Derk Bolt (without a trace) about fear of death, and with kidnapping

Without a trace-presenter: Derk Bolt and his regular cameraman Eus Follender were in June last year, kidnapped by a Colombian guerillabeweging and five days held in a jungle. Bolt (62) reported his story in the book Kidnapped – The Complete Story, that today appears.

You’re kidnapped and in fear of death, and sat. However, you can look in your book quite sober at the whole episode.
I am also sober. Things that have happened, are completed past. That you need to accept and process. That takes time, but I have friends and family members for. I do not feel the need to analyze or so.

No psychologist like you?
No, no, no. I am ever, even once, because of something else, and then I laughed loud. Nothing for me.

You were a Lost item in Norte de Santander, a Colombian region where, according to the experts, do not come. Why did you still go?
In the police, army, drivers, and the car rental company: we had on all fronts for more information about how the security situation there was. There was no one who clearly said that you should not do. The last kidnapping there had, moreover, a year earlier.

Did you know right away what the problem was when you were taken?
First we thought that the insane were those of us with them. The word guerrilla fell, we knew how late it was.

When feared you the most for your life?
I knew ELN, the guerillabeweging us kidnapped, not as good as the FARC, but I knew that they are able to rücksichtlos to kill. I asked the commander on the man off or they were shot. He said that they weren’t going to do. Later I thought: they are guerilla’s, what is their word worth? However, ebbing the fear away. That was back when we were in the middle of the jungle were. We were hunted down by the army, which was looking for by us, and by our kidnappers who have just raced through that pitch-dark jungle walk. There you have no shot in the neck need to be on your end. It was constantly slipping, falling, branches and vines to hold just the right side in precipices fall. I said: shoot me dead, I’m going to do this anyway never survive. “Not so you brooding’, was the comment. Insane it was. In a fall I broke something in my rib cage, that appeared later in the Netherlands, five ribs had been.

Did you know what to do with you were?
We tried to gather information on the kidnappers, but said nothing. Eventually, a commander telling us that we can come to a kind of safe house brought would be. That was very boring. But fortunately there was a lot of football and we saw programs in which the about our kidnapping. We were there for two days and we heard that we released would be.

How was that?
I went crazy and made jokes. Against our commander, I said, ‘I’ll be a time when you come over for a beer. We have it again, very pleasant. “You’re welcome,” said he. I was then eight hours in a jeep back-and-forth-shaken with my five broken ribs. At one point I was so exhausted – we had two days not slept – that I myself performed. I heard myself raaskallend and joking my story to everyone and tell. Then I fell into deep sleep.

In the last paragraph of your book, there are tears, where you write that that is a comforting thought. What do you mean by this?
I am writing started after I found a diary had read that my ex had kept over those five days that I had been taken. It never occurred to me that the tough days have been for my children and parents. Psychologically, perhaps even harder than for us. We knew that we were not dead in a pit, were thrown, at home, they had only to guess what happened to us happened. That has me very touched. It sounds a bit jezusachtig, but I find it especially sad to have loved ones sad to see. “Comforting thought,” I mean that I was not as emotionless as I sometimes think.

How is Eus?
That has had a harder time than I, because he is a woman and a small child. It has a lot of suffering and there they were with z’n threes come true. Eus is philosophical, tends to be a bit deeper thinking than I am. I have always discouraged, once you get deeper in thought, you leave the area, and it is more difficult to breathe. You can better a little bit at the top remain. In the meantime all goes well with him. We are again in Columbia. A great country, still.

Kidnapped – The Complete Story (17,50 euro) is published by The Circle.