Hostage Stephen McGown a year after his release
A year after his release Mali hostage Stephen McGown is a new man – but returning to normal life hasn’t been easy
HE LOOKS nothing like the hostage held captive for nearly six years by an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell in the Mali desert. Gone are the long ponytail and bushy beard and his body, which had become emaciated during his captivity, is fit and healthy again. In fact, it would be easy to pass him on the street. “Looking cleaner and healthier makes people treat me more normally,” Stephen McGown (43) says.
But the former London investment banker has battled to settle back into normal life since returning home to Johannesburg a year ago. “I figured I had everything under control. But in January, when I looked back over the time since my release, I realised how out of control everything really was.
“I suffered from nightmares. I’d either dream the Al-Qaeda guys came to take me back to the desert, or it would be my family telling me it had all been a big mistake, I had to go back.”
Since his return from the Sahara Desert, Stephen and his speech therapist wife, Catherine (40), have created a new home for themselves in Randburg. Stephen has planted flowers in the garden and they have a new dog, Rocket.
But it’s taken a whole year to get his life back on track, Stephen says.
“There was so much to do. It was like coming back a new person. I had to unlock bank accounts, get passwords.”
His mother, Beverley, took care of his financial affairs for the years he was held hostage. Tragically, she died of lung disease two months before his return.
He battled to sort out his affairs. After all, he’d been plucked from society on 25 November 2011 outside a hotel in Timbuktu, Mali, while on a motorbike adventure across Africa. For five years and eight months he had no contact with the outside world. “Normal prisoners still have access to TV, they still have books and conversation. But for me it was like being in a cave. I had nothing.”
FOR much of his captivity he travelled the desert with the terrorist group, who were always on the move to prevent detection. He was given only the Quran to read. He says it was tough fitting back in but time has brought a measure of healing. “I needed time to become human again. To be able to say – if someone asks what I do – that I cycle, I run, I travel for work.”
Catherine also had her share of challenges in the past year. “I’d become very independent,” she says.
It took a while to settle into the routine of married life again. While Stephen was away she’d become used to jogging early every morning, while Stephen’s day in the desert started with meditation. “I’d been going for counselling throughout the ordeal. When Stephen returned my psychologist advised me to keep to my routine so I could [remain] as stable as I could be for Steve,” she says.
Stephen no longer works in banking and runs a jojoba bean farm with his dad, Malcolm, about 15km outside the Little Karoo town of Ladismith. He’s excited about the guesthouse and restaurant they’re starting and he does motivational talks at corporate events, dividing his time between Joburg and the Karoo.
His six years in the desert completely changed his perspective on life, he says.
“Having very little at your disposal makes you very grateful – things such as just having a roof over your head, a cup of coffee, a blanket when you go to sleep.
“And being grateful adds so much colour to your life. To just take things for granted . . . it numbs you. You forget how it feels to be alive.”