This is Ingrid Betancourt who I went to hear speak on Monday on my day 3 of the OxLit. Festival. She was terrific. She gave her talk in the big white marquee
in the grounds of Christ Church, were everything happens. She looks a lot younger than her 49 years and is a very beautiful woman.
She was running in her country's presidential campaign on an anti-corruption ticket when she was abducted and she spoke for over an hour about her six and a half year ordeal as prisoner in the jungles of Columbia. She was spellbinding. How she survived is all in her book but is mainly due, I felt to her fighting spirit and strong mind.
She was born in Columbia but has dual nationality with France. She arrived wearing a dark jacket and skirt with no colour or relief except for a bit of red lipstick. Yet she looked fantastic, elegant and so french. She has a beautiful smile and a sort of beatific calm that she seemed to be saying she learned in captivity. She explained this by saying that after many years she discovered that no matter what the terrorists did to her, they could not take away her spirit or her mind and that gave her a peace that she could not describe. She tried to escape on many occasions - risking being shot - but was recaptured. In the end, the Columbian army freed her, along with several other captives held with her.
One anecdote I loved was that in Columbia, so many people are abducted that one radio station has a slot every day to broadcast messages from family and friends of those disappeared, in hopes that they might hear their words of love and support. Every day of Ingrid's captivity, her mother broadcast a message to her, and sometimes, when the guards allowed her their battery radio, she heard these messages! She smiled her beautiful smile when she told us this, and said "I have a fantastic mother".
Another book I'll be buying.
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| Ingrid Betancourt |
She was running in her country's presidential campaign on an anti-corruption ticket when she was abducted and she spoke for over an hour about her six and a half year ordeal as prisoner in the jungles of Columbia. She was spellbinding. How she survived is all in her book but is mainly due, I felt to her fighting spirit and strong mind.
She was born in Columbia but has dual nationality with France. She arrived wearing a dark jacket and skirt with no colour or relief except for a bit of red lipstick. Yet she looked fantastic, elegant and so french. She has a beautiful smile and a sort of beatific calm that she seemed to be saying she learned in captivity. She explained this by saying that after many years she discovered that no matter what the terrorists did to her, they could not take away her spirit or her mind and that gave her a peace that she could not describe. She tried to escape on many occasions - risking being shot - but was recaptured. In the end, the Columbian army freed her, along with several other captives held with her.
One anecdote I loved was that in Columbia, so many people are abducted that one radio station has a slot every day to broadcast messages from family and friends of those disappeared, in hopes that they might hear their words of love and support. Every day of Ingrid's captivity, her mother broadcast a message to her, and sometimes, when the guards allowed her their battery radio, she heard these messages! She smiled her beautiful smile when she told us this, and said "I have a fantastic mother".
Another book I'll be buying.
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