transcript

Book Information

This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI's THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI's THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and his is The World. Marc Gonsalves knows what it means to be free. That's because he knows what he means to lose your freedom. He was a civilian contractor for the US military. 6 years ago, he and two colleagues were flying a drug-surveillance mission over Colombia when they crash-landed in the jungle. Guerrillas from the FARC found them, kidnapped them, and held them for five and a half years. Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes have written a book about their ordeal. In “Out of Captivity”, Gonsalves explains that when you're a hostage, your world suddenly shrinks.

MARC GONSALVES: Once you finally get to the point where you accept what is happening to you, ‘cause that takes -- that's a process in itself to actually realize that what is happening is reality and you've lost your freedom and you're being held by terrorists. Once you get beyond that point, your world shrinks to nothing more than a bubble that barely encompasses your body. So it's a very small world where you think of what you're going to do after you eat your ration of breakfast. If you're going to do pushups or if you're going to exercise, if you're going to look at the sky. You could see it through the cracks in the canopy of the trees.

MULLINS: Now, that's when things were up to you, when you could actually dictate what you were going to be doing. But most of the time that wasn't the case.

GONSALVES: No. Well, you always maintain a certain level of freedom, even if you're a hostage. Mentally, you're still free, so you're able to control your thoughts and your beliefs, even if the Guerrilla would try to influence that. And that was one of the things that we struggled to do.

MULLINS: You really reached the depths mentally during part of this crisis, understandably when you were held captive. Do you remember what took you so low and what helped you out of it?

GONSALVES: My lowest point was after I had a dream one night. And I dreamt that I was with my daughter, who was only 9 years old when I crashed in the jungle.

MULLINS: Her name is Destiny.

GONSALVES: Destiny, yes. And I had her with me in that dream and she was sitting on my lap, and she had all these little tiny braids in her hair, and I could smell the shampoo in her hair. It was so real. My two stepsons were there, my family was there, and then all of a sudden I woke up and I found myself locked in a box, ‘cause we were each in individual boxes.

MULLINS: How big were the boxes?

GONSALVES: They were about 6 by 6 cubed; six feet by six feet, if that, maybe five and a half. They were just big enough for you to stand up inside and lay inside.

MULLINS: Like a cage?

GONSALVES: Yeah, like a cage but made out of solid wooden planks. And when I came out of there that morning, I was supposed to go receive my ration of breakfast, I was just unable to do it. My head was so heavy. My shoulders didn't have any strength to support my head that my chin was just stuck to my chest. At that time, we weren't allowed to talk to each other – Keith, Tom and I – but Keith and Tom saw this state I was in -- it must have been just black energy that was emanating from me – and they broke this rule that the Guerrilla had imposed on us and they came to me, both of them at the same time, and they just gave me a hug. It was a three-man hug right there, and as soon as they did that, it was like somebody had opened a faucet. I started to cry and I couldn't stop for quite awhile. But after I did stop, I looked at Keith and Tom and I was just thankful that Keith and Tom were with me.

MULLINS: Well, I don't want to dwell on it, but we should say you were beaten on more than one occasion; you were chained.

GONSALVES: There were times we were blindfolded and there were times we were chained. The last, I would say, year and a half we were chained 24 hours a day. They would put big heavy gauge chains around our necks, and they would close the loop with a big, thick heavy Chinese-made padlock, and they would chain the end of my chain to Keith's chain. They were able to disconnect us by unlocking the chain the middle, so we were still always having that chain around our neck, if that makes sense. I don't know if I'm articulating it clear enough.

MULLINS: Yeah. It creates quite an image. And after 1,967 days of minimal amount of support and food, the day of the rescue. What happened on that particular day?

GONSALVES: That day was amazing. That morning we heard the sound of helicopters approaching, and I remember looking up, I can see now these two helicopters – I can seem them clearly, and they were big painted white and orange, and they were flying one behind the other. They walked us up to a field and one of those helicopters came in and landed right there. And I watched as that clamshell door opened and a group of humanitarian aid workers – so I thought – came out. And I thought that this might finally be the moment where the FARC are going to release us. But then I noticed as we were approaching the helicopters, that the aid workers were stopping the hostages – they were stopping us and then they began to tiewrap our hands together. And then my high hopes just fell to the floor. So as they began tiewrapping us, I refused to be tiewrapped and one of those aid workers noticed that I didn't want to be tiewrapped and he came up to Keith and I and he said, “Trust me. This is for a good cause. You have to get tied to get on the helicopter.” I didn't know what was going on. I saw that everybody else was tied up. Keith was tied and I let him tie me up as well, I got on that helicopter, so at that point, 15 hold hostages were on the helicopter and only 2 Guerrillas – the two commanders of the group. And as soon as that helicopter took off and broke ground, it was just chaos – fists flying and bodies in the air. I saw a pistol in the hand of the commander who was sitting right across from me. I was extremely worried because I thought he was going to shoot Keith. And so as I was standing there, somebody came and pushed me down, and looked at me and he said to me in Spanish, “We're Army. We're Army.” And then I looked over and I could see where the Commander was that had the pistol in his hand, and I saw at this point he was on the ground, and there was five humanitarian aid workers that were on him, just pummeling him. And at that point when I saw that, I realized it was true: we had just been rescued. And I was counting the minutes from that point on until I was going to see my family.

MULLINS: You did see your family, but things changed. What's the past year since your release – what's it been like?

GONSALVES: Well, it's been like a rebirth, because everything has changed. The life as I knew it before, it does not exist anymore. I'm no longer married. My divorce was just finalized a month ago, and I'm trying to take steps to live as healthy and as clean of a life as I can now.

MULLINS: Is that different from before?

GONSALVES: Yeah it is different from before, because before I used to take so many things for granted. That five and a half years were a school in appreciation.

MULLINS: How does that exemplify itself daily, if it is daily?

GONSALVES: Oh it is daily. It is. Look, here I am looking out this window and I can see the open sky, I can see green leaves, and I can see cars going by, people walking around and I can see freedom. The colors are so vibrant. It's like my senses have been brought to life.

MULLINS: Do you have to remind yourself of that? It's been a year. One would think that you know, we all kind of tamp down to our point of stasis.

GONSALVES: No. You know, maybe at one point I'll reach that, but for right now, you know, I'm just thankful every day when I get up in the morning that I'm laying on a mattress; my head is on a pillow. I don't have bugs constantly stinging and biting me. That doesn't go away. And when I look around, I can't help but be happy and appreciate what I have here.

MULLINS: Marc Gonsalves is co-author of “Out of Captivity.” Check out the photographs of the Americans life in captivity at our website, theworld.org. One more note now: the FARC rebels still hold hundreds of hostages. 22 of them are Americans. Some have been kept in the jungle for 12 years. This is PRI.

Copyright ©2008 PRI's THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI's THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World's Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.