And I remember holding my friend's hand,
that was the last thing I remember doing.
She was in the aisle seat next to mine,
and that was like the last thing I did,
the last person I looked at, spoke to on that plane,
and then it was just darkness.
I assume at that point
that's when the plane actually crashed.
It was December 10th, 2005.
I was 16 years old and I was a high school student.
I was in my senior year of high school.
I went to a boarding school,
which was in the capitol of Nigeria,
which is where I was born and raised,
and I was in school, I was on campus.
This was the end of the semester,
and myself and students who lived in the same area as me,
we typically board the same plane to go home,
to come back to the campus,
because the school is made up of students
who live all over Nigeria, so we usually
like come from different parts of the country
to get to the school.
Flying was nothing unusual, you know.
I mean, it was part of life for us.
So this was just like a routine trip, essentially.
There was nothing that would indicate what was to come,
there was no reason to think anything weird would happen.
It was a regular commercial Boeing jet,
and I was sitting in front.
I was in one of the, I was in an aisle seat in front,
and next to me was one of my closest friends.
She was also in the aisle seat, and then the pilot
made the announcement that we would be landing soon
over the intercom, which they usually do,
and then the descent started, and that was when
the turbulence started, and I remember, it was just,
you know, regular turbulence.
Nothing weird, it happens on flights,
it's not a big deal, you know?
And it just kept getting worse and prolonged,
and I just remember like the rising tension in the cabin.
No one was saying anything, no one was screaming
or anything like that, but like,
it was palpable, you know, just the feeling
in the air that like you know, we're all thinking like,
"What the heck is going on?"
And then there was like this scream
from the back of the plane, it was a woman.
She screamed, and at that point, that was just like
all that was needed for the chaos
to just kind of like erupt.
It was like a movie, it was literally
like I was in a movie and I was watching this happen.
It felt very surreal, and it was just unbelievable,
and I just couldn't believe I was in that situation,
and I remember holding my friend's hand,
that was the last thing I remember doing.
She was in the aisle seat next to mine,
and that was like the last thing I did,
the last person I looked at, spoke to on that plane,
and then it was just darkness.
I assume at that point that's when
the plane actually crashed, but I don't remember
the actual impact, you know?
I just remember that metal scraping, irritating sound,
like nails on chalkboard, and then I blacked out.
And it was just darkness until I was opening my eyes
and I was in the hospital bed in South Africa,
and five weeks had passed and I was waking up from a coma.
I was told later on that the plane crashed and exploded.
No one except two people survived.
I was flown to South Africa the day after the accident
after they had stabilised me in the hospital in Nigeria,
but they had to fly me out ASAP
because we did not have the facilities.
We had the people, you know, brilliant doctors,
but no facility equipped to care for third-degree burns.
I sustained third-degree burns over 65% of my body,
so it was a very dire situation,
so they had to get me out of there as soon as possible
to a place that could actually give me a chance to survive.
I opened my eyes and I saw the nurse
that was talking to me, and I saw my mom,
and I knew what had happened, why?
Because while I was in the coma, my mom would talk to me,
she would talk to me over and over,
she would tell me what had happened,
where I was, and that I was gonna be okay.
I could hear her, I could hear everything she said.
So when I opened my eyes, I knew where I was,
I knew what had happened, and you know,
I believed that I was gonna be okay,
because you know, my mom said I was gonna be okay.
I started asking questions, you know,
about the intensity of my burns, where wasn't I burned,
you know, what part of me was not affected.
There were not a lot, you know, and even those areas
were now, like they looked like they were burned
because they had used skin from those areas
to cover the rest of me, over and over,
so those areas kind of scarred over,
and yeah, I just kind of, I took stock of how bad it was,
and just kind of tried my best to roll with it,
and I guess just not be too affected
by the fact that I was so different physically now,
and just focused more on like the healing part of things,
which was hard enough, honestly, on its own.
So 65% third-degree burns, that's basically everything
from the top of my head to the soles of my feet burning
except for my torso, my tummy, and my butt too.
