← This Is Actually Happening
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- [00:00]
Wit Misseldine
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of this Is Actually Happening ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi listeners, Today's episode requires a little background and context. The first part of the story takes place in South Africa during apartheid in the 1950s through the 1970s, and most of the second half of the story takes place in Mozambique in the 1980s, which was at the time in the midst of a civil war. So I'd like to spend a few minutes here giving a very rough overview of the context of South Africa and Mozambique at the time so it will be more clear what Dave, our storyteller, is referring to. In the 1960s and 1970s, both South Africa and Mozambique were part of the larger decolonization of Africa, with South Africa gaining full independence from Britain in 1961 and Mozambique gaining independence from Portugal in 1975. However, in the decolonization process, both were thrown into proxy battles between old structures clinging to power and the larger global cold war between communist and capitalist superpowers. South Africa, even after independence, was still ruled by a white minority government under the National Party. The National Party was populated mostly by the white ethnic group known as Afrikaners, who spoke a language called Afrikaans. The National Party instituted apartheid apartheid, a brutally oppressive system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy enforced in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. South Africa shares a northeastern border with Mozambique. When Mozambique gained independence in 1975, they were ruled by the communist party known as Frelimo. Frelimo became a major force opposing apartheid in neighboring South Africa. The South African apartheid government, in response to frlimo's opposition, actively destabilized Mozambique from the inside side by propping up a rebel group known as Renamo. This led to a violent 15 year civil war in Mozambique between the ruling Communist backed FRELIMO party and the South African backed Renamo rebel group. In the first part of today's episode, you'll hear our storyteller speak about growing up in South Africa during apartheid as a white man, but he was not an Afrikaner and grew up in a family that was opposed to apartheid. The second part of the story takes place in Mozambique where he and his family are held by the Renamo rebel group and caught in the chaos and fighting between Ferlimo and Renamo, the two warring factions in the civil war there. Of course, there's much more to say about all of this, and Dave, our storyteller, will speak to some of these issues as he experienced them. We've put this description of context in the show notes as well, but I encourage you all to read more about the brutal and complex history of decolonization and apartheid in Africa. One other final note, you'll hear Dave talking about Arwen many times throughout the story. In case it isn't clear right away, he's referring to his boat that he built. And now onto today's episode what if you are held captive by child soldiers?
- [03:14]
Dave Muller
I had this weird feeling that I'd fallen into a TV set. It was just absolutely unbelievable. I could not acknowledge that what I was seeing with my eyes was real. That's the point where life changes. You just know that nothing at all in the future is going to be what you imagined it to be.
- [03:40]
Wit Misseldine
From audible originals I'm wit misseldine, you're listening to this is actually happening. Episode 396. What if you were held captive by child soldiers?
- [04:05]
Dave Muller
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- [04:17]
Wit Misseldine
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- [04:20]
Dave Muller
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- [05:04]
Wit Misseldine
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- [05:47]
Dave Muller
I was born in Port Elizabeth in South Africa that's now called Koberga. Both my parents served during The Second World War. My dad fought in North Africa, captured there at the Battle of Tobruk, and spent two years as a prisoner of war, one of them on the run in Italy. My mom is British. She came out to South Africa straight after the Second World War in 1949, presumably to find her husband. And I'm the result of that. I was born in 1951. I have a sister who's four years younger than me. My dad was a salesman for heavy earthmoving equipment. That was great for me as a little boy because I would tag along with him to building sites and things like that, with cranes and excavators, all sorts of things that little boys love. My mom stayed at home most of my childhood. They never spoke about the war. They never spoke about their experiences. And I wouldn't want to convey the image that they lacked emotion. I think they were all very emotional people. But I had fantastic parents. They gave me everything I needed, especially a safe, secure home. Both my parents were anti the government, the National Party government at the time. 1948, the National Party came to power. They introduced the concept of apartheid. So I grew up with apartheid as the norm in my life. I never knew anything any different to it. That just seemed to be how life was. I know both my parents were very anti it. The place where I grew up was very, very close to New Brighton, which is where the very first unrest occurred. And one of my earliest memories is of troop carrying vehicles that the South African army had. They didn't make a normal vehicle noise, they had this very high pitched whine. So I was. I was aware of the discontent in the country. I do recall one incident that occurred. We were giving a black lady a lift to her home in New Brighton, which is a sort of segregated area. It was about 3km from where we lived. I just have this very vivid image of seeing the Tim Shacks and we stopped to let the lady out and when we did that, a group of men came rushing up to the car and they started shouting and rocking it from side to side, trying to turn it over. And then my mom was screaming and my dad just flooring it. Soon after that, the start of the civil unrest in South Africa did break out. One of the other things that is quite difficult to explain is that as much as there was apartheid between black and white, there was quite a lot of friction between English speaking people and Afrikaans speaking people. So Afrikaners were in power throughout the apartheid era. And the National Party, they looked after their grassroots members and they made sure that Afrikaans speaking people got all the prime jobs and they had the majority. So it was impossible for people like my parents to ever unseat the National Party. We just had to live with it. I was in grade five and I had an Afrikaan speaking teacher, Mr. Kruger was his name. And in 1960, South Africa held a referendum to establish whether or not the country should move from being the Union of South Africa under the control of the Queen, to the Republic of South Africa, an independent country. And my parents went off and voted and I knew they wanted to remain the Union of South Africa, which would have had a link with Britain. Anyway. The morning after the vote, I remember Mr. Kruger said, I put up your hands, all of you whose parents voted for the Queen. And probably about a third of us stupidly put up our hands. And he said, right now, all of you to the front, bend over. And we, we all got the Union Jack imprinted on our little backsides, which was a very brutal thing to do. So yeah, that, that kind of turned me against the Offrik Corner. I was 9 years old when that happened. I never enjoyed school at all. I was one of those kids who just didn't fit into school. That just reinforced my intense dislike of schooling and teachers. As I grew up and became a teenager, it became more and more apparent that I would be conscripted into the army the moment I left school. So, you know, awaiting me was this inevitability of a year of