A helicopter pilot described on Friday how he had been forced to drink his own urine and eat leaves to survive for eight days and nights after crashing in the depths of the Kenyan jungle.
Solomon Nyanjui, a retired major who works for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), broke several ribs when his helicopter crashed on November 15 in the Mount Kenya region, about 110km north of Nairobi.
”I realised even leaves are sweet because I fed on them together with my urine after the water I had ran out,” he told reporters from his hospital bed in the outskirts of the capital.
Nyanjui, who was rescued earlier on Friday after a week-long search that involved KWS rangers, Kenyan army and police officers as well as members of the British army, said he never doubted he would live to tell his amazing tale.
”I knew I would come out alive,” he said.
”The helicopter came down very fast and crashed under a thick canopy. The search teams over-flying the area could not see me. They were so near yet so far, which made it agonising,” he said.
Nyanjui, who has been a pilot for 27 years, survived an earlier crash in 1995. — Sapa-AFP