Kyra Saylok (3:33)
Well, whenever someone tells me not to do something, it has always made me want to do it all the more. I feed on people's doubts in me and I use it to sort of fuel my determination. And I've used this a lot with my adult life and my career writing for magazines and doing my book writing. And I have spent most of my adult life traveling to some of the world's most dangerous and inhospitable places, doing trips I frankly wouldn't wish on anyone, like kayaking 600 miles alone to Timbuktu, being chased by these insane Tuaregs, bushwhacking across Papua New guinea, going to Congos war zone to report on the genocide, that sort of thing. And I first got into this line of work when I was 20. I had discovered solo backpacking around Europe and North Africa and for the first time in my life I found something that I felt I could do. I didn't have much confidence back then, I was just, I didn't really believe in myself and didn't think I had any capabilities. And then I started traveling alone and I was hooked on it. I was hooked on the empowerment of having to get from one place to another and I wanted to find harder and harder places to go to and more and more challenges. And so When I was 20 I worked in a factory packaging croutons and I saved up every cent I made and I bought a one way ticket to Central Africa. So there I was, this 20 year old girl, blonde hair, tie dye, T shirt cut off jeans, living out of the pack on her back traveling around Africa for months and it was the first time in my life that I felt joy from doing something. It was hard, it was really tough, but it was also exhilarating for me because I'd suffered from severe depression for much of my life and I didn't really know what living was about. I didn't know what I was doing here. I didn't frankly really want to be here. It was just tedious being alive. And for the first time traveling through Africa, I found something that I felt was satisfying and could sustain me. And so I was doing that. And it might have been enough for somebody to just sort of go to Tanzania or Kenya and do a safari, but I had my sights set on Mozambique. I really wanted to go there now. At that time, Mozambique was in the middle of a 17 year long civil war. It was a gruesome, bloody civil war that had killed tens of thousands of people. It wasn't the easiest thing getting to a country like that, but I really wanted to see it and write about it and see what was happening to the people there. Even back then, I sort of had inklings to being a journalist or a writer, so. So what I did was I was trying to figure out how I could get in there. This young American girl. Why in the world would I want to go to a place like that? But it was like the universe was conspiring to send me there. And I was hitchhiking in Malawi and the man who picked me up was best friends with the ambassador to Mozambique. And so I got a visa and a record five minutes, which is amazing by African standards. And so there was nothing stopping me from going except just the logistics of it. How could I actually enter a country that was in the middle of this protracted, gruesome civil war? So I learned about a road called the Boneyard Stretch. It was a road that cut through the northern part of Mozambique's war zone from Malawi to Zimbabwe. And these intrepid truck drivers would take it to find the fastest way to get between the two countries and get their wares across. And so I figured I would try to find some of these truck drivers and see if they would take me with them. So I ended up in a truck depot late at night by the Mozambique border. And I was knocking on the doors trying to find a driver who would take me. And they all thought I was just a complete lunatic. They didn't know I wanted to do it. And I had trouble explaining to them why I wanted to do it. And then I met Jerry. He was a 25 year old black Zimbabwean man. Happy go lucky. And he's like, okay, sure, I'll take you across. But then he took me out to the back of his truck and he showed me these dings in the truck, in the metal. And he said, these are bullet holes. And my truck was shot at by rebel soldiers just last week. I need you to know this. I also need you to know that this war is real and there's a chance that we could get ambushed by rebel soldiers and hurt or killed. And he also wanted me to know that the fuel injector on his truck was broken, which explained why he wasn't actually hauling any goods. He just wanted to get to Zimbabwe to get the truck fixed. And he said that there's a possibility that when we're crossing the boneyard stretch, the fuel injector could go on the truck and we would be caught there like sitting ducks and the convoy which was supposed to protect us would leave us behind, you know. And I heard what he said and intellectually I understood that it was extremely dangerous doing this. But I couldn't really grasp that reality of a war. I didn't know what that meant. I mean, in our postmodern western world, you know, people's tragedies and wars are reduced to Sunday night movies and entertainment. So I