military training. Some of my friends, two years military training, and many of them actually went and fought in Angola. Some of them lost their lives. That was a nationalist party driven issue as well, what they called the Red danger, this ever present threat of Russia taking over. So that sort of brought the proxy war in Angola and the enforcement of apartheid together. So my younger days were very much influenced by this battle between the east and the West. So when I was 13 years old, I was a member of the Boy Scouts. One evening our scoutmaster arranged for a man who just sailed around the world to come and talk to us. I didn't really have any idea of the world out there. You know, there was no social media, no tv, access to books and libraries. And that was also extremely restricted. So this man showed this form and suddenly it opened my eyes to all the incredible wonders of the world. And I was absolutely riveted by scenes of the Caribbean and the Panama Canal and the Marquis Islands and this whole concept of sailing. It seemed a way out of what seemed to me to be a very boring life. I just felt this incredible Longing for adventure. And I decided then at 13, that I would build a yacht, which was an absolutely absurd notion. I certainly didn't come from a family that could afford a yacht. You could barely afford a car. High school years were pretty uneventful. I think I was a painfully shy person. Most people feel sad when they leave school. For me, it was one of the happiest days of my life. I felt free. By incredible good fortune, I chose to study architecture. It was a perfect fit for me. So once I got to varsity, I had a professor who was quite politically aware. He was an Afrikaans speaking person, but he was what would have been called verlucht in those days, which is enlightened. And he suddenly exposed these students to the injustices of apartheid. That's when I became aware that we were in a morally impoverished situation as white people. Because I went to university, I managed to escape having to do a year of army service. But I did have to do two month sessions each year in the army. So I did my basic training. I was very lucky in the army in that I managed to escape going up to the border. I suppose just as I wasn't a good fit for school, I wasn't a particularly good fit for the army as well. After I finished school and went into the army, I became very good friends with a guy called Stephen, who had very similar views to me. And together we bought a racing dinghy and we sailed this dinghy on the local river. And those were wildly exciting days. And that just reinforced this almost imperative to own a yacht one day and go sailing and escape the madness that was sort of slowly but surely developing around me in South Africa. And then with my very first paycheck, Stephen and I, we put our money together. We didn't have much money, but put down a deposit on having a steel old yacht built for us. So local engineering works built the steel hull of Arwen. And at that point, the direction of our lives was completely linked into this building and finishing this yacht. Arwen was built to be pretty much indestructible. We spent ten years completing her. So every weekend we were working on Arwen. We started in 1975 and Arwen was launched in 1985. A further complication was we never have had enough money living from hand to mouth. So I trained as an architect. And of course, you know, when you, when you're young, you have no idea of the incredible complexities of life. You know, life is very simple and uncomplicated. But you're a bachelor, you don't have any responsibility to any other person. So the real cost of Arwen was not so much money, but it was essentially every free moment of my early youth. There comes a time in every man's life, I suppose, when that devastating thing happens and you fall in love. And that happened to me quite suddenly. I was sitting at my drawing board working one day, and this lady suddenly came and demanded that I go and sort out electricity in her flat. And I know it's corny and trite, but I just knew that this was the girl for me. That was Sandy, who I ended up marrying. Sandy was a marine biologist and she was working at the local university. I became quite a strongly committed Christian. Sandy already was one. We moved into a little flat in Port Elizabeth. But then along came Temi. Our daughter was born in 1983. And in 1985, just before we launched Arwen, Seth, our son, was born. They didn't have much of a choice. They became sailors literally from day one. So for five years we did sort of fairly short coastal voyages on Awan along the coast of South Africa. And the children just adapted to it very easily. Then in 1990, we started to hear reports about people sailing up to the Bazaruta Islands in Mozambique. And this gelled quite nicely with Sandy's work at that time. So Sandy also was quite keen to investigate the possibility of doing some baseline research in what we knew would be a fairly pristine environment around the Bazarus Islands. So the plan was to sail there, gain some more sailing experience. I would finally achieve my objective of sailing to a tropical island, and Sandy would investigate and make contact with the scientists there. So we set sail for the Bazaruta Islands. During that period, one became very aware of certain violent aspect that was starting to manifest in the application of apartheid. But eventually, in February 1990, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, that was a sign of enormous hope. But when we headed off to Mozambique, we were aware that there was an act of civil war being fought in the country. But we'd done some investigations and we were assured that this was way to the north and inland from where we were going to be. And we also knew that the warring parties was essentially Frelema, which was the socialist government of Mozambique. And this organization called Renano, which had originally been supported by South Africa as a destabilizing force in Mozambique to basically ensure that FREMO never gained enough power to pose a threat to South Africa as a communist based organization. But we were assured that the areas we were sailing into were safe. Remember, their words were that the coastline is secure was the word they used. So we didn't feel there was any risk in what we were doing. We sailed up and visited Maputu, which was an extraordinary city to visit in those days. It was still very, very much under the influence of the Russians. The Russians had a huge floating dry dock in the harbor. These were the first Russians I ever met in my life. This was the dreaded enemy. And they were all incredibly amiable, lovely, friendly people. It was just such a strange experience to encounter these people who up to that point had been so definitely painted as vicious, horrible people. And yet here they were, these rough sailors. They could not have been more gentle and kind. Once we left Maputu, we then sailed up the east coast of Africa. So for two days we worked our way northwards and I could see there was a thunderstorm brewing inland. Didn't feel any anxiety about it because Alwyn more than capable of handling storms. We actually, he was made for those kind of seas. The kids had been playing in the cockpit so we cleared out the cockpit and cleared up all the washing and stuff hanging around. Took the children below and I was alone on the deck. And the storm slowly approached from behind. We were probably like 10 kilometers offshore at this point. But then there was just this wall of wind. You could see it on the sea coming up astern. This wind hit us with a force that was just absolutely unbelievable. To this day I don't really know what that storm was. It was way beyond anything normal. It literally just took control of the yacht. The foresail tore apart. The force on the mainsail was so strong they actually bent these 10 millimeter metal plates that were welded to the deck. The yacht kept on spinning around into the winds and shuddering. So Sandy came up on deck and left the children below. She