T7ZWVRDHAVVS4JQR&bestFormat=true
Originally a schoolteacher from the United States, she relocated to Africa to work as an education advisor for a nongovernmental organization. While finishing a routine field mission on October 25, 2011, she was abducted at gunpoint and held for ransom. Forced to live outdoors in brutal conditions, Jessica's health deteriorated until she was rescued in a highly classified raid by SEAL Team Six authorized by President Barack Obama.
Buchanan speaks with Business Insider about her abduction and the mental fortitude she needed to develop to stay alive. She also details the high-stakes rescue by SEAL Team Six and the realities of what she terms "surviving survival" — navigating the complexity of PTSD and challenges of reacclimating to normal life after intense trauma.
In 2013, Buchanan coauthored "Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six." She is also the author of 2025's "How to Survive Survival."
For more from Jessica Buchanan:
https://www.jessbuchanan.com/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPHZ6BZP?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_FTS3T7ZWVRDHAVVS4JQR&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_FTS3T7ZWVRDHAVVS4JQR&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_FTS3T7ZWVRDHAVVS4JQR&bestFormat=true
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FunTranscript
00:00:00My name is Jessica Buchanan. I was kidnapped by Somali pirates and held hostage for 93 days
00:00:05before being rescued by SEAL Team 6. This is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
00:00:13We drive for hours, I mean in hours, until the middle of the night and all I can think is
00:00:19like
00:00:20I don't know what they're going to do to me out there but it's not going to be good.
00:00:22We just start walking in the direction of this darkness. I'm weeping because I believe
00:00:30that this is probably the last few minutes of my life.
00:00:39I'm a teacher by profession. Took a full-time teaching position at an international school
00:00:44in Nairobi. A couple months into my experience I met a cute Swedish guy in a trashy nightclub
00:00:52one night and we've been together now for about 20 years and but he's really the reason I ended up
00:00:57in Somalia. I left my position teaching at the international school and moved up to Hargesa,
00:01:03Somaliland and kind of settled down there. That turned into a full-time regional education advisor
00:01:11role for the Danish Demining Group. It was a dream for someone who had gone to Africa wanting to
00:01:18you know experience such an interesting culture and do meaningful work. October 25, 2011, I was finishing
00:01:26up a three-day training for my Somali staff. I had gone down to the southern part of Somalia
00:01:33because basically my organization had told me I needed to go. I had actually canceled this training twice
00:01:41before because I didn't feel and that the conditions were necessarily very safe and I had this like gut
00:01:48feeling that something was off. However this is you know I was told that this is what you've signed up
00:01:55for if you want to do your job. So you know I thought what are the chances that something can
00:02:01go wrong
00:02:02and I've been doing this work for years. It'll be fine. I'm just being paranoid and so the first two
00:02:09days of the training went great. We had a team in northern Galcaio where we were working and a team
00:02:16in southern Galcaio because of the the nuances around and conflicting clans. The northern part of
00:02:23the city was basically controlled by one clan and then the southern part of the city was controlled by
00:02:28another clan. I was staying in the northern part of the city in our office and training there and what
00:02:35I was worried about was crossing over this what they called the green line into the southern part
00:02:40because I knew from trainings I take in hostile environmental awareness trainings that you're most
00:02:47vulnerable when you're in transit. I get in our our group of land cruisers they drive me across the
00:02:53green line. I'm with my colleague a Danish man named Paul that I worked with. He's my counterpart and so
00:02:59we get across the green line. We drive with our convoy of vehicles to the southern office. We spend all
00:03:05day there. We do the training. Everything goes great. We get to around three o'clock in the afternoon
00:03:11and we're waiting for the convoy of land cruisers. We have armed guards and there are three land
00:03:17cruisers armed guards in the first one and then the last one and then we would be riding in the
00:03:21middle.
00:03:22They would escort us back to the green line. I'm kind of chastising myself about being so paranoid
00:03:26and so we get into this convoy. We start moving through the gates and through the town of Galkayo.
00:03:34It's you know tight city streets. There are people milling around. There are goats running across and
00:03:40dogs and kids and it's very busy and and all of a sudden um somehow another land cruiser comes like
00:03:48just roaring up on the right side of our vehicle and and and veers in front of us and blocks
00:03:53us and
00:03:54splashes mud up on the windows and the windshield. It had been raining and I remember like I'm looking
00:04:00at my phone. I think I was sending a last minute email or something and I looked up and said
00:04:04to to
00:04:05whoever was in the car Paul was in the front. We had a driver and we had our Somali security
00:04:09advisor
00:04:10Abdi Rezak sitting next to us and I said what a jerk who drives like that and then I hear
00:04:16the crack of
00:04:16the butt of an AK-47 on the car hood and it sounds like we're being surrounded by very angry
00:04:22men who
00:04:22are like yelling in Somalia. I don't understand what they're saying and then suddenly Abdi Rezak who's
00:04:29sitting on my right side in the back of the land cruiser, his doors pulled open and there's a very
00:04:33angry man dressed in a police uniform. He pulls Abdi Rezak out of the the vehicle and he had a
00:04:40seat belt
00:04:40and I remember him just ripping him straight out of out of the the seat and without like out of
00:04:46the
00:04:46seat belt and he slammed him to the ground and he hit him in the head with the butt of
00:04:49his gun
00:04:50and then he climbed into the back where Abdi Rezak had been sitting and he put the AK to my
00:04:55head
00:04:56and he starts screaming at the driver to drive and it we just take off like we're just like we
00:05:03met it
00:05:04felt like we were going 65 uh miles an hour like just like a bat out of hell like we're
00:05:10up on two
00:05:11wheels we're slamming back down we're up on two wheels I I I'm like freaking out thinking the the
00:05:18car is gonna flip Paul's in the front seat he's begging the driver slow down he keeps yelling at
00:05:22him like saying you're gonna kill us you're gonna you're gonna wreck the car you're gonna kill us all
00:05:27and and we drive like that for I don't know how long and all I can think um
00:05:32um are like two very basic thoughts uh that are just like on a loop in my head and the
00:05:38first one
00:05:38is just like this is so bad this is so bad this is so bad whatever is happening right now
00:05:43I have