didn't know what the reality of war meant. So I said, yeah, I still want to go, I still want to do this. So I went with Jerry to the border with Mozambique. And early the next morning we crossed the border and we were through and we were on the boneyard stretch. Now we are one of about 40 trucks in this convoy. And the way it would work is the trucks would be guarded by these government soldiers that were supposed to keep protecting us like we are a herd of gazelles. And they were drive around and look for rebel soldiers hiding in the brush trying to ambush us. And in truth, I mean the government soldiers were. There was no loyalty and they would just take their uniforms off at the end of the day and just join the rebel soldiers. And so it wasn't really protection, it was just an illusion of protection. But it was enough to sort of give us a sense of enough safety to make the crossing. And Mozambique itself was a complete wasteland. It was like dried up savanna land, burnt down villages, towns reduced to rubble and covered with bullet holes. You didn't see sight of a living thing. There were no human beings anywhere, no animals, no nothing. And every once in a while on the road we'd pass these gigantic craters where land mines had gone off and you see these twisted hulks of metal and pieces of bloody clothing where people had just been killed the day before by some min. And we were going down and Jerry was blasting Bob Marley out of the truck windows as if saying, fuck you world, fuck you war. And so we're going through this just tragic scene with Bob Marley blasting. And I was realizing for the first time, just the reality of this war. And I couldn't figure out what I was doing in this place. All of a sudden it occurred to me that I was there in the war, this 20 year old blonde girl, like, what in the world was I doing there? And as we were going along, a jeep of government soldiers would keep going by. And at one point the soldiers saw me in the truck and they looked up and they couldn't believe their eyes. They couldn't believe that I was actually in their war and what was I doing there. And they weren't soldiers by any kind of sense of our idea of soldiers. They were really just children, 12 year olds, 14 year olds with AK47s and uniforms that were two sizes too large for them. And, and so they followed alongside her truck and made these kind of crude gestures at me. And you know, and Jerry said, just ignore them, they're animals, you know, and then they would pass by. And so we were going along and we got more than halfway along the boneyard stretch and we're into the last third of it. And all of a sudden Jerry's truck started coughing and it died. He pulled it alongside the road and immediately jumped out and popped open the hood to try to do something to fix it. Meanwhile, the convoy that we were part of started passing us one after the other. The trucks would go by and they would honk their horns and pity at us because if we weren't in the protection of this convoy, we were like a wounded gazelle left behind by the herd, at the mercy of the prey animals. And so one by one they would pass and honk in commiseration with our plight. And I would. And my hands were shaking and I knew I was in something so far over my head that I couldn't escape from that. My life was out of control. I didn't know what I was going to do. Fortunately, Jerry by some miracle managed to get the truck working again. Only the nature of the problem was such that we couldn't go more than 20 miles an hour because of the fuel injector issue. And so we're doing this pathetic 20 miles an hour down the boneyard stretch, completely alone in the middle of rebel territory, just totally at the mercy of any soldiers that might have been out there. So Jerry told me to look out my window and he looked out his. And he instructed me to tell him if I saw any rebel soldiers hiding in the brush now what he thought we would do if we saw any. Doing only 20 miles an hour, completely on our own in the middle of this place, I don't know. But I did my duty. I was looking for soldiers, and adrenaline was rushing through me, and my hands were shaking terribly, and all my senses were acute, and I realized how fragile my human life was, how vulnerable I was, and how the people living in that country had to deal with this sort of danger and violence and uncertainty on a daily basis. So we're creeping along, doing that 20 miles an hour, and the sun was setting, and I could see in the distance that we were getting close to the border with Zimbabwe. I could see the mountains of Zimbabwe, and we're going, we're going, we're getting there. And then his truck lurched. It coughed again, and it died. So he went out again in the last remaining light to try to fix the engine and get us going again. And as he was doing that, I heard in the distance the sound of an engine of some vehicle coming down the road behind us. At that time of day, it could have been anyone. Rebel soldiers, government soldiers. And even in that case, it didn't matter anyway. There was no loyalty. It was