wedged them safely onto the floor amongst the cushions. The wind was so strong and the rain was so intense that though Sandy was only about 5 meters away from me up in the bows, I actually couldn't see her. But eventually we got the front sail down and Sandy took over steering the yacht. And after about an hour the storm moved on and things calmed down. But it was a little bit of a shattering experience. Our self steering gear that we'd been using to steer the yacht up to that point, it literally just disintegrated. It couldn't take the force of the water on it. Anyway, we survived and throughout that night we carried on sailing north. When the morning came we found ourselves immediately south of the Bazaruta Islands at that Time. Because there was no sat nav or gps, I was taking compass bearings off objects along the coast that we could see. Then, combining with the depth that we were in, I could plot our position fairly accurately. I knew from projecting ahead that we would reach the islands that night at around about 2 o', clock, in fact, we would be north of the island. So there was a great moment. Sandy and the children were asleep down below. I was feeling really content because this was now the culmination of, of all those years since I was 13, to finally reach the island, just about 30 kilometers away. So I tidied up the ropes and things in the cockpit area and I went down below and I was intending to jump up and stick my head out every 30 minutes, but unforgivably I fell asleep. I, to this day can't explain that. I suppose the frailty of mankind. I must have been asleep for about two hours. I'd calculated that we had probably at least six or seven hours of safety around us before there was any need for concern. But after about two hours, Sandy suddenly woke up and said, dave, we're touching bottom. And sure enough, it lurched up and the next thing, bang. We hit something. The yacht healed over. Waves broke over the yacht and before we knew it, we were aground. I was absolutely astonished. I couldn't work out where we were, what we'd found aground on, but it was obviously a sandy bottom, which was a relief, and it was pitch black still. Strangely beautiful scene though, because the waves breaking over the yacht all burst into phosphorescence. But as the sun rose, it became very clear that the tide was dropping. We'd obviously been pushed inshore by a very strong current that swirls around the islands and we were aground. And there wasn't an awful lot we could do until the tide came in. Sanjay and I by then were absolutely exhausted beyond belief. So we allowed the kids to jump off onto the shore and they ran. They were completely unaffected by this as well, by the way. So they ran ashore and ran around collecting shells and things on the beach. We tried to work out where we were and managed confirmed we were on the spit of land about 30 km south of the islands. The children were running around happy on the beach, as children generally are. And then suddenly Seth realized that it was his fifth birthday. So Sandy climbed aboard Awen and ferreted out the presents that we had hidden away for him and got some cool drink and some biscuits and chocolate. And she put a blanket out in the shade under the shade of Alwyn, and we held A little birthday party for Seth. So I went and found my camera and took a few photos of, of this rather strange birthday party. As I was walking back to the yacht, I looked up north in the direction where the islands were and I could see in the heat haze it was very hot by then. There was this little group of people walking towards us and I assumed they must be fishermen from the islands. I said to Sandy, oh, great news. We've, we've got some help coming. So both Sandy and I, we left the children in the shade of the yacht and we started walking towards this group coming towards us as they got nearer and we could see more clearly. We could see that it was a family and five children. We carried on walking towards them, but they stopped walking and the children started to move inland up the beach towards the dune, which was strange behavior. Anyway, we just carried on walking, then suddenly looked up and realized that these children were all boys and they were all kneeling down and pointing AK47s at us. The old couple wasn't their parents. They were actually being captured by them and were carrying their burdens. I had this weird feeling that I'd fallen into a TV set. It was just absolutely unbelievable. I could not acknowledge that what I was seeing with my eyes was real. That's the point where life changes. You just know that nothing at all in the future is going to be what you imagined it to be. Now. In those situations, people will say fight or flight. Response kicks in. Neither of those options were open to us. I mean, we were there in shorts and T shirts, barefoot, exhausted. Our children were about 100 meters away from us and unprotected. We had no weapons at all. Fight or flight was not an option. We literally froze. We just stood there staring at this apparition before us and freeze sort of pretty quickly became also appease because you had to do everything in your power to not escalate the situation, you know, There were five guns pointing at us. These were all teenagers. The youngest was probably about 13 years old. The oldest was probably 17, I suppose. I said to Sandy, don't make any sudden movements, move very, very slowly. And then slowly backtracked towards the children. So we slowly walked backwards down the beach towards the children and these boys sort of followed us. They were on the inland side. And then we went and sat with the children. They were still happily having their party at that point. The oldest boy, the leader, he'd lost one eye. We ended up calling him Cyclops. So he told one of his, one of the boys to climb on board the yacht. So he disappeared into the yacht and started throwing out our possessions onto the sand. And that was the point when the children suddenly realized this was not a good thing that was happening. They came and sort of snuggled into our laps, and we just held them tightly. Cyclops then started shouting at the old couple that were with them. It was an old man and a woman. He was telling them that they must bundle up what was being taken out of the yacht. Obviously they were going to walk away with the stuff. He wasn't happy with the speed with which this old couple were doing it. So he started to beat them with the butt of his rifle, which is a bit brutal. Cyclops was asking us questions, but we couldn't understand anything he was saying. So there they would speak a version of Shangon or Portuguese, and neither of which we were familiar with. We just sat there. And Cyclops became more and more hysterical, rushing up to us and pointing south and pointing at his watch. I realized that there was no choice. We had to walk with them. And so we walked off with them. When I looked back at Arwen and saw her lying there, I realized that she represented our only route of escape out of the situation that we found ourselves in. I was determined that somehow or other I would get back to Arwen and we would sail off and life would continue as normal. I was just more filled with incredible remorse at this terrible situation that my family was in. And then also just realizing that we had no idea what was going to come. And there was just this terrible feeling of failure on my side and worry about the pain and the anguish that we would be causing our family and friends. We walked for the rest of that day. Cyclops and the boys kept on prodding us forward. I calculated that we must have walked about 15 kilometers down the coast. As evening was coming. We reached a point where there was a very tall sand dune. And the boys and the old couple went behind the dune. And we could hear them shouting and carrying on. In retrospect, I realized what they were doing then was they were dividing up their booty amongst themselves and sort of strategizing as to what was going to happen next. We lay there on the sand. We were