00:05:44no frame of reference for what to do and then the other thing I keep thinking is just like everything
00:05:49in my life has changed from this moment on like there there was just this like before
00:05:55and now there's an after and um whatever comes after um is going to significantly change the course
00:06:06of my life
00:06:12we drive for hours I mean in hours and we stop we would change personnel like there would be
00:06:20uh arms men getting in the car and like six would be in the back of the land cruiser and
00:06:27we'd be
00:06:27stuffed and then they would stop and they would force us into separate vehicles and then drive in
00:06:32separate directions and I thought I'd never see Paul again we just kept doing this over and over for
00:06:38hours until the middle of the night um and then they stopped for one final time and the man who
00:06:45was
00:06:46holding the machine gun he had like a turban like something wrapped like fabric wrapped around his
00:06:51head and I'm trying to figure out like who has us you know is this al-shabaab like an Islamic
00:06:56terrorist extremist group if that's the case then I'm pretty much dead and so he like shoves me
00:07:05out of the vehicle and he says to me an English walk and it's just so dark it's um it
00:07:14just feels like um
00:07:16this vacuum this this void of of darkness and I can't see anything I mean and all I can think
00:07:23is
00:07:23like I don't know what they're going to do to me out there but it's not going to be good
00:07:27and so something just I I think it's just survival instinct took over and I said no
00:07:34and we go back and forth he's like walk and I'm like no and we keep doing this and
00:07:42somewhere from around the corner of the vehicle Paul comes around to me and he um takes my hand
00:07:47and he says Jessica you know we have to walk and I remember falling over like thorn bushes and and
00:07:54hitting myself on rocks and I can't see anything and I'm tripping and I'm picking myself back up and I'm
00:08:02I'm weeping because I'm I'm I believe that this is um probably the last few minutes of my life
00:08:13I'm saying goodbye to my husband and to my dad and and my siblings my mom had died the year
00:08:19before
00:08:19and so I was somehow like mentally I think um calling out to her or or um begging her really
00:08:29to help me be strong and help me be dignified in these final moments and and we walk for a
00:08:35very long
00:08:35time and then as we continue walking just more of them come out of the shadows until I don't know
00:08:43how many are there but it feels like a small army maybe 50 armed men have completely surrounded us and
00:08:52they tell us to stop walking and to get down onto our knees
00:08:57and I do still maintain that that was the most terrifying moment of my life thus far
00:09:05and as I'm waiting for them to shoot me in the head or I don't know cut my head off
00:09:13um one of them
00:09:15says go to sleep and then knocks me over into the the sand and I think it's so interesting how
00:09:25our bodies
00:09:26are so intelligent and and they want to take care of us and so I just shut down and and
00:09:32I fell asleep
00:09:38Abdi Rezak I would later come to find out was really in on the whole thing
00:09:43uh I felt so sorry for him when he got pulled out of the vehicle and slammed to the ground
00:09:48but it
00:09:48turns out he's the one who sold us he had orchestrated the timing and the place um and had
00:09:55initially I guess you can say trafficked us to this group of uh pirates Paul who had been based in
00:10:05after reflecting and gathering some information had realized that perhaps this might have been
00:10:12the third or fourth attempt at something like this and it turns out I was just there in the wrong
00:10:17place on the wrong day I was not a target I was just a um collateral damage
00:10:29so I wake up a couple hours later it's starting to get light out it's the first time I can
00:10:34kind of
00:10:34see what's going on around me I we're you know in this like makeshift camp and I mean I use
00:10:41the term
00:10:41camp loosely because it's not like there were structures or tarps or tents or anything it was
00:10:48just people like sitting under trees or laying under trees and maybe a small campfire Paul and I were
00:10:54still together so we were able to talk a little bit he had been up all night and he had
00:11:00heard them
00:11:00calling making phone calls and he could hear he could tell that they had called the UK so he could
00:11:07put
00:11:07together the fact that this was like much bigger and much more I probably well orchestrated than
00:11:14just an opportunistic group snagging a couple of aid workers development workers are normally
00:11:23supposed to attend you know several different types of trainings there was really only two things that I
00:11:30remember from that part of the training the first one was that I needed to have somebody's phone number
00:11:35memorized so that I could contact them because we would need a point of contact if we had been
00:11:40kidnapped and the second thing I remember was if they believed that if you survived the first 24 hours
00:11:47most likely they had taken you for money and they weren't going to kill you I do not believe that
00:11:54they could have killed me anytime I think there were times that they really wanted to that could have
00:11:59been 72 hours in that could have been a thousand hours in one thing I realized as a hostage is
00:12:06that
00:12:06you will believe anything that helps whether it's true or not whether it makes any sense or not and so
00:12:13I think holding on to that hope if I can just make it through 24 hours and stay alive then
00:12:19my my chances
00:12:20of continuing to live are that much greater it would take days if into a week before we were able
00:12:28to
00:12:29determine who was the leader of the group and who turned out to be a man named Abdi and then
00:12:37it was probably a week or so before we were able to make contact with anybody
00:12:43from our organization I don't know how many days and it was they drove us even deeper out into the
00:12:48desert in the middle of the night and they had a satellite phone and they said we were making a
00:12:55proof of life call essentially and so I had my dad's phone number and my sister's phone number
00:13:01memorized and so I called my dad first and his phone was disconnected then I called my sister and her
00:13:07phone was disconnected and I'm I'm thinking like how how is this happening like what like why can't I
00:13:14get a hold of anybody and then Paul called his wife and his daughter in Denmark and their phones were
00:13:19disconnected we put together the fact that they must have been working with the authorities and
00:13:26wanted one point of contact because a man came on the scene named Jabril he said he was up from
00:13:31Mogadishu and he was his sole purpose for being there was to translate because he spoke English
00:13:37and he had a phone number it went to Nairobi to our organization and there was a man I didn't
00:13:44know on the
00:13:44other end of the line named Mohammed and he identified himself as our family communicator
00:13:50and said that he was the only person we would talk to during this this experience the reason they do
00:13:57this is for our own security and also for our family what they wanted was to put us on the
