Explorer made haunting video ‘will’ when he feared malaria would finish him
THE explorer rescued from a remote jungle by the Daily Mail had filmed a ‘video will’ for his family as he feared malaria would kill him, it emerged yesterday.
TV adventurer Benedict Allen was recovering last night after being rushed to hospital for life-saving treatment.
He was weak with fever when he was plucked to safety on Friday – and doctors said he was lucky to be alive after contracting the tropical disease on his expedition to find a lost tribe in Papua New Guinea.
After his wife Lenka raised the alarm last week, the Mail hired a helicopter and found him on a jungle mountaintop. We flew him 100 miles to the country’s third-largest town, Mount Hagen – but on Friday night, Mr Allen’s condition deteriorated further.
We contacted a specialist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who spoke to Mr Allen by phone. He ordered a quadruple dose of anti-malaria drugs – which we had – and immediate hospitalisation. The Mail organised a second airlift to rush 57-year-old Mr Allen a further 300 miles to the poverty- stricken country’s most advanced hospital in capital Port Moresby.
There, consultant Dr Kyaw Khine diagnosed malaria or similar Dengue Fever – both highly dangerous tropical diseases caught from bites by infected mosquitos. Either can be lethal if not treated quickly.
Last night as he recovered, the TV explorer revealed he had made a ‘video will’ at his lowest ebb – recording a farewell message on his camcorder to his family in the event he succumbed to the disease. The documentary-maker also showed a haunting clip filmed as he lay delirious and fearing death in a former Christian missionary refuge in the remote Hewa valley. Clutching his head, his hair matted with sweat, he says: ‘I’ve got fever, bad fever. This is so very quick... so sudden.’
He recalled yesterday: ‘I was in a bad way. I was lying in an abandoned mission station and it was like a place for the dying. The missionaries had fled during a tribal war. I felt it could be me next to go. It wasn’t a place of hope, but of despair – a horrible place to be entombed in. I could hear birds of paradise singing outside, and it felt like I was slipping into heaven.’
Mr Allen, father to Natalya, ten, Freddie, seven, and Beatrice, two, said: ‘My mind was beginning to slip. I was hallucinating about my children begging me, “Please daddy come home” and “Daddy don’t do this”. I was thinking, “Freddie needs to have a dad” – they all need me. I was meant to be the strong one, but I was weak – I felt like an old man.’
Mr Allen’s diary also records his despair as his condition deteriorated, with ‘Fever’ twice underlined. Another entry reads: ‘ Is Lenka very upset? Is she the slightest worried? And will she have shared her fear with the children?’ Last night after 48 hours of intensive treatment with drugs, he felt well enough to eat a plate of fish and chips – and sip his first gin and tonic since setting off three weeks ago.
He hopes to fly home this week for an emotional reunion with his wife of ten years and children. Mrs Allen, 35, who did not sleep for five days while her husband was miss- ing, learnt he was safe when the Mail called her from a satellite phone and passed him the handset. He broke down as he begged her forgiveness and told her: ‘I’m so sorry I’ve put you through this, Linky. I’ve been missing you and fighting every inch of the way to get back to you and the family. I never quite gave up. Thanks for not giving up on me.’
Mr Allen, who has six BBC TV series to his name, had been trying to reach a lost tribe called the Yaifo – the ‘last people on Earth’ with no contact with the outside world. He spent three days with the Yaifo but on his return trek the veteran adventurer became trapped between two warring tribes using bows and arrows and bush knives to savage each other.
As his fever began to take hold, thorns tore into his legs as he hacked his way through the jungle in search of safe passage. He was also plagued by bees, biting centipedes and poisonous spiders crawling around his sleeping bag.
Downpours turned the forest floor into a swamp, and dissolved his anti- malaria pills. He was spending up to four hours a night fixing makeshift shelters he had fashioned out of palm leaves as electrical storms tore through it.
But he said the worst peril was trees crashing down in the storms ‘like a hammer’ at night.
Eventually he discovered the Hewa mission station. The Mail found him there, deep in the jungle after two tribesmen marched for two days and nights to find a village with a mobile phone to pass on Mr Allen’s location.
Had he not been rescued, the explorer – who insists on trekking without any phone or GPS tracking device to make it more authentic – was about to make a final effort to save himself by dragging his malaria-ravaged body into the unknown. The Mail’s pilots John Russack and Craig Rose spotted Mr Allen’s already-packed rucksack from 500ft up.
Mr Russack said yesterday: ‘For me it was nice to be a part of his rescue mission home.’ The Mail’s pilots also rescued 19-year- old tribeswoman Eka, from Hewa, who was also suffering from malaria. Mr Allen handed her cash to cover any medical bills.
‘Thanks for not giving up on me’