absolutely exhausted. The boys came back and they again indicated we had to climb the sand dune. And when we reached the crest, I could just see it was like a flat swampland that stretched away far to the west. Then beyond it was this very thick coastal forest. I just knew that, you know, we could just disappear. Anyway, Cyclops was in a. In a big Hurry. So we plunged into this forest. There was one boy behind us who kept on pushing us forward. The forest was very dark, pitch black. You couldn't see anything. At this point, Sanji and I were taking turns carrying Seth on our back. And we must have blundered our way through that forest for about an hour and a half to two hours. The boys had moved on ahead of us with the old couple as well. So we just sat down on the ground, and then we heard Cyclops and the boys shouting and hacking at Bush. And it was as they were through cactuses, through succulents. We just lay there, oblivious to what was going on. So after a few minutes, Cyclops and the boys returned. And Cyclops was very out of breath and very, very agitated. And he sort of brushed past me. And as he walked past, he handed me a plastic jug that I knew the old man had been carrying. The handle of the jug was sticky and wet, and I voluntarily licked my fingers and tasted salt. And I just knew then that it was blood. And they just killed the old couple. That's the most horrific thing I've ever experienced in my life, that little boys could actually just kill old people in such cold blood. We did literally think we were the walking dead at that point. We didn't think there was any chance of us surviving. What is a blessing, if one can find a blessing in such a situation, is that the children were completely oblivious to what had happened. They have no memory of this at all. So we carried on walking with them. During that time, Sanji and I, we discussed making a break for it, running away. There was no chance of us being able to escape. We also made a vow that we would never be separated from the children, even if it meant we were going to be killed. But after about an hour, we arrived in what was sort of an outlying camp. At this point, we didn't know who we were with. We didn't know that it was Runoama, could have been any renegade group of rebels. We arrived in this camp, we were aware of little fires in the bush around us and people staring at us. But we were so exhausted we couldn't remain on our feet. So the first fire we came to, we literally just collapsed onto the ground, and the boys disappeared. What was fairly comforting is that an old man came with a plate and it was some beans on it and gave it to us to eat. So that was a hopeful sign. After a short while, we were summoned and we arrived at a clearing. There was a fairly big fire in the middle of it. And sitting on the other side was a man wearing a beret. And he introduced himself as Paul Patrick. He had this massive communication problem. We couldn't understand what he was asking, what he was saying. But I drew a yacht in the sand and the map of South Africa and explained to him where we were from. He just mumbled and said, no worry, no worry. Which was not very comforting considering what we'd just experienced. Anyway, they put a blanket out next to another fire nearby, and we lay down on this and started to read the Chatty Parrot to the kids and some of the young girls that were in the camp. They came and lay there with us. It was again one of these sort of slightly unreal situations. We never slept that night. It was a terrifying night. The next morning, they brought us some porridge Seth wouldn't eat because it was very bitter. So I tried to indicate, using mime, that Seth would add sugar on his. And eventually poor Patrick issued a command and one of the boys ran off. And he came back with a little broken glass with some very sticky sort of liquid and twigs in the bottom of it. Stuck my finger into it to see what it was, and it was honey. That was the first sort of point of relief. I thought, well, if they're going to share honey with us, they're not likely to be killing us at any time soon. Soon after that, Cyclops was brought in to this clearing where we were now sitting. Paul Patrick started shouting at Cyclops and he was obviously being accused of something. This teenager was obviously terrified, and before long he was in tears. So this boy, who the day before had literally murdered an old couple, was now being humiliated. Two little boys were told to break some branches off the nearby trees, and they started hitting Cyclops on the back of his legs. Eventually, Cyclops fell onto the ground. Paul Patrick grabbed one of the ever present AK47s that were around everywhere and put it to Cyclop's head and forced him to lie on the ground, stretch out his arms so he was lying on his stomach. He was made to shout what I presume was a confession. It was just a really sad, terrible thing to see, you know, and you just begin to realize the incredible complexities of children fighting wars. What an absolute abomination it is. We were then taken to the top of a nearby dune. Then poor Patrick and a whole retinue of troops and women came. Poor Patrick made a big show of how generous he was in giving back our goods to us. It was a strange mixture of things that he returned to us, like dishwashing liquid. But most incredible of all, my camera, which is why I actually have photographs of this whole time. So Paul Patrick introduced us to the five boys who were now going to accompany us south, and I think five or six girls who were all carrying huge bundles of maize on their head. And he said to us we were going to be taken to the road to Villenkulas, the nearest town. So this was incredibly good news. As evening came on again, we fell onto this beautiful soft cross. Frogs started to croak around us. Tammy had just at her school, been learning to sing Paul McCartney's Frog Song. And she started to sing the song and we all joined in, and it became sort of slightly delirious. We. We sang it again and again and again, side by side, hands in hands, we all stand together. And every time we sang it, we sang it a little bit louder. I think they must have thought we were mad, which possibly we were at that point. But it was an incredible point of triumph for us. This is the point where we shifted from having no hope to definitely having hope. And then, as daybreak came, we set off again, heading down the coast, and then we veered inland. And then suddenly the boys just disappeared, and we were left standing there. Suddenly, this man arrived, incredibly well dressed, in a sort of starched shirt and slacks and sandals. He stopped and looked at us and started to giggle, which was a rather unexpected reaction. And he'd lost his left arm just above the elbow. He immediately got the name Captain Hook. Soon after that, we arrived in what we found out to be was the headquarters of Renamo. We were told to sit down at the table, and we met the commander of the camp, and he started to question us. And we were aware that our life hung on the answer we were giving. But again, we had this terrible problem of the language barrier. We couldn't understand what they were saying. Another old man appeared. He was Patricia, and he became our interpreter. Patricia had a very, very rudimentary understanding of English. He would get negatives mixed up, for example, and we never really ever knew whether we'd heard the questions correctly and whether our answers were being conveyed correctly. But then we were able to vaguely sort of understand what was going on. And they were asking questions about whether we knew anybody in the oil trade and why we were there and so on. But at this point, we had absolutely no idea what their intention with us was. And I was using every opportunity I could to ask them to take us back to the yacht. We were still convinced we were going to get back to Arwen and this would all soon be over. But never ever did we understand why they were holding us. The next morning we were woken up very early and we saw that they were clearing