00:14:05phone
00:14:05with a family member and then get us all riled up so that we would be hysterical or hurt us
00:14:11so that our
00:14:11family member would hear that on the other end of the line and and hopefully that would drive up the
00:14:16ransom demand because we were working for an organization that's the reason we had a single
00:14:22point of contact because we had kidnapping and ransom insurance and so there were protocols that had
00:14:29to be followed they quickly employed professional hostage negotiators onto the scene it got a little
00:14:36bit complicated um because i i'm an american and the fbi got involved right away if i had just been
00:14:44you know a random citizen or a freelance journalist who had gotten caught up in this it probably would have
00:14:50been more so on my family um to be the point of contact but because i was working for an
00:14:56organization
00:14:57they handled it in a different manner this guy jabril who identified himself as a translator he
00:15:04let us know about six or seven days in that they had to set the ransom demand at 45 million
00:15:10dollars
00:15:11that was shocking and not good news he also mentioned within that time frame that the
00:15:19hostage negotiators that were working on behalf of our organization and had counter offered twenty
00:15:25thousand dollars you know he kept saying to us they're crazy they're crazy and i keep telling them that
00:15:31you're not a ship you're not a cargo ship because the ransom demands and the payments for a cargo
00:15:36ship they do run up into the millions because you've got crew you've got cargo you've got insurance but
00:15:42we're two aid workers and i kept trying to explain this to them like we're not valuable we are people
00:15:48of
00:15:48very little means you're never going to get millions for us and it was interesting abdi would say to me
00:15:54well how many how many people live in america and i uh you know i'd say i don't know 350
00:16:00million or
00:16:01something and he'd say well all they need to do is you only need 45 million of them to donate
00:16:05a dollar
00:16:06and then you can be free and that boggled my mind but i also understood it because i'd worked in
00:16:13the
00:16:13culture for for many years the clan um the clan culture is such that they do contribute when
00:16:20someone in their clan runs into a problem everybody contributes what they have to get them out of the
00:16:26the situation that they're in and i kept trying to explain to him that that doesn't translate like
00:16:31that doesn't work in a place like america you know obviously we couldn't see eye to eye i was filled
00:16:37with such a sense of despair it's an impossible situation um and we're never we're never going
00:16:44to get out of here if you think about somalia at that time it was really divided up into three
00:16:55separate regions somaliland was a self-declared autonomous region not recognized internationally but
00:17:02they recognized it themselves and you had the middle region which was a little less
00:17:07safe than somaliland and then you have the southern part which is what we hear about on the
00:17:11news mostly mogadishu and the surrounding areas i kept waiting for them to take me somewhere you know
00:17:18i i thought maybe they would take us to a house or stick us in a hole in the ground
00:17:24or do something to
00:17:26hide us away but they didn't uh we were held outdoors the entire time just out in the desert and
00:17:34we would
00:17:34sit for 12 hours or sometimes lay under bushes or trees on a mat and then we would have to
00:17:42pull the
00:17:43mat out into the open it for at night and then we would lay on the mat and sleep for
00:17:48the next 12 hours
00:17:49and then we just did this on repeat in different locations we kept waiting for them to take us to
00:17:55ships they kept saying they were going to i was welcoming that because i you know thought maybe there
00:18:01was a chance then maybe we could at least have like i don't know a bed or something to sleep
00:18:06on
00:18:07i slept on the ground i slept on a mat for the entire time uh i was there i think
00:18:12the first week
00:18:13there were i didn't even have a blanket or anything i just wrapped myself up in my arms and a
00:18:19lot of times
00:18:20i paul and i shared a mat but oftentimes they would separate us as a means of um like punishment
00:18:28perhaps
00:18:28they'd pull me off the mat and and and take me out of the perimeter of the camp and fire
00:18:35off
00:18:35machine guns and then come back and tell him that they killed me um and he was alone now they
00:18:40would do
00:18:41stupid stuff like that all the time and i stopped believing them the complication with sleeping on the
00:18:46ground is not just that it's uncomfortable and cold but uh you have animals you have scorpions i was
00:18:55constantly killing scorpions with my shoes they're big beetles they're snakes oftentimes i'd wake up
00:19:01because somebody kicked me in the back and told me they would scream at me standing standing which
00:19:07meant i needed to get up wrap my mat up and get in a land cruiser because we were leaving
00:19:12it was
00:19:14cold and then it was hot and deeply deeply uncomfortable they didn't have a lot of resources
00:19:19my understanding is that they went way into debt to pull this whole this whole thing off we ate
00:19:28like a little can of tuna fish in the morning that they would bring and have like some canned pineapple
00:19:34in the afternoon sometimes they would make a fire and boil spaghetti noodles and everybody would just
00:19:40eat with their hands i think the freedom that we had to move around depended so much on actually
00:19:48circumstances that i i didn't understand or i wasn't privy to people ask me all the time like
00:19:55why didn't you try to escape but we realized very quickly that we were outpaced by the elements here
00:20:01in the desert you don't know how long it would take you to get to civilization couldn't carry enough
00:20:07water and then we realized as the days moved on that oh these communities know we're here i will never
00:20:16forget it was around christmas time and it was abdi and a couple other guys they drove us into
00:20:23a village and it was the first time we had been like amongst civilization and they parked us right in
00:20:31the
00:20:31middle of this village they didn't let us out of the car but they rolled the windows down and i'm
00:20:38sitting there
00:20:39looking out the window and all of like all of the villagers come out of their like huts and they
00:20:45all
00:20:45crowd around the car to look at us like we were zoo animals and paul and i were just like
00:20:50that was so
00:20:52bizarre and also oh no one's gonna help us they know we're here so um it didn't make sense to
00:21:04try to
00:21:04escape it it was a it was a it was a death sentence
00:21:13some of them were nicer than others some of them were horrible and mean and evil and just wanted to
00:21:19torture us other times we would have a group of young men who were there basically because they
00:21:27were getting 20 bucks a day a pack of cigarettes and and chat and they weren't bad they were just
00:21:32victims of their own circumstances as well and so in those time periods they would let me walk around
