Facing the threat of assassination, Ingrid Betancourt sent her children to Auckland to protect them - and rightly so. The anti-corruption campaigner was taken hostage and held in the Colombian jungle for 6 years. She tells her story to the Herald on Sunday's Jane Phare.
Ingrid Betancourt doesn't quite know how she will rebuild her life. In the years she was kept hostage in the jungle, often chained by the neck to a tree or beam of a hut, everything changed.
Her young children, Melanie and Lorenzo - once sent to live in New Zealand when she faced death threats in the mid-1990s - grew up without her. Her beloved father, Gabriel, died soon after her capture in 2002 but the news was kept from her.
Her marriage to husband Juan Lecompte had fallen apart by the time she was released. Now, she has no home and no one special in her life.
And then there are her politics, her driving force. For now, her determination to stamp out corruption and obscene wealth at the expense of others has faltered. She won't go back to Colombia until she sees a change in Colombians themselves, she says. That change will take more than laws and reforms.
"It is a decision of a society that has to change," she tells the Herald on Sunday. "There is too much hatred. We have become a society that is too cynical. We don't want to see the suffering of others."
For now, Betancourt is concentrating on her book, Even Silence Has An End, published this week. It is an account of the years she spent as a hostage in the jungle, living in appalling conditions, suffering from failing health and a fear that she would never be released.
Her days were spent watching the guerrillas who guarded her - members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (Farc) - while they, at times, tormented her.
With the book complete, Betancourt says her life is "just beginning". She has spent the past two years living the life of a "nomad" between the apartments of her son and daughter.
Lorenzo, 21, is studying economics and working in Paris and 25-year-old Melanie has just finished her masters in film-making in New York and is working on a movie script.
When Betancourt was seized by Farc while on her presidential campaign in a rebel-held area of the countryside, her children were 13 and 17. By the time she was released, her children were young adults, with their own lives and careers.
With her marriage in tatters, Betancourt concentrated on rebuilding her relationship with them. "It was a joy, the best thing that could happen in my life, to be with them but it was not easy at all."
* * *
Things are good now, she says. She thinks her children were subconsciously angry with her for disappearing when they needed her most.
Betancourt recalls a day talking to Lorenzo about an issue in his life. "He reacted: 'How can you say that, you don't know me, you haven't been here for six years'."
For the first year or so in captivity, Betancourt had no access to a radio. But as time wore on, she and other hostages were allowed to listen to broadcasts, including a station devoted to thousands of hostages held in Colombia. Family members could ring in and broadcast a message to their loved ones. Her mother never failed to send a message and she heard her children's voices.
But there were friends and colleagues she expected to hear from who were silent. "I felt abandoned."
After her years in the jungle, Betancourt's fellow hostages had become her new family. "They are my brothers ... they understand everything."
But after six years without privacy, she wants to be by herself.
* * *
Betancourt talks softly, almost dreamily. But probe into the more painful memories of her time as a hostage - the humiliation, mind games, beatings and "years" spent chained by her neck to a tree or shackled by her ankles - and she will falter.
Her love for her children kept her going but it also drove her to make attempts to escape. That brought savage punishments, which included being chained by her neck for a day and night.
And then came a miracle. In July 2008, a day started with yet another transfer to a secret location. Normally, Betancourt faced a gruelling trek through the jungle, tormented by insect bites, thirst and hunger. This time, she was transferred by helicopter.
But in a daring hijack, members of the Colombian Army took control of the chopper and flew the hostages to freedom. A soldier yelled at her: "We're the Colombian Army, you are free!"
An exhausted Betancourt stared at him for a long moment before the reality of his words sank in.
"I just screamed, but it was like a beast thing ... [an] uncontrolled thing that came from very deep inside of me."
* Even Silence Has an End by Ingrid Betancourt (Virago, RRP $39.99)