an area. And pretty soon they started to build a hut. And with a sinking feeling we realized this was going to be our hut. By that evening it was finished. So we pretty much resigned ourselves to a long stay. Slowly, a few other things drifted back to us from the yacht. One of them was about a third of our first aid kit. So Sandy offered what few medical things we had to them. And at this point we, we met the man we called the doctor. Sandy started to explain to them how the medication that we had could be used. The doctor took meticulous notes about what all these things were for and so on. It turned out that the doctor wasn't really a doctor, but the hospital was just beds laying on the ground under the trees. And they had no capacity to treat anybody. The most common wound were gunshot wounds. So they would try and stop infection if they could. But if gangrene set in, the only option was to amputate. So there were a fair number of people walking around with minus a leg or an army. But because of Sandy's knowledge, she developed a bit of a reputation as the doctor. And she ended up on many occasions treating people while we were staying there for various ailments like ear infections, pink eye and things like that. We were obviously in what was the equivalent of the officer corps. There were about 15 teenage boys. They were all very snappily dressed and we gave them collectively the nickname of the yuppies. We knew raiding parties were being sent out to attack the road in the nearby town. They could carry on supplementing themselves by simply raiding and grabbing ammunition and guns and things like new batteries off trucks. So in that sense Renamo were pretty self sufficient and certainly probably could have sustained the war for much longer time. At this point I realized that we could just disappear and there'd be no trace of us. I thought we'd seen too much of their operation. So we were still expecting a very strong likelihood, despite the goodwill shown towards us, that we would be killed. So I decided I better start writing up what had actually happened to us while we were there, what had happened. And that was the beginning of the diary I kept through the entire time. And that pretty much was my therapy in the time that we were there. The days just sort of slowly bled one into the other. The day would always begin with the cocks crowing, donkeys braying and the sweepers Then after that we would seat ourselves at our table. So the food we ate while we were there was probably 80% little bony finger sized fish that they smoked over a fire and you just ate the thing whole and you spat out the bones. The kids loved this. Also with the fish would be what we call mashibo, which is a bit like a stiff porridge made from cassava. Once a week they killed a goat and we would then have meat for a few days in that sense, well looked after and catered for by them. After our breakfast, the yuppies would all assemble, they'd have a little bit of a parade, worship their ancestors and then the yuppies would all go to and sit under this tin roof where the music bled out. The music became psychologically a real trauma for us. It wasn't though that the music was horrible. It was. They had only three or four tapes and they were all incredibly stretched and they were playing the volume way beyond the capacity of the speaker. So we ended up many times having to put our hands over our ears to try and avoid it. So another important event of the day was the beer delivery. They made beer from all sorts of things, so oranges, cashew fruit, sugar cane. Every day two 20 liter plastic tubs of beer would arrive and by 10 o' clock the yuppies would have consumed all of this beer and they would be pretty blotto by then. Obviously the fact that we were now amongst teenagers carrying guns, who were drunk most of the time didn't make life any easier for us. The way we dealt with the children was Sandy and I took a decision right at the beginning that we would never do anything to show fear in front of the children. And we would treat whatever was happening as just a strange deviation of our holiday plans. Nothing to get worried about. Gosh, isn't this fascinating? Look at this funny fruit. Look at this incredible insect. So these were all great educational opportunities and the yuppies were very kind to the children as well. They, they put up a swing for them and brought them some old bicycle hoops that they could roll around the sand. So for the children it was like landing in a giant playground. Particularly for Seth. We did homework with the kids as well and we tried to stick to some kind of routine with them. We kept on pleading with them to take us back to Arwen, but their reply was, can't do that because this was an active war zone. So about three or four weeks in, one morning in the dock, before anybody had even woken up, we heard what sounded like thunder. In the distance. And we knew that at this point, the boys were out on a raid to the nearest town. I said to Samuel, maybe the boys have blown up something on the road. A few minutes later, there was this unmistakable sound of missiles falling from the sky above us, and then incredible explosions. So instantly, the camp was awake. There was another distant vroom. And a few minutes later, again. They were slowly getting closer and closer. The boys in the camp were incredibly calm about this whole event. They've disassembled everything. They packed all the stuff from the kitchen area onto donkeys. And I knew from my military training that it would be followed up with an infantry attack later on. And just this awful realization of what we'd fallen into overcame me, and I had this weird feeling of my brain disintegrating in my head. I couldn't talk. I suppose I was just terrified beyond belief. And all I could get out was ask Sandy to pray for us. After about 30 minutes, we headed off with the little armed party of guards and the people from the hospital, and we walked towards the coast. By then, daylight was starting to break. Sure enough, the inevitable happened and all hell broke loose back in the area where the camp was with mortars going off. And we stopped at the top of the dune and literally listened to this battle. We couldn't see anything, we could just hear it. Astonishingly, after about an hour of fighting, it all went quiet. And by lunchtime we got the message to come back to the camp. So we arrived back in camp. It was quite eerie. It was just the commander and a few of the yuppies sitting there. But the cooks and the donkeys returned soon, and before long they had the fire going. And within an hour they had lunch prepared for us. And I don't really know what can one make of that level of care and concern. Having just fought a pretty significant battle, their priority was to provide us with food. The next morning at breakfast, the commander came across to us and told us that the reason for the attack had been to kill us. We expressed disbelief at that, and Patricio said, no, no, that's true. The camp hasn't been attacked for a year. Anyway, life drifted back into the routine for about another two or three weeks. And one morning just after breakfast, suddenly there was this enormous bang about 50 meters away when a mortar landed in the camp. And that was the beginning of the second attack. And that was a far more serious event than that first one. Once again, we fled, and we could sort of follow the sound of the. Of the various attacks. One of Them came very close to us, probably 100 meters away from us. But we just hid under the trees. There were probably about 50 people in the group we were in. That was quite serious because there were bullets flicking around the trees again. By lunchtime, we got instruction to return to the camp. But this time we could see there was a lot of damage. Once again, the next day after breakfast, the commander came and told us that the reason for that attack had been to kill us. Our mental state at this time was deteriorating. The mental cycle we were in was looking for signs of hope. Your hope would rise