The African Wind

“He continued speaking with the ambassador while we all huddled on the stairs.”

Vera’s stories have amazed me since the first time I spoke with her only a few weeks ago. During that initial interview, I found that an hour was not enough time to obtain any of the intricate details of her life, nor was it time enough for me to fully grasp the extent of her adventures. When I spoke with her she briefly touched upon her adventures in Africa, an entire continent I previously had little knowledge of, but one about which she had many, many stories to share.

After Vera had retired (a decision that she actually made in Africa, but that is another story…) she was called back to do contract work two to four months out of the year. While on contract she worked at an embassy in Mogadishu, Somalia. At the time, the U.S. government had just built a new embassy, but after the war started it was destroyed. Therefore, Vera and the other embassy workers lived on the Getty Oil compound in two big houses. They had to share bedrooms, but they made do nonetheless.

What astounds me about Vera’s stories is that she has lived history; this was true when she was taken hostage in Iran, as I have previously written about, and while she was in Somalia during Black Hawk Down. Somalia had been suffering from much internal conflict and many of its citizens were dying of starvation. The United States tried to help, but they eventually began pulling out and tried to hand the operation over to the U.N. Pakistan sent troops into Somalia as well, but on June 5, 1993, 24 Pakistani soldiers were ambushed.

“The Somali foreign minister was at our embassy visiting our ambassador and all of a sudden we heard all of this shooting…And he [the foreign minister] continued speaking with the ambassador while we all huddled on the stairs,” she recounted this blood-chilling scene. “He [the Somali foreign minister] acted like nothing was happening, but he knew what was going to happen before he came.”

Due to the dangerous circumstances, Vera and a few other embassy workers were evacuated to Nairobi, Kenya to the Hilton Hotel. They were not allowed to leave the hotel unless they were in a group because it was too dangerous. During the day they would walk to the embassy, but after a week they decided “to get out of Nairobi and breathe a bit.”  

They flew into a small island called Lamu off the coast of Kenya “to a dirt landing strip. We were met by a sailboat, but it wasn’t what we imagine a sailboat is,” she recalled. “It was all homemade; it was big and the sails were like just heavy canvas.” She and another woman spent the next day with the men who had the “sailboat.” They were picked up early in the morning and sailed to a different part of the island.

When they got off the boat the men built a fire and went to “go get lunch.” The men went fishing and brought back a freshly caught fish, which they then cooked over the fire. There was not a separate dish for each person, nor were there separate utensils. She and her friend ate first and the men ate whatever was left. “The fish was absolutely delicious, I mean just coming out of the water,” she explained.

It would have been a lovely day, had their boat not been at the mercy of the wind. She remembers very clearly that the boat did not have a motor because, on the way back to their hotel, the wind died down. The distance from their whereabouts to the hotel was comparable to a trip from Windham to Salem. The men were “tacking, but…they are not tacking like you do over here on sailboats. I mean they just have wooden planks more or less.” Nevertheless, she described the men as “very capable of what they were doing.” Stuck three quarters of the way to their destination and without the wind to help them, one of them got into the dingy and rowed all the way to the hotel. A man with a motorboat had to come out and tow them back in!

Amazingly, Vera’s adventures in Africa do not end here. Quite on the contrary, Vera has much more to tell about life in Africa.

My name is Jillian DiPersio and I am a sophomore at Windham High School. After learning the stories of my own grandparents, I have been interviewing the elderly. Through my research and interviews I have been able to dig up some incredible bits of history from the lives of local residents, as well as learn about people who are the products of a different generation. If you or someone you know would like to share your stories, please contact me at jillian@dipersio.com.