So they took skin from my tummy
and my back, and my butt, to like cover up
the main areas that burned...
which was like everywhere else, literally.
The most important thing at the beginning
was to cover up the large surface areas
that were burned off.
Third degree means burning down to your dermis,
not just the top layer but the bottom layer of the skin,
and in some areas, down to the bone as well.
It's literally like being naked,
but like for the body, because when your skin
is not on you, then you are exposed to every kind
of infection, and that can be what ends up killing a person
as opposed to like the actual trauma
that took your skin.
There's the pain of the actual accident, of the injuries,
and then the pain of the healing injuries.
My pain was being managed very severely
in those earlier moments.
I was barely feeling anything, not just pain,
but just feeling in general.
It was a very floaty, cloudy time,
like the first two months or so.
I was mostly kept under, I was sleeping
more than I was awake during that time.
This is even after waking up from the coma.
So with the recovery came more feeling,
more sensation, and it was just really hell,
it was just, you know, the more alive I was,
the more pain I was in.
So my family was like very supportive and encouraging
and just present there, and then the rest of the world
was very supportive of my family,
including those who lost their kids.
'Cause you know, that was like I think
one of the hardest, if not the hardest part of like
dealing with all of this was like,
just coming to terms with the fact
that all these other kids that were in the plane with me,
all my classmates were gone,
and some of them had all their children in my school,
like in the same school, and literally lost
all their kids in one go.
So painful to think about how they had all
lost their kids, you know, and it also gave me grounds
to not complain too much because I knew
that no matter how bad things were for me,
all those parents would prefer to have their kids
in my situation than to just be gone.
Once surgery stopped and hospital life
was no longer really a thing, it left everything open,
so now my future was like now,
just a regular future of like whatever you wanted to be.
And at that time, I kind of took back
the reins of control, rather, they were given back to me,
and now I could do whatever I wanted
and I didn't have to plan things around
like surgeries or hospital visit anymore,
so in that moment, I think a transition happened
where I started trying to live with more intention
and live with more purpose.
So now, I am a singer, you know, I sing,
I travel, I perform, I am also a speaker,
professional speaker, so I do a lot
of inspirational, motivational speeches and talks.
I do a lot of advocacy work for bullying prevention
and for other burn survivors,
representing burn survivors, you know, the world over.
And I only recently was able to add author
to my repertoire of stuff I guess,
this year, with my book called More Than My Scars.
I wrote that, it's a memoir.
The reason I wrote the book was because I wanted
to be more relatable to people who have gone
through any kind of trauma, and I wanted them
to see that they're not alone in what they're going through.
You know, I understand from a very personal point of view,
and I want people to know that they're not alone.
You know, I feel like the more you realise
you're not alone in something, the more you feel
like okay, then maybe, you know,
there's a sense of companionship
when you're going through something with people.
It's more likely you're gonna get through it I guess,
you know, and I want people to feel that way
when they read my book, so.
We fly, we hope it doesn't crash and that,
that ship has sailed with me.
So for me, it was like, it's already happened.
We've already experienced the worst thing
that can possibly happen from flying, so yeah,
I'm pretty sure it's done, you know,
it's lightning, sometimes it strikes in the same area twice
but it's unlikely, so I just kind of see it like that,
you know, if you want to do things
and go around, you know, you can't,
you're not gonna be able to live the full life
that you promised everyone you're gonna live
if you can only go to places that you drive to.
Like you're not, you will be very limited
if that's how you decide to live your life.
So, you know, I feel like I was just like,
it's part of life, we move
and we just do what we have to do.
I just remember him pulling me back
and I was like, "Dad, please help me, please help me."
He just kept going, "I got you, I got you, I got you."
So we get most of the way back to shore,
he's carrying me, but you know, he just punched a shark
like five times, so I didn't see the shark
and I don't think anybody saw the shark.
They might've just saw the fins,
but after my dad was like carrying me back,
he says he saw two fins, so there were two sharks.