and then it would be dashed. We didn't realize it, but we were slowly, slowly sinking into a pretty traumatic state of mind. One of the things that was given back to us early on was our shortwave radio. Because we. We only had the one set of batteries. And we had no idea how long we were going to be there. We restricted our listening to the BBC in the morning and the BBC in the evening. Sometime just before the first attack, we were listening to the BBC. And to our utter astonishment, we found ourselves mentioned that this family was missing in Mozambique. And there was heavy fighting in the area where they were being kept. I can't stress to you enough of how absolutely terrifying it is to hear yourself reported about in that way. But what was comforting is we at least knew that our family knew that we were alive. And that we were somewhere in the Mozambique countryside. A strange thing happened. One Saturday. Two cattle were brought into the center of the headquarters. Tied up next to a tree and also a goat. This was quite unusual. So we anticipated something was going to happen. At the other side of the clearing, under the trees, was the hut of one of the yape zoo we call Communication. And while we were sitting there wondering what was going to happen, a man and two women arrived. The women all were dressed in traditional clothes. And they had whisks and rattles with them. And they went into communications hut and they started this rhythm. This went on for at least an hour. While all this was happening, the rest of the yuppies who were in the beer garden. And they were all sort of milling around and laughing and quite jovial. There was sort of an air of great relaxation. Eventually, the man who had gone in with the woman, he appeared at the entrance to communications hut, followed by the two women and Communication. And the man was blindfolded. And he sort of came out of the hut and wandered around in a circle. And the woman in communications fell in behind him. All the time they were chanting and clapping and rattling Slowly they started sort of heading towards what we call the chapel, which was where the yuppies did their ancestor worship ritual every morning. It had a curtain across the door. We couldn't see into it. And as they were getting closer and closer, suddenly the blindfolded man started walking really fast. And the others all were running along behind him. Just as he got before the door, it was as though he'd walked into a pane of glass. Something invisible hit him. He was flung back on his feet. People behind him, they were all flung back. They all fell onto the ground. That was inexplicable because clearly there was something there all the time. The Yapis are still now laughing and watching what's going on. And the four of them get back onto their feet, they sort of dust themselves off. The blindfolded man is still blindfolded, wandering around in circles again, trying to find direction. And again something invisible hit him. And again they all found themselves on their backsides in the sand. And I realized then that there are things that we do not understand in this life. Then another woman appeared carrying a uniform, and she walked into the hut and disappeared into the hut. And then the curtain was pulled to one side, and the man who'd been blindfolded, he appeared. And he was dressed in this military uniform, in full military gear. He was carrying in front of him a cloth with a dagger across it. And so he started walking towards the cattle. And I said to Sandy, I think we better go into our hut because I think they're going to slaughter the cattle. And he started walking sideways like a crab, but he didn't stop at the cattle. He came rushing up to us, and he stood literally nose to nose with me. And I thought, oh, boy, this is now it. Maybe we are going to be the sacrifice this time. And I looked into his eyes, and I don't know if anybody's ever looked into a trans person's eyes. His eyes were just empty. It was absolutely terrifying thing to see. What was particularly terrifying is that right next to him was the commander of the camp. But this time I looked at him and I could see he was terrified. And I realized he didn't know what was going to happen next. Anyway, he stood there and he slowly sort of tilted his head down, and he almost like scanned my body with his eyes. And then he stepped sideways, did the same to Sandy. He was next to me, and then Tammy was the next one along. He did exactly the same thing, and then he sidestepped back to me. Then he stuck his hand out and Shook my hand. And then he did the same to Sandy. And Tammy turned around, and he briskly walked back past the cattle towards the chapel area. And on the way, he picked up a chicken that happened to be passing by. And he slit his throat and let the blood flow onto this little white apron that he had in front of him. And then later on that afternoon, they slaughtered the goat as well. And I realized that there's a lot in the spiritual realm that I do not fully understand. So a few days after that, commander came to our hut. And he said to us, you must get ready to leave. Just like that, out of the blue, what we've been hoping for for 44 days, suddenly there it was. You're going to be released. Within five minutes. We were packed and ready to leave. But nothing happened. The next day passed. The next day passed. We started to lose hope that this wasn't just another false alarm. The next day, just after lunch, the commander came across and said, okay, you're leaving. We ended up walking north about 10km. By then it was twilight. This was a very somber time for us. Because we really had developed a bit of a sympathy for these youngsters that had looked after us. It was very difficult not to do that. They were just children. So anyway, Patricia took us behind the primary dune again. They made a fire. And knowing that we loved roast coconut, he made some last roast coconut for us. We could see the fires had been lit, and we could hear Captain Hook shouting for Patricia. And he went running off. Soon came running back and said, come, you must go. You must go. Quick, quick, quick. He grabbed our things and disappeared. So we followed him. Everybody was sort of rushing around. And we never saw Patricio again. He just disappeared. And we were left standing there in the midst of this mass of people. And then this man in a wetsuit appeared. He stuck his hand out to me, and he said, are you Mr. Muller? And I said, yes. And he said, boy, are we glad to see you. And it turns out he was a member of the equivalent of your Navy SEALs and swam ashore. He said to me, you've got a choice. You can either go now by ski boat, or we can bring helicopters in at midnight. And I said, no, we go now. And with that, he went down into where the waves were breaking. And the ski boat came screaming out of the dark. Men jumped off it. We were put in flotation suits. We were put in the boat, and we went roaring out to sea in a great big spray of phosphorescence. And I just felt this incredible Profound sadness for Mozambique. That sight of the three fires slowly dwindling into the distance. At that point, we'd actually witnessed a very critical event in the history of Mozambique's civil war. That was the first time Renamo and Frulima had ever agreed to stop fighting each other. And that event gave both parties enough confidence to start peace talks. Anyway, we sped our cross over the sea, and suddenly this huge ship loomed up out of the dark. That was the SAS Tafelberg, which is South Africa's naval replenishment ship. As we approached, the silence was broken by this great big cheer. Sanji and I at this point were catatonic. We were numb. We could not comprehend what was happening. So we came alongside. We were lifted up on derricks, and then suddenly all the lights came on. And there before us was the entire ship's crew. The captain and admiral greeted us. Huge cheer. And it was like stepping onto a stage into a different world. And I to this day, regret that we were so impassive to what was happening, because I