00:21:41they would let me walk the perimeter of the camp and i would do that i would walk in circles
00:21:45for hours
00:21:46and then other times you know i made the mistake early on of leaving my mat to go to use
00:21:52the the bathroom
00:21:53behind a bush and um abdi got horrifically angry at me and threatened to shoot me in the head and
00:22:01i
00:22:01learned very quickly i needed to say the word toilet in order to ever leave my mat they called themselves
00:22:06a militia they called themselves pirates but at the end of the day they were just a group of individuals
00:22:14who had been hired by this mafia if you will they were just guards a lot of them had big
00:22:21families
00:22:21eight ten kids um and they were hungry and so um you know in a way i kind of understood
00:22:28why
00:22:28why we were all there the number of pirates um that were there keeping a watch or guarding us varied
00:22:37day to day um it seemed to me that they were operating on shifts sometimes we had as few as
00:22:44six
00:22:44who were watching us um and then we'd have as many as 40 they would sleep with us on the
00:22:51ground
00:22:51to in their defense they lived the same way we did i remember having um basically like a meltdown
00:22:59early on about something they had brought me some food or something and i was a vegetarian at the time
00:23:06and i think it was like goat and i'm like i'm not eating this you know i i'm a vegetarian
00:23:10and one of
00:23:12them oh he his name was colonel we called him colonel that was his nickname he got so angry at
00:23:18me for
00:23:18being so ungrateful essentially and what i gathered from the conversation was basically like you're living
00:23:26like most somali people live so shut your mouth and go take a nap but i do remember having this
00:23:34kind of like
00:23:34moment of realization that wow okay i mean yes he's a bad person he's committing a crime but
00:23:45maybe he's got a point you know i am perhaps living a life that most of the people in this
00:23:53country live
00:23:53i'm not becoming like a stockholm syndrome you know like connecting to their cause believe me no one
00:24:01wanted me out of there more than i did um but i i could kind of see the other side
00:24:06of it as well
00:24:07we had nicknames for everyone so that we could talk about them and they wouldn't hear their names we just
00:24:14picked um words that described uh characteristics about each of the the pirates and one of the guys we
00:24:25couldn't stand and his teeth were all rotted out from chewing chat and drinking sweet tea so we called
00:24:32him rotten the entrance of the men that were holding me was really surprising actually there were some
00:24:37really young like these guys are so young like 16 17. the youngest was 11 years old um and i
00:24:45met him
00:24:46the night we were actually kidnapped he i kept hearing this high-pitched voice um talking like
00:24:54right behind my head in the land cruiser finally my curiosity got the best of me and i turned around
00:25:00and
00:25:01i came face to face with this this kid like a little kid a small child and he was wearing
00:25:07um like belts of
00:25:09ammo and he had an ak-47 that literally was as big as he was and i later learned that
00:25:16his name was abdullahi
00:25:17he was 11 and he'd already killed three people and he was there learning the trade of kidnapping and
00:25:25ransom because it was a family business i had such complicated feelings about him he was present at the
00:25:33camp a lot um part of me i think because i'm a teacher just felt completely heartbroken that this
00:25:41child was growing up this way he there was it's no childhood and then also part of me was really
00:25:48afraid
00:25:48of him uh because he was a kid he didn't understand like um the impact of his actions and so
00:25:57he thought
00:25:58that he was this big man and he was wielding a deadly firearm and he and i had this altercation
00:26:06it was new year's day 2012 and we got into it because he wanted me to move to another he
00:26:14wanted me to
00:26:14move like two feet this way and i was sick of being ordered around by a little kid and i
00:26:19told him no and
00:26:21he got mad at me and put his gun in my face and then put a knife to my neck
00:26:26and um he disappeared
00:26:29after that um i think they realized that he there was too much drama associated with having a kid
00:26:36on um on the premises and then i think colonel was probably the oldest he seemed a lot older than
00:26:44someone in their late 40s he had lived um a hard life and and i think there was a point
00:26:52in the time
00:26:54that we were there where i almost felt like it sounds strange to describe it this way but like a
00:27:02fatherly
00:27:04protectiveness from him as long as i followed orders
00:27:11and stayed a good hostage and he seemed caring about my like you know physical needs in terms of
00:27:23it was cooled out somehow he sourced a jacket for me and he would bring me extra food one time
00:27:30he brought
00:27:30me a small comb because he noticed that i was combing my hair with a fork because they had given
00:27:35me a fork
00:27:36to you with in an environment where your humanity is being diminished on a regular basis those are very
00:27:44big things and they mean a lot there were a few um kidnoppers that i could say that maybe we
00:27:52became
00:27:53friendly with um the one that i felt closest to his name was dair he was a driver we called
00:28:01him helper at
00:28:03least he came across as compassionate and he was really sorry that this was happening to us he would
00:28:08try to get us information he also slept next to me every time he was on his shift and i
00:28:15still believe
00:28:16that that is the reason i wasn't assaulted during the course of the 93 days the guy who was really
00:28:22i
00:28:22think in charge and who would come out and visit the camps from time to time was horrible and super
00:28:28mean
00:28:29and evil at his core his name was bashir and he scared he scared the life out of me every
00:28:36time he
00:28:36came to camp and i actually had a couple of the guards tell me don't make eye contact with him
00:28:42and stay as far away from him as you can because he's gonna hurt you and um so you know
00:28:48it was just
00:28:49every day you were looking for someone that you could connect with in that moment who could protect
00:28:57you and just keep you alive and fortunately there were a few of them probably the third night that
00:29:04we had been taken and there felt like this urgency to move locations and they separated paul and i into
00:29:13separate vehicles and they went one direction with him and another direction with me i became so panicked
00:29:19that i got physically sick and i asked them to stop the car i told them basically i'm going to
00:29:24throw up
00:29:24i get out of the vehicle i i go over to the bushes i lose my everything that's inside of
00:29:32me and abdi gets
00:29:34out of the vehicle and he comes over um and it was such an odd interaction and it was probably
00:29:42one of the
00:29:42only times that he actually was kind or kind of like compassionate he asked me if i needed anything
00:29:51did i want some milk and i said no and then he said do you have children and i don't