just anarchy. There it turned out to be a jeep, though, of government soldiers, adolescents with assault rifles. And they had seen me before. And in a country like that, in a place like that, everything is up for grabs. And if you want something, you take it. And they decided, as Jerry put it, to do things to me, and they wanted to take me with them to this building. They were going to find me a place to sleep, they said. But I knew everybody knew what they had planned. So I left Jerry behind, and I was taken with these men to this dilapidated building very close to the Zimbabwean border. I could tell from where the mountains were, it reeked of piss. And I was put on this bench, and the soldiers were just inviting all their buddies to this building. And one of their little entertainments would be to throw baobob pods at me or bottles to try to scare me. And I sat there with a stoic face. Just the only thing that kind of betrayed my fear was my hands were just shaking uncontrollably. And I knew if I didn't do something, I would be in deep trouble. If I died, if I was killed there, no one back home would know what happened to me. I would literally just disappear from the face of the earth. And meanwhile, they were clearing out this back room that was full of junk and crap because they wanted to have what they made very clear to me, to have a rape fest. And I was to be the main attraction. So they were busy Doing that and getting drunk and making lewd gestures at me and taunting me. And I asked one of the soldiers where the toilet was, because I had to just move. I had to think. And he pointed to a room. And I went in. And it was this, like, tiny little closet. And there was a broken window. And out through the window, I could see a bead of light that I knew because it was electricity. Had to have been. The border post was Zimbabwe. And it wasn't far at all. It was close. And if I could just get to Zimbabwe, get across the border, I knew I would be safe. So I left the closet room and I made a decision to just run. And there was the open door in front of me, and I sprinted out the door, and I ran into the night as fast as I could. And in high school, I'd been a long distance runner. I'd won state and track and set the mile record and whatnot. And I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be running literally for my life. And I ran into the dark, and I got a good lead on them before they got mobilized. And I could hear them shouting in the distance behind me. And actually, I could actually hear them coming after me and hear the rocks crunching beneath their boots as they chased after me. And I would run, and I would hide and stop and listen and I would run some more. I was terrified to run. I was terrified to hide. I didn't know what I was going to do. And I just finally figured out that I would just get to some place where I could just hide out through the night and then try to make it to the border post. And so that's what I did. And the night went by with excruciating slowness. I mean, each minute was just ticking by, and I just waited for the sun to rise. And when it did, I just headed toward that beat of light that I'd seen looking out for soldiers. And as I approached, I was right. It was the border post. And I could see these trucks parked out in front. And it turned out they were trucks from the convoy. And they hadn't made it to the border post by the time the sun set. And so they were parked there to wait to go over that morning. And I saw a truck I recognized with little dings in the side. And it was Jerry's truck. And I was like, oh, my God, it's Jerry. And I ran over there, and I made it without the soldier seeing me. Jerry, immediately, his face was serious for the first time. And he put me in the truck. And he locked me in the truck and he told me not to get out. And then as the morning came and the last trucks were crossing the border, he got me close to the Zimbabwean border and I ran out and got across the border and escaped with my life. And I grew up overnight from that experience. I lost all of my childhood innocence in that single day and that single night. And I realized the truth, the reality for millions of people in this world, the sort of violence, the uncertainty, the barbarity that they have to live with on a daily basis. And I wanted to share that with the world. You know, you'd think with that experience that I wouldn't want to do these trips again. But it was the opposite. I was willing to take a calculated risk. Not a blind risk anymore, but a calculated risk if I felt like I could bring back their reality and allow people in this world to understand what they have to live with. And on a larger, deeper level, I understood that my life did matter to me after all. I understood that I had done everything in my power to escape from that situation because I wanted my life. I wanted to live. And so that experience not only taught me the truth about the world and the realities that other people have to live with, but the truth about myself and that I wanted to be alive. Thank you.
