IRISH AID WORKER Gena Heraty, who was kidnapped in a shock ambush in Haiti last month, has said she is recovering after she was released from captivity at the end of last month.

The Mayo woman was among eight people, including a three-year-old child, kidnapped from an orphanage near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 3 August.

Speaking on the Tommy Marren show on Midwest Radio today, Ms Heraty recounted her ordeal and said “all things considered”, she is “very well”.

“I feel well, I’m tired. I need to get back my strength, I’m not back at my strength yet, but considering what I’ve been through and what we went through, I have nothing to complain about.”

She said she was grateful for the support from the people of Mayo, Ireland, and the world.

“I’m most grateful, most thankful, and especially grateful for all the support and everything from listeners in Mayo and all over Ireland and indeed, all over the world.”

Ms Heraty said the day of the kidnapping, it was around 3:30am when everyone was in bed that they heard a “ruckus” with people outside the property.

“They were shouting, and they were saying in Creole, ‘don’t be afraid, we’re the police. Don’t be afraid. We’re the police’. Obviously, we were afraid – and figuring out what could we do next?”

A group of armed men “very aggressive in the sense that they came in with lots of energy” entered the building.

“All of a sudden, you see this bunch of young men with massive guns in their arms. It’s overwhelming.”

Ms Heraty is responsible for the special needs programmes in the orphanage, which means she has three different houses that she’s responsible for. The property itself spans around 13 acres, she said, and the armed men came across their house first.

“It wasn’t as if they came specifically for me, they didn’t know who they were going to find. They were looking for religious sisters living in the property.”

She said the men asked to be taken to the nuns’ house and asked ‘where are all the white people?’, looking for the directors of the home.

“They headed off with me, and I had no idea what was going on behind me when I left. I thought they’re just looking for me. We were all in our pyjamas and our flip flops.”

Ms Heraty asked one of the men if she could bring a jumper with her, explaining that it gets cold in Kenscoff in the nighttime, to which he replied ‘I’m going to blow you up’, she said.

The Irishwoman was placed in a truck. Two of the night staff and another worker, carrying a three-year-old boy, were brought next. 

“When I saw him come in, my heart sunk. I thought of two things. I said, ‘Oh my God. Why would you kidnap a little child.’ And then I thought, how will we ever keep this normal for him?

“It was just awful. There was nothing nice about this experience. Luckily, when you live in the country anyway, you have a fair idea: it gets dark at this time and it gets bright at this time.”

She said there was only a sliver of light coming into the captives, which they used to guess the time.

“The nights were long and terrifying.

“It’s amazing because I knew all the things that they had done to other people and all the things that they could do to me.

“So when he’s walloping me in my arm, a part of me is saying, thank you, Jesus, that he’s not walloping me in my face. This could be so much worse.

“Food was sparse and it came sporadically. I mean, we got something to eat every day, but it was really small portions, and we were saving to make sure that the little fella had food in the morning, because he wouldn’t be getting food in the morning.

“I mean, it was the first time in my life I knew what it was like to be hungry. One of the messages is, and Dad used to say this, and all my family know this, he used to say, ‘There’s nothing bad that couldn’t be worse’. So that was my motto the whole time.

“The people I was with were those wonderful women that I’m with and was with. They’re very prayerful people also. So we were praying for the people in Gaza, for the people in Haiti, for the people who are hungry all around the world, because for as bad not as we were, we knew we felt we’d get out and there’d be days we wouldn’t be hungry, where there are people all around the world that are hungry every single day.”