00:29:59know what possessed
00:30:00me to say yes because i didn't have children um eric and i had only been married for about two
00:30:06years
00:30:06and but i said yes i have a son he's one year old and his name is smulan and um
00:30:13i actually
00:30:16just came up with this idea while i was standing there throwing up that perhaps they would
00:30:24if my husband got this message he would understand what i was trying to do because smulan was the name
00:30:30of our dog i thought that this might help with i don't know what negotiations or perhaps it would help
00:30:38them see me as a mother and i would get better treatment i realized and knew that somali men
00:30:46respected their mothers and so i was hoping to protect myself especially from assault if they
00:30:53could see me as a mother and so i think it worked because they would ask me about my son
00:30:58all the time
00:30:59and i would just like make up all these stories about this son that i didn't have and every time
00:31:05i had
00:31:05a proof of life call colonel would ask me if i got to talk to my baby and i would
00:31:11say yeah yeah i talked
00:31:12to my baby no i you know of course he didn't understand that i was talking to a you know
00:31:18a
00:31:18hostage negotiator and and that there was no baby um but at the end of the day i do think
00:31:26that it's somehow
00:31:27served to put me in um for them to view me as a mother and whether or not that changed
00:31:36how they
00:31:37treated me i'll never know but i like to believe that it did i knew early on that next to
00:31:48staying alive
00:31:50staying sane was going to be my biggest challenge there were moments sometimes half a day where
00:31:57i was just so completely filled with panic about what was going to happen to me also i'm the only
00:32:04woman i'm surrounded by men at all times i you know yes i'm worried i'm going to be killed but
00:32:09i'm also worried i'm going to be sexually assaulted there was no one to protect me other than me um
00:32:16and
00:32:16then once you you know live like this day in and day out and even you know they took breaks
00:32:23they
00:32:24would be on five days and then go off for a week and they worked in rotations the only people
00:32:29that
00:32:30didn't get breaks were paul and i and so there was an airport in a dotto and i think one
00:32:35of the cruelest
00:32:36things abney ever did was we would drive by the the airport and he would turn around and look at
00:32:42paul
00:32:42and i and he called me jesses and he would say wave goodbye paul and jesses you're not getting on
00:32:49that
00:32:50airplane until we get our 45 million dollars and we would drive by this airport and i mean the feeling
00:32:56that you get of just like knowing that there is that like there is freedom you could like you could
00:33:02touch it but there's there's there's no way i could get to it is so defeating and it was cruel
00:33:10it was so
00:33:11cruel it was i don't know maybe 40 or 50 days and we woke up that morning and they told
00:33:19us immediately
00:33:20to go and wash and to put on they had clean clothes for us and so we thought oh maybe
00:33:27this is it maybe
00:33:29maybe the ransom has been paid and they're doing a drop in an exchange we you know go our separate
00:33:35ways
00:33:36wash ourselves from a bottle of water and put on these clean clothes and we get back in the vehicle
00:33:41and they drive us hours away and and so you know in a direction we never been before so i'm
00:33:48thinking
00:33:48this must be it this this must be over and instead we sit there for hours and finally another land
00:33:54cruiser
00:33:54comes to meet us and there are two again really young guys who were told are journalists and they say
00:34:00things aren't moving in the right direction so we're going to record a video a proof of life video
00:34:05because we need things to start moving in the right direction so they instruct us to say our names
00:34:13you know assure our families that we're being treated well and implore the american military not
00:34:19to attack and to beg our families to do more and because things aren't moving in the right direction
00:34:24and after that i remember paul and i you know we go back to camp and neither one of us
00:34:31are saying
00:34:31anything to each other because the reality of what we've just done and the fact that that might be
00:34:39the last time our families ever see us alive you know splashed up all over bbc or something
00:34:45it was very sobering it was very sobering and it was a reality check that we're in this for the
00:34:53long haul
00:34:54i think that was the point where we realized we need to make some decisions here that
00:35:05are going to help us serve us in in the long term and in in the two promises that we
00:35:13made each other
00:35:13the first one was that neither one of us would try to escape you know we had been taken together
00:35:18so
00:35:18we're going to stay together until we can leave together and then the second promise we made was
00:35:24that we could feel any emotion on the human spectrum but the only one that was off the table was
00:35:31despair
00:35:33because once you've lost control of your mind then everything else is going to fall apart there were
00:35:40often moments long spans of time weeks on end where we were separated and i didn't talk to another
00:35:48living soul they would be around um but they weren't allowed to interact with us as a form of
00:35:54punishment um and so just endless hours of me myself and i and my thoughts i just lost my mom
00:36:03the year
00:36:04before i had a lot to work through in my grief in losing her and also just like the
00:36:12the reflection of the reflection of our relationship and some of the dysfunction there um i had time
00:36:19for the first time in my life to really sit and be honest about decisions that i had made
00:36:27and where those had taken me my mother was very present with me throughout the entire ordeal um
00:36:34there were there were moments where i physically um i felt her presence i could almost see her
00:36:46and and um maybe i was just hallucinating from panic but it brought me solace and it brought me
00:36:54comfort and strength and so for the first time even though she wasn't physically there i could connect
00:37:00with her in a way um that was really profound and so i talked to her all the time there
00:37:07were two stars
00:37:08that would come out at the same time every night i would talk to her um and and and tell
00:37:14her about
00:37:15my day and what i was discovering about myself and and i think that i was able to actually put
00:37:21some
00:37:21things to rest in terms of you know forgiveness and grudges and i got to the point where i started
00:37:28like craving this time because it became this this peaceful place inside me that i could crawl into
00:37:40even when there was total chaos around me um and that has probably been one of the most important
00:37:47experiences and lessons i've ever learned in my life
00:37:55we had six proof of life calls um throughout the course of the 93 days the point of contact changed
00:38:02in the middle mohammed disappeared at some point and a european woman named alex was the point of
00:38:10contact from then on just based on living out in the desert not being able to adequately wash and not
