30th June 2011

SA teen relives horror pirate ordeal

Last Saturday at around 9.30am, South African student Nicola Soekoe, 18, sat on a public transport ferry deep in the Amazon jungle in Brazil with her father and stepmother, Mike and Lin Soekoe, stepsister Kira Castle, and friends Heather and Arieh Katz. Eleven days earlier they had got on the ferry to a small, remote Amazonian village at Reserva Xixaú-Xipariná. Over eight days they camped in hammocks in the jungle, trekked through the forests, swam with pink dolphins (and the local species of crocodile, the jacaré), fished for their own food, and at least one of them suffered a piranha bite. On their trip back to civilisation down the coffee-coloured Rio Negro (a tributary of the Amazon River) on the same ferry, they were attacked by pirates.

This is Nicola’s story.

A bang. Loud, but not loud enough to lift me from the pages I am reading. Then I am pushed roughly from my seat as a man runs past. I look up in confusion and anger, then see a second man running after him, grasping onto a profusely bleeding upper leg.

About 2 metres away, there is a man with a shotgun.

A moment of confusion, then icy clarity: this man is a bandido. My newly acquired Portuguese confirms this when a woman sobs that these are thieves of the river. Pirates.

I scream for my family to dive down. All the passengers cower in the centre of the boat, on top of luggage and under hammocks.

Amid the chaos, men in balaclavas, and sporting machetes, seem to be everywhere. They scream for us to go downstairs.

Frantically, I translate these orders to my family and, together with the group of about 80 terrified passengers, we scramble down the stairs to the lower floor.

Another gunshot propels us to the back of the boat, trampling over people, crouching, lying as low as possible.

Waiting. Breathing.

With the frantic crying and praying all around us, I cannot make out the shouted orders.

“Èu preciso sua ajuda (I need your help),” I cry in a desperate plea to a local travelling with us. But what can he do?

The men are ordered to strip down to their underwear and are herded towards the armed men.

I beg my dad not to go, but as a man aggressively approaches, waving his machete and looking for hiding men, I beg him to go faster.

I am faced with the chilling realisation that they may kill my dad. Never before have I been this terrified. More orders: now it is our turn to strip; only women with young children may stay.

I frantically tie up my curly blonde hair, which screams “foreigner”. The last thing I want is to stand out.

“Take off your jewellery. Quickly,” screams the threat of the raised machete. I hurriedly obey before I am pushed into a deep black hole. Desperately my stepsister, stepmother and I shout for my dad. I hear his voice but I do not rest until I am crouched next to him, clinging to his arm.

Only after the cries of the now-arriving women and babies subside do I take note of where we are: the small storage area below the decks of the ferry. There are no windows. Then they shut the trap door. It is hot, unbearably hot, and there is very little air.

And there we crouch.

Eighty bodies compressed together in a small, dark hole. The hot, fetid air and our burning fear make it impossible to breathe. Sweat pours down our bodies. Except for the whimpering of the babies, there is silence.

We strain to hear what is happening above us. We are all facing the reality that we are about to die – most of us saw the faces of some of the pirates before they donned their balaclavas.

I am sitting cramped up between the hot bodies, trying to comfort the small boy next to me who has been separated from his mother. Every sound from above spells out our death.

Scrape: they are pushing heavy objects over the exit. We will be locked in and we will suffocate.

Splash: they are pouring petrol over the boat. We will burn.

Shouting: they are surely summoning us now.

But no one really knows; the scariest guessing game of all.

Hours pass. We pray. We think of loved ones. We try to rein in our overwhelming impulse to shout, to scream, to cry.

Then, after an eternity of two-and-a-half hours, a shouted order: “Mulheres e Crianças primeiro (women and children first).” And the door is opened. A scrambling of women frantic to get their children out. All of us desperate to get out, to breathe, heedless that the monsters may still be up there.

We don’t know who opened the hatch, maybe crew members who were ordered to help the pirates navigate the river. When the hatch opens, the pirates are gone.

We emerge to chaos. Bags slashed, and clothes and possessions all over the boat, many stained with blood or vomit.

My frenzied questions eventually confirm that the pirates are no longer on board. We are alive and unharmed. The relief, the euphoria, yet still the ongoing fear. We are safe. For now.