just knew that if we showed any emotion at that time, something would break. Certainly in me, something would have broken. We were taken under the wings of a medical team. They realized we would be in quite a bad mental state. We were completely oblivious of that fact. The day after we'd been rescued, they took us through a psychological debriefing, and they just simply said, tell us the story. Tell us what happened. And I started talking about it, explaining what happened. And then we came to that point where the old couple had been murdered, and my voice just vanished, and I literally just melted into a lump. It was such a strange and disturbing feeling of becoming like jelly. And I couldn't say what had happened. I was so traumatized by it. And they said, well, just skip that now. Carry on. You know, so there was lots of tears all around, lots of huge emotion. And so we went through the story, and there were quite a few other points where we hit these walls and couldn't carry on. But it was incredibly good to talk about it. It was sort of like a cleansing. One of the questions we get most asked when anybody hears the story is how do the children come out of it? And the children were declared unaffected by what had happened by psychologists who helped us when we got back. Not so Sandy, or I think, that burden of pretense overcoming your own tendency to just show fear. The sheer stress of trying to keep up a sense of hope that this was going to end, that you would survive. And to portray that in front of the children that burden probably affected Sandy and me quite a bit. The fact that we were captured by soldiers who were simply just boys was very difficult to get one's head around. Both Sandy and I realized fairly early on that though what they were doing was absolutely atrocious and unforgivable, they were just children. They didn't know any better. The Rama's technique to build up its army would be to raid a village, grab the children, especially the boys, and then train them to become fighters. And then they had to return to the village and kill somebody from their family. And in doing that, that ostracized the child forever from the family. We didn't know that at the time, we only discovered that afterwards. But there was this amazing innate innocence in them. They were lovely kids. They played with my children. They played hide and seek. I had a funny experience in the middle of our time of capture. A raiding party had just returned from attacking the nearby village. There were two boys. One was carrying a cage made out of cane that had in it a parrot, obviously somebody's pet. And the other boy was wearing a turban. And I sort of walked up to them and I said, did you have a successful raid? And I suddenly realized what I was doing, that I was siding with them in something atrocious. I was as guilty as they were at that moment to ask them a question like that, because they'd obviously just killed someone. And that rocked me back on my heels and made me realize that I couldn't point a finger at what they were doing. If I were in their shoes, if I had gone through what they had gone through, I would probably just out of sheer survival, do exactly the same thing. When we arrived back in East London, there was a big welcoming party of about a thousand people greeted us on the jetty. This might sound strange, but at this point I didn't believe that Arwen didn't exist anymore. So my Persona, I suppose, was to some way grounded in the fact that I was this Sailor Dave, you know, who was going to go and sail the world. And I still kind of believed that false construct of who I was. So we walked off to Tafelberg. We walked across to the yacht club, which was our home base, which was quite close by. So I walked across with some friends and someone handed me a pack of photographs. And one of them was of Owen burnt out on the sand. And that was the first time I actually faced the reality that the yacht did not exist anymore, that that life was over. I didn't at that point, react at all to it. We had to drink. And it was all just like any other day at the Yacht club. That night I woke up and I could not talk. Words wouldn't come out of my mouth and I tried to stand up, but my legs wouldn't carry me and I fell onto the floor. But I knew that I had to show Sandy the photograph of Arwen, which was on the bedside table. So I sort of like, dramatically dragged myself up and grabbed the photograph and showed it to Sandy. And I think we just sat there hugging each other, sobbing our eyes out. Sandy and I both dealt with trauma in very different ways. I've always been very happy to talk about it, even though I know that there are times, especially in the early days, when I would be hit by the overwhelming emotions. Sandy is very reluctant to ever talk about it. She very early on said, it's something that happened in the past. It's gone. We survived. There's no need to keep on harping back at it. And we respect that as a family. We respect that. From my side, I'm always very happy to talk about it. It is a cathartic experience, a little bit like diluting the horror of the whole thing. For a while, we were still fairly infamous in our community, but we disappeared off the news very, very quickly, and we very soon were back in the routine of taking the kids to school. There was plenty of work for me to do. Sailing was obviously no longer an option, but we still loved traveling. So a few years after we got back, we backpacked through Madagascar, we backpacked through Egypt and had amazing experiences there with the children. So we basically tried to get life back to normality as quickly as possible. But then, eight years after we got back, a missionary man appeared at our church, and he was putting together a team to visit Mozambique to assist and provide aid to some of the churches there. He asked if anybody was interested in joining. And I just knew I had to do that. I had to go back to Mozambique. I was feeling quite normal and excited about what was happening. And we came to the border with Mozambique, and instantly we were in this world where the signs of war still there. We'd driven probably not more than a kilometer into Mozambique, and suddenly I just lost complete control of my body. I could feel myself outside of myself, looking at myself lying on the floor. I couldn't speak, I couldn't say anything. And I think the people with me all thought I was having a heart attack. The leader of our little group knew my story, but none of the other people knew of my story. So we drove up the coast and we were about 40 km from the area where we were held captive. We eventually stopped at a town called Mashishi. Our interpreter was a guy called Thomas, who was very reminiscent of that Thomas. That was one of the soldiers. So suddenly all these things were very, very familiar. Thomas jumped into the van with us and told us where to drive. I asked him where we were going, and he said, we're going to a little village called Augustino Netu. I said, that's a strange name for a village in Mozambique. And he said, yeah, that was the FRA headquarters for Amompong. All I can say is how incredibly strange that all of the huge Mozambique. I should find myself ministering and working in the little village that used to be the headquarters from which the attacks to kill us had been launched. The military had long gone and the people had moved on. The person who hadn't moved on was me. And that was tremendous healing. Spending the week there in that village with those people. The feeling that you've gone through something that you actually cannot share with anybody else. You can connect up to a certain level and there's empathy, but there's a point where it stops. And that makes you feel a little bit other and apart from society. Generally, when you go through something like that, something gets broken that you can't really fix again. And I suppose for me, that brokenness was, you know, this happened once, it could happen again. We live in this world filled with evil, and things can happen at any time to anybody. I