00:38:17having a bathroom facilities i contracted a urinary tract infection and i knew exactly what was
00:38:23happening i get these you know from time to time and um tried to articulate tried to communicate to them
00:38:31what was happening i need antibiotics i knew exactly what i needed i wrote the name down i gave it
00:38:38to them
00:38:39there were a couple of times where um i'll use air quotes doctors would come out to the camp to
00:38:48check on us my understanding was that in order for negotiations to move forward
00:38:54our our company our you know our side was requiring confirmation from a doctor that we were in good
00:39:01health i use the term doctor very loosely one time this guy came he had a rusty stethoscope and
00:39:09like a blood pressure cuff that didn't work and then he just threw me a package of medication i don't
00:39:15know what it's for another time there was a doctor that came out he spoke english he i think was
00:39:20diaspora
00:39:21and he was lovely and very kind i think he felt very sorry for us he brought us a couple
00:39:27of books to
00:39:28read that later got taken away and some vitamins and and despite those efforts no one would bring me the
00:39:36right medication they would just bring me some random box of old antibiotics i wasn't going to
00:39:42take those because i didn't know what they would do or if i'd have an allergic reaction it just kept
00:39:47worsening and um at one point i got desperate i did take them they didn't do anything and so i
00:39:53knew
00:39:54i was moving into a kidney infection and so my last proof of life call with our um communicator alex
00:40:02was january 16th 2012 i got on the phone with her and i listed my symptoms and i said i
00:40:10know this is
00:40:11moving into a kidney infection i need a doctor i need to be hospitalized i need antibiotics i probably
00:40:17have two weeks left and if you guys don't get me out of here i'm gonna die and it's gonna
00:40:22be on you
00:40:23and then that was you know that was the last interaction i had and so i go off back to
00:40:29camp
00:40:30they take me back to camp um the the pain is becoming ridiculous i'm throwing up constantly i can't walk
00:40:38anymore and so i would do this night after night um and unbeknownst to me of course at the time
00:40:47alex took this information to my organization my husband took that information to my doctor
00:40:54in nairobi and he said to him you know eric you gotta get her out of there or she's gonna
00:41:00die
00:41:00he took that information to the fbi um and he said you know there were two fbi agents that he
00:41:09was
00:41:09working with and they both looked at each other and walked out of the room and he knew he didn't
00:41:15know what was going to happen but he knew in that moment something had changed um and and and
00:41:21something big was was about to take place
00:41:28the evening of january 24th and into the 25th 2012 um i've become incredibly ill and i couldn't even
00:41:37really move my mat on my own anymore and paul was helping me drag my map over to part of
00:41:44the field
00:41:45that i was sleeping in there were nine pirates on the ground that night keeping watch and i fall into
00:41:51kind of a fitful sleep i wake up a couple hours later with the need to be sick and um
00:41:57i sit up
00:41:58and i say the word toilet there was always at least one of them keeping guard at night always
00:42:03every single night somebody was awake but all nine of them were passed out so i kind of crawl my
00:42:08way
00:42:09over to this bush that's on the you know right right by my mat really and do what i need
00:42:14to do and
00:42:15then i crawl my way back to my mat and i roll myself up in my blanket and i can
00:42:20hear something
00:42:22and i kind of get up and i i'm shaking my blanket out maybe they're bugs or i don't know
00:42:27what's going
00:42:27on and and i'm trying to figure out the source of the sound and i can't hear i can't see
00:42:31anything
00:42:32all of a sudden helper is awake and he's up and he's holding a firearm which he usually didn't do
00:42:38and he's whisper screaming at the rest of the guys basically like in somali like wake up wake up
00:42:43wake up and then there's just this like one of them i don't know which one he fires he fires
00:42:50his ak
00:42:51and then just automatic ammunition just comes from behind me and i can almost like see sparks like
00:43:02helpers hit he falls to the ground these guys are they're firing their guns like there's just this
00:43:08like massive rush of um of bullets going over my head and i'm just trying at this point to get
00:43:19as
00:43:19low to the ground as i possibly can i'm laying on my back but i'm just like oh god oh
00:43:23god oh god oh god
00:43:24because i'm thinking one if this is another group that's come to kidnap us which was always kind of
00:43:31a threat it was something that they would threaten us with oh maybe it's al-shabaab or it's another group
00:43:35who wants to you know take you and i'm just hearing the most horrific sounds all around me i mean
00:43:41these guys are dropping to the ground they're dying i mean they're they're moaning and i'm under this
00:43:47blanket thinking that i'm next and then somebody um i feel hands grab my like my ankles and my shoulders
00:43:55um and i'm trying to to pull the blanket over me i'm trying to protect myself and they pull the
00:43:59blanket
00:43:59away from me there's this figure i can't really make it out it's so dark and um it's a young
00:44:06man's
00:44:07voice and he has an american accent um and the weirdest thing is that he knows my name and he
00:44:13says
00:44:15jessica we're the american military you're safe now we're gonna take you home and i'm just immediately
00:44:24overcome by shock i just start shaking i'm shaking so badly and all i can say over and over again
00:44:31is
00:44:31you're american wait a second you're american i don't understand i don't understand you're american
00:44:37and i where did you come come from how did you find us and he says we've been watching you
00:44:43for a
00:44:44very long time and we know how sick you've been and so he has um like about he has a
00:44:49pack of pills
00:44:50and he has a bottle of water and he tells you know these are antibiotics we know you have a
00:44:55urinary tract
00:44:56infection um and so i take them and then another one of them is he's standing there and he says
00:45:03okay well i'm gonna here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna pick you up i'm gonna put you over my
00:45:07shoulder
00:45:07and i'm gonna get you to the edge of camp and so he does that but my first question of
00:45:12course is
00:45:12where's paul is he safe did he make it out alive and he's there he's actually sitting there on the
00:45:21edge of camp already and he just leans over to me and he says do you know who these guys
00:45:26are
00:45:27and and i'm i i'm like no i don't know what's happening i'm i'm i'm so confused and he's just
00:45:35like
00:45:35this is seal team six these are the guys that got osama bin laden and i think all i can
00:45:42really
00:45:42think in that moment is like we're just like we're just aid workers like how how is this happening how
