One of the fond memories of my childhood involves my grandmother, who, I believe, was a woman way ahead of her time. She was not the sit-in-a-rocking-chair-with-the-grandbabies-on-your-lap type of grandmother. She was extroverted, spoke her mind whatever the consequences. She loved to read – had tons of books and hated being disturbed when she was reading – loved to dance and she loved to travel. Oh, she had the maternal instinct, but I believe it was latent; though she could find it when necessary. However, that is not what my memory is about.
Despite constantly being out and about, she still found the time on occasion, to tell us stories of her own childhood. And what a good storyteller she was. Up to today, I am still not sure how much of what she told us actually happened and how much was the product of the vivid imagination she must have had. The stories involved her and her brother being in endless scrapes and near death situations, but always just managing to escape. And she always prefaced her stories by reminding us that the particular incident would have taken place when she was a child and that there were no electric lights in the rural area where she grew up.
My grandmother’s stories, told only at night for some reason, apart from making it impossible for any of us to go to the bathroom or to bed alone, elevated her to hero status in my mind. I believed her to be fearless and felt there was nothing she could not overcome.
How is it that some people survive a deadly crisis, while others do not? We see it or hear about it everyday, someone who ‘zagged’ when s/he was expected to have ‘zigged’ and ended up cheating death. Is it providence, acuity or simply instinct?
How is it that two very young girls, lost in the jungle for weeks, managed not only to walk out virtually unscathed with just bouts of malaria, but were able to find edible plants and water to keep themselves alive, when experienced adults, including hunters, have fallen prey to wild animals or starved to death?
How is it that a young mother and her son were able to walk down a mountain to safety after their plane crashed killing everyone else, but trained soldiers are unable to navigate similar terrain?
Why would a woman, who was so terrified that her husband was going to kill her that she ran away from him, venture back into a house where she knew he was likely to be, for something as unimportant as clothing, just to end up suffering the same fate she had most feared — being killed?
How does an 18-year-old girl fight off and escape not one but two men, bent on rape and perhaps murder? Especially when one considers that one of the men was armed with a cutlass so sharp that she suffered a woeful cut on the head and a severed thumb?
What makes the difference? What determines the odds? Is it that some people have more of a will to live? Is it that they do not fear death and therefore do not cower and give up when faced with it? Or is it that they fear it so much that they fight to live?
The 18-year-old university student, who, incidentally, should not have been identified, but sadly was, had no special training in martial arts, or even in defending herself from such an attack.
Clearly though, from her account of the events, she is no shrinking violet. That young woman has spunk. Not only did she fearlessly stand up to her attackers before they pounced, but fought them tooth and nail to survive, and did.
She is a hero.
I imagine that after the adrenalin, which kept her going through her ordeal would have subsided she must have been and probably still is terrified. Her parents too and other loved ones must still consider, with awe, how close they came to losing her.
The situations were different, but just as there were overwhelming responses to the other three heroes mentioned in this column, this young woman deserves support — tangible as well as emotional. And perhaps the best reward she can receive for her bravery would be for justice to be done with regard to those who attacked her.
