By Helena Williams

When Colin Freeman, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, was kidnapped by Somali pirates along with his photographer Jose Cendron, he did not know when he would be free again – if ever.

But during last night’s Frontline Club event, Freeman – who is now the chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph – said he had signed up for a life of adventure.

 “In a world with an increased sense of safety, it was a chance to toss a lot of that aside. It gave me a sense of adventure.”

His harrowing experience is retold in his new book Kidnapped: Life as a Somali Pirate Hostage.

In 2008 Freeman was sent to Bossaso, Somalia, to investigate a spate of piracy in the Gulf of Aden in the hope that he’d be able to secure exclusive interviews with pirates.

He was adamant that he was never pressured to put his life at risk to bear witness.

“For anyone who thinks foreign correspondents get put under pressure to go to dangerous places – that has never happened in my experience.”

Convinced that pirates craved media attention, he was disappointed to find that when it was time for his trip to finish, it had not been as fruitful as initially anticipated. It was when he and his photographer were on their way to the airport when their bodyguards, hired for protection, kidnapped them at gunpoint.

“I remember thinking that if I got kidnapped I’d shout and scream, because if you do that in public they [the kidnappers] would lose their nerve.

“But if someone points a gun at you, you’ll do whatever they want. Anyone who passed us on the road would have thought we were changing a tyre.”

Taken into the mountainous region outside Bossaso, they endured six weeks of terrifying uncertainty.

“Luckily Jose had the same attitude as me – we both knew to keep calm, take it easy and have a sense of humour.

“The first week was pretty grim. What kept us going was the friendship we had developing at 100 times the rate it normally happens.”

He describes being kidnapped as living “like a soul in a waiting room, waiting for an afterlife.”

“The best thing to do is to think about things that are comforting, and to keep your mind busy. It’s frightening how quickly your brain empties of things to think about.”

It is only after negotiations with the pirates that he and Jose were freed – and as soon as he was a free man, the Telegraph immediately asked him to file a 5000 word story on his experience. He was happy to oblige.

“It’s part of your duty as a journalist, and also good therapy.

“At the end of the day, as a foreign correspondent you are paid to go out there and come back intact – and not get kidnapped. My sense of professional pride was smarting.”

Indeed, he says despite his ordeal there is not a country – other than Somalia, “for a while” – that he wouldn’t want to cover.

Kennedy Mwale, 32, pictured, is a freelance tour
guide in Mombasa’s old port, a claustrophobic melange of Arab and
Portuguese architecture with one small stone pier. A week ago Monday,
three small cargo ships were tied to the pier. Scores of shirtless
stevedores lugged bags of cement and tossed them into the ships’ holds.
The stevedores might earn a couple dollars for hours of hot,
back-breaking work. That’s just enough to survive in Mombasa. Mwale, by
comparison, earns up to $15 for an hour tour.

Five years ago, Mwale escaped Mombasa’s maritime
economy. He had been a fisherman, plying the waters as far north as the
Somali borderland in search of tuna and other big fish. But with piracy
taking root in lawless Somalia, fishing and sea trade were becoming
riskier and less profitable by the day for the small operators. One of
the final straws for Mwale was a close call, in 1999, with a band of 14
pirates that sneaked up on the 11-man refrigerator ship where Mwale was
the chief engineer. (The reefer ships follow behind the fishing boats
to store fresh catches.)

They came at night, as the ship was anchred near
Mdoa island, surprising the sleeping crew and their one Somali
bodyguard. When the pirates failed to wrestle away the guard’s rifle, a
standoff ensued. The pirates demanded the crew’s money and possessions,
plus all the diesel fuel stored on deck — and wanted the ship sailed to
the Somali port of Kismayo. If the crew didn’t comply, the pirates
would start killing people, they said. The crew coughed up all their
cash — just a few dollars for most, but around $700 in the case of the
ship owner’s secretary — and handed over possessions including a new
boom box stereo. But the captain refused to give up the diesel or to
sail to Kismayo. He would not allow the ship to enter in to captivity,
nor strand it at sea. The captain had only as much leverage as was
afforded by his one armed guard, but it was enough. The pirates
compromised. They agreed to go to Mdoa and continue negotiations.

That apparently was a clever bit of strategizing
on the captain’s part, for he had called at Mdoa earlier, seeking the
ruling committee’s permission to fish Somali waters. The committee had
endorsed the expedition. And when the pirates rolled in with Mwale and
his shipmates in tow, the committee immediately branded the captors
criminals and had the local militia seize their weapons and return
everything they’d stolen. They gave back the boom box, but denied
taking anything else. The penniless Kenyans now were free to sail home.

This story has a happy-ish ending, but for Mwale,
it was another near-miss in a career full of them. Every day the
arguments mounted against working at sea. Already, three of his friends
had been killed by sharks. And with piracy making profitable fishing a
dicey venture, Mwale soon decided he’d had enough. He went ashore, for
good, and for five years was unemployed on Mombasa’s sweltering streets.

Today, as a tour guide, he survives, and surely does better than
many of the city’s 700,000 residents. Not that freelancing for curious
tourists is an easy way to make a living: it’s just a Hell of a lot
safer than grappling with Somali pirates.

Read my piracy series here.

(Photo: me)