00:45:52is this really real am i really like alive like is this you know and several of them lay down
00:45:58on top
00:45:58of us and then the rest of them form like a ring around us with their backs to us to
00:46:06ensure that
00:46:06we're safe he's like i can't carry you the whole way but i can help you and there there was
00:46:12just this
00:46:13like i guess this like last burst of energy or something if you will of like i'm gonna get myself
00:46:20onto that helicopter and i'm gonna get myself the hell out of here um even if i have to crawl
00:46:27on my
00:46:27hands and knees i don't really remember breathing until we're like however high up in the air i
00:46:34remember just like throwing myself on my stomach and crawling across the floor and pressing my back
00:46:40up against the wall as far away from the door as i as i could and then as we started
00:46:46climbing higher i
00:46:48thought okay i i think maybe i survived i think maybe maybe i i am gonna
00:46:57live and i'm gonna be okay so once the helicopter took us away from the camp in somalia they landed
00:47:09in galcaio at the airport and put us on a plane that then took us to djibouti to a military
00:47:14base
00:47:14where we received medical treatment and then we were flown to italy to another military base where we were
00:47:21reunited with family and then the fbi was there um and they let us take a shower and then started
00:47:29in
00:47:29on information gathering because they had been working to get these guys for a long time and
00:47:35they wanted as much information as they could get from us as quickly as possible so i do not know
00:47:40exactly who was behind all of this but i do know that they were linked to other crimes and other
00:47:45kidnappings and um the fbi it's still an open investigation and they're still trying to prosecute
00:47:52when we landed in djibouti we were also met by two psychologists and military psychologists that were
00:48:00assigned to each of us for our mental health and support and care and so they accompanied us to italy
00:48:07um and we had the option of participating in the hostage reintegration program um created by the
00:48:15department of defense and so our reunification with family was very measured um it was chaperoned
00:48:23and i realized oh they do know what they're doing this is definitely necessary because
00:48:28the amount of conversation that i could have and withstand and just like the the processing of
00:48:34emotions was so limited after about a week in italy then i was reunited with the rest of my family
00:48:40stateside and this was a very high profile media event and because of its association with seal team
00:48:49six and president obama at the time when i was in djibouti and admitted into the hospital and there was
00:48:57a marine in my room and he said to me you know how your dad found out that you're safe
00:49:06and that you're
00:49:07coming home and i said no i i don't know because i haven't gotten to talk to him yet um
00:49:12i figured you
00:49:13know my husband called him and told him and he said actually president obama called your dad personally
00:49:18to let him know that you're safe and you're coming home and i found out that you know president obama
00:49:23had
00:49:23been briefed every day on my um my status and the fbi and then the military and have a protocol
00:49:35and
00:49:36there are three scenarios essentially where a hostage recovery operation would take place and one of them
00:49:45is that there's an impending loss of life of the hostage and because of my health and that it was
00:49:52becoming such a dire situation that um really kind of set the wheels in motion for a hostage rescue
00:50:00my understanding is that there had been other times where a hostage recovery was considered but
00:50:09the circumstances or perhaps the overall environment wasn't conducive to a successful operation a military
00:50:18intervention is the last resort for many reasons most of the time um hostage recoveries don't go well
00:50:27um because the hostage is can be killed in the crossfire or um the kidnappers will kill the hostage
00:50:36before they're recovered there are so many circumstances um around elements and the weather and and everything
00:50:43that are so far outside of anybody's control that can affect the success or the demise of an operation
00:50:50like this i mean these guys jumped out of a plane and parachuted in the middle of the night in
00:50:56the dark
00:50:57and then hiked three miles into the camp to find us there are so many things that could have gone
00:51:04wrong
00:51:04and so you know the fact that i'm sitting here today telling this story is really in my mind a
00:51:11miracle
00:51:16i had spent so many hours visualizing what it would feel like and what it would be like to finally
00:51:25see my husband again to to hug him and to hold his hand and so
00:51:31the moment that he came around the corner into my hospital room i will never forget it as one of
00:51:39the
00:51:39most significant moments of my life and i reunited with my family um in a location that was undisclosed
00:51:47it was private uh we met uh out in oregon where my sister and i had both been born and
00:51:53mainly because
00:51:53it felt like a place where my mom would have wanted to be and so we got to just have
00:51:58this really beautiful
00:51:59week together um bonding and and and spending quality time together i don't know how to describe
00:52:07other than just like this feeling of just sheer pleasure and giddiness we were walking next to this
00:52:15beautiful river the zigzag river outside of portland oregon and i had on a pair of hiking boots and i
00:52:24just
00:52:24took off running because the feeling of being free was so intoxicating to to get to move my body
00:52:35and to be in a space where i was breathing fresh air and there were no weapons and no one
00:52:42was terrorizing
00:52:43me or threatening me it was just such it was such a high and i think a lot of hostages
00:52:50experience that
00:52:51in the first couple of weeks of their um of their freedom it's euphoria and you think that
00:52:59it's always going to feel like this and you're always going to feel this free and then reality comes
00:53:05is crashing down and your next survival journey begins when i got out i didn't know who i was
00:53:13anymore i didn't know what i could do for work or if i could work my identity was so tied
00:53:20to
00:53:21just buchanan as the the humanitarian aid worker and the teacher who worked in africa and who am i when
00:53:27i don't have that anymore because certainly i wasn't going to go back to somalia i was having terrible
00:53:34nightmares um i wasn't getting sleep um i was constantly anxious um i got pregnant with my
00:53:42son pretty quickly after so then the complications of like pregnancy and labor and delivery and then
00:53:48having an infant and not sleeping that complicated things extraordinarily i felt very strongly that
00:53:55the pirates had taken enough from me but they weren't going to take away um
00:54:00um take away my agency and my decision in terms of how long i was going to stay in africa
00:54:06and and
00:54:08and when i was going to leave so after reuniting with family um eric was still working in somalia but
00:54:16we were based in nairobi we had our son there um and so we stayed for about a year and