think that feeling of disassociation from others, one of the areas where it manifests it most is in Sandy and my Christian faith. I told the story about when those people walked into a wall. Something invisible hit them. I'm pretty sure they weren't acting. And, you know, I can't explain that. So when you talk about your Christian faith and, you know, everything's going to be lovely and just trusting God and there's going to be no problem. I think you're making a very dangerous mistake to assume that we live in a world that is not filled with evil. So how do I reconcile my faith in a God who is kind and benevolent and has saved me? How do I reconcile that with the fact that you've got little boys killing adults and all the other terrible things that happen and what faces us every single day of our lives on the news? The way one can reconcile your faith with that is by realizing that we have this absolutely extraordinary gift of free will. We're not little automatons. We're not machines, and we make decisions and choices all the time, and those decisions have consequences. Everybody around you is making decisions at all times, and those decisions can impact negatively against you. There's no guarantee that I'm going to be saved from horrible things happening, though. I believe that that is the sort of default wish of the God that I worship. But the reality is that there is something evil that exists as well, and one has to take that into account. It's extremely, extremely complex. And I get frustrated that on the Christian level, so many people simplify it. You know, just hold the Bible in front of you and the devil will flee from you. Doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. My architectural career was mainly hospitals, government buildings, factories. But my particular interest was in sustainable construction. And as part of that, I was invited to design a building which was essentially a pavilion that would work as a worship center and a tier teaching sense at the same time. And this was nominated for a national award of merit. These days, I'm actually living in the Gnube Green Eco Village, which is a village that I had the privilege of being partly able to be involved with the development of it. Probably one of the most unexpected things that has happened to me since that time in Mozambique was to find myself appointed as the architect for Nelson Mandela's retirement home in Qunu. I was there one day doing a site inspection, and Madhuba and Gracia Michel, his wife, were there as well. And they invited me to have a meal with them, just like around a family table. Gracia Mishael was tasked with writing a report on how children should be treated in areas of conflict. And obviously that's a subject that was very close to my heart. So for me, it was just as exciting to meet her. I asked Mrs. Michelle why was she pretty much, at that time, the world expert on the impact of warfare on children in conflict zones? And she explained to me she was an orphan herself and she'd been raised by three women. One of them recognized there was something in her that was special and arranged for her to attend a university in Lisbon. So to answer my question, she said, I just feel I'm giving back what was given to me. And I thought, well, that's a pretty amazing summary of how one should live one's life. And I think that's about as good a summary of what I try to do as I can in these latter days of my life. After I published my book, I was approached by a man who said he had information that might be of interest to Me, it turns out he was a young officer at the time of our capture, and he'd been instructed to begin monitoring the radio messages coming from frelimo. Just prior to that, the President of Mozambique agreed that South Africa could send its naval task force up the coast to land in Mozambique and that he would arrange for his FRELIMO troops to be withdrawn from the area where we were held captive. He was told he couldn't trust the president of Mozambique. And even though they've said they were withdrawing their forces, they in fact are doing the complete opposite. There was actually a bounty on our heads and anybody who killed us would be rewarded. So we were in a very strange situation where Rama captured us, but pretty soon realized if anything happened to us, it would be blamed on Ranamo. So FRIMA had a real interest in actually killing us because it would have put Runama in a v disadvantageous situation. When peace talks eventually began because of this, I decided I needed to rewrite the book. And that resulted in my making contact with a charity in England called Hostage International. They assist former hostages to sort of get back on their feet. So this was about 30 years after our experience, but Tammy and I met up with the people from. From Hostage International in London. And we weren't intending for them to assist us in any way, but it came to light that the book really was upsetting her and she was experiencing some kind of like post traumatic stress. So Hostage International had become a big help in that sense, just assisting us as a family to talk about these things. And I realized because of the involvement of these men who negotiated for us to be released, we really literally owe our lives to them. So that's just made me and us as a family realize that we don't really own the story. So one of the ways to do what Groscha Michel suggested and give back what's been given to you is all the money we make from the sale of the books gets donated to Hostage International. We do all we can now to try and raise funds for Hostage International. I think at a very personal level, when I think back of what might have been had Owen not been destroyed, I realized that had we carried on sailing, Tammy and Seth would have been deprived of their education. And both of them, Sandy and I, are incredibly proud of them and what they've achieved. Tammy now has her own business. She's got an MBA and extremely successful in what she's doing and very happy. And Seth, my son, he's now a pediatrician. And I think had we carried on sailing, they probably would have not had those opportunities to reach what they have reached. It may be a little bit looking back, trying to put a happy gloss on it, but in a way possibly the best thing that ever happened to us was losing Alwyn and the change of life that we were forced to take. It's made me feel very strong and confident. Prior to the event I was a very quiet person. You'd never ever got me speaking in public or taking any significant leads, but I think knowing that we survived kind of made one feel a tremendous sense of self confidence and it's allowed me to achieve what I have achieved. So life is very, very complicated and you have no idea where it's going to end up and what's going to happen and you just have to, I think, be resilient and keep going.
- [70:47]
Wit Misseldine
Today's episode featured Dave Muller. Dave has written about his experiences in a book entitled Not Child's Play, available where books are sold. If you'd like to reach out to Dave, you can find his email, socials and website in the Show Notes from Audible Originals you're listening to this Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the Episode Notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Aviva Lipkowicz and Andrew Waitz with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westberg. We'd also like to thank Head of Creative Development at Audible, Kate Navin, Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louie, and Chief Content Officer Rachel Gyazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates, LLC the opening music features the song Sleep Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram actuallyhappening on the show's website thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactually happening dot com. And finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. Follow this Is Actually Happening on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of this Is Actually Happening ad free by joining Audible.