00:54:22then after my son
00:54:23was born that's really when things changed for me because all of a sudden i had this this little human
00:54:30being that i was responsible for and i felt very scared for his safety so we relocated to the washington
00:54:39dc
00:54:40area um and that was really hard talk about culture shock it took me a really long time to settle
00:54:47in
00:54:47but i know at the end of the day that that was the right choice for our family um but
00:54:52it was definitely
00:54:53not the easiest i woke up about six months into post rescue uh one morning and i looked at eric
00:55:02and i
00:55:02said you know maybe we should write this down i wanted to put it all in writing for my son
00:55:08um so
00:55:09that he would understand um what we had survived as a family and what he had been born into
00:55:16from that perspective the first book eric and i wrote was impossible odds the kidnapping of jessica
00:55:24buchanan and her dramatic rescue by sealed team six and that was really um just a retelling of the
00:55:31story um but as the years have gone by i have had a lot of conversations and i've i've done
00:55:38a lot of
00:55:38learning and a lot of healing and in my own surviving survival journey and i i maintain that
00:55:46pain is pain and it doesn't matter what what the circumstances are um but no one escapes the human
00:55:53experienced unscathed so i wrote my next book how to survive survival a guide for turning life's
00:55:59hardest moments into meaningful contribution for the world um and it's a series of stories from people who
00:56:06have been through really hard things and what they've done in order to reclaim their own
00:56:12um identity and autonomy and their healing journey and how they make contribution and connect with
00:56:18purpose and i know that that has helped me um and so i just want to put out what i've
00:56:25learned so
00:56:25that maybe it can help somebody else
00:56:32i don't think it's necessarily possible to compare two hostages experiences to each other
00:56:40at the time and there were kind of this rash of kidnappings that were happening in this part of the
00:56:48world captain phillips an american ship captain who was in charge of the mask alabama his boat was taken
00:56:55over by somali pirates and i believe they were held for about four days until they were also rescued by
00:57:02seal team six that happened about a year and a half before my kidnapping and so when um it became
00:57:08too
00:57:09dangerous for them to kidnap on water they started moving onto land and they started moving where there
00:57:14were foreigners and that was refugee camps that was in places where um expats were working in humanitarian and
00:57:24development uh projects i can say that the number of similar hostage takings as i experienced has
00:57:32definitely gone down dramatically in the east african region any location where there is not there is not
00:57:41an effort to build stability through democratization through education um through
00:57:50food security you're going to have crimes like this whether it's
00:57:55humanitarian aid workers or locals desperate people do desperate things which means they're going to commit crimes
00:58:05and so as long as globally there are environments where people are not able to better themselves
00:58:14have decent basic needs with basic human rights you're going to have issues like this i still deeply believe in
00:58:25the act of humanitarian assistance and international development even after everything i've been through and
00:58:32everything i've experienced it is needed it is necessary and it's a worthy cause how has the industry or the
00:58:39business of kidnapping changed over the years um i believe it's changed exponentially in terms of it's
00:58:46moving to state actors and illegal detainments and prisons um it's much more um government-led than
00:58:54it is ad hoc by these more um you know gangster or crime rings if you will um at least
00:59:02in my experience
00:59:03and in the circles that i'm in and the trend that you know i've seen is that there aren't as
00:59:09many
00:59:09hostage takings as there are detainments usually um conducted by state actors or governments
00:59:18for political reasons and now that's not to say that there aren't uh hostage takings going on largely
00:59:26we don't know what's happening um because they're not widely publicized largely for the hostages on
00:59:34personal safety um we often don't know about these situations until um they're there's been a release
00:59:41or um a rescue general hostage takings such as mine the bottom line is money these acts of piracy these
00:59:51acts of kidnapping are a web if you will of crime that goes much deeper than just somalis and somaliland
01:00:00or in somalia it's diaspora in the uk and the united states and all over the world funding and
01:00:05orchestrating these things it's like a mafia sort of institution and these detainments that are
01:00:12becoming more and more of a regular um case usually a foreigner is apprehended on you know unsubstantiated
01:00:21basis such as being a spy or breaking some sort of law i can't even begin to dismantle that because
01:00:28i just
01:00:28don't have the the the expertise um but i do have many personal friends who have been detained
01:00:36in prisons in syria um iran and and and so forth and um it's equally as frustrating and terrifying
01:00:50and impossible just in very different ways i've worked extensively with a non-profit based out of
01:00:56washington dc called hostage us and they support families of uh detainees or hostages and then
01:01:04support the the former hostage or former detainee when they come um out and what i always say to the
01:01:12family member while their loved one is being um held or detained is you have to focus on what you
01:01:18know
01:01:19is true for example what do you know about your loved one you know that they have an incredible sense
01:01:25of humor they have a dark sense of humor and there are going to be moments where they're going to
01:01:29survive this thing because they're able to laugh their way through it and we can't think about what
01:01:34we don't know to be true or not we have to just focus on what we know is true in
01:01:40terms of someone
01:01:41who finds themselves in god forbid a situation like this my advice would be um to make
01:01:52your your the preservation of your mind and your mental health to be your number one priority
01:01:58um during captivity and then after do whatever you need to do to protect your mind that's the only
01:02:06place that no one can touch and it may feel like an impossibility if you're in a situation like this
01:02:12but
01:02:12i'm here to tell you i am nothing special i am literally just a girl who grew up in the
01:02:17middle of a
01:02:17cornfield literally like if i could figure out how to do it anybody can figure out how to do it
01:02:22and so
01:02:22it's it's possible and i'll never ever say that this whole thing was worth it but on the other side
01:02:32of my healing journey and survival i'm grateful to be here and i'm grateful that i have been able to
01:02:41learn more about myself and learn those lessons and internalize them because i like who i am now
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