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Six years, five months, five days and 12 hours.

That’s how long McKinleyville resident, missionary and aid worker Jeffery Woodke was held captive in Africa after being abducted by militants in Niger in October 2016.

He recited that length of time aloud more than once Friday afternoon as he addressed a roomful of reporters inside Arcata First Baptist Church, making his first public comments since being released from captivity on March 20. 

Wearing an orthopedic boot on his right leg and a knee brace on his left, Woodke walked to the lectern with a cane and a pronounced limp. Standing beside his wife, Els, he thanked God, his family and friends and the United States government for their labors to secure his release.

“My wife and a network of friends and organizations including Crisis Consulting International, this church and YWAM, Youth With A Mission, worked tirelessly for six and a half years to bring me home,” he said.

He identified the group that held him as Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an extremist organization that the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes as a coalition of Salafi-jihadist insurgent groups operating in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa.

He declined to answer a question about why they took him hostage and why they finally let him go, saying he didn’t want to compromise an ongoing investigation.

“I was treated brutally and with inhumanity during my captivity,” he said. “I was beaten and held continually in chains for 16 hours a day, every day. I was kept in isolation. I suffered injuries and illness which were never medically treated.”

Woodke said his left knee is “blown out” and his right achilles tendon was injured by a blow from a rifle butt. He now suffers from chronic gastro-intestinal problems for which he might have to undergo surgery, and while he’s not sure what caused the stomach issues, he speculated that they’re likely related to the meager diet he was fed, which consisted mostly of unfiltered water, boiled rice and a sand-baked flatbread called taguella. 

Though he declined to describe the details of the mental coping mechanisms he employed to endure his captivity, Woodke said he finally lost hope after the fifth year and embarked on a hunger strike in hopes of improving his treatment and being allowed to speak to his wife and his country.

Seven hostages remain in captivity in the Sahel region, including a German priest, citizens of Romania, Australia and South Africa and an Italian family. Woodke said one of the things he’d like to do now that he’s free is to help secure their release.

“For now, I will limit the information I share and continue to cooperate with authorities to bring these monsters to justice and to help get the other people out — because they’re in hell,” Woodke said.

Asked if she’d ever given up hope, Els Woodke said that she did not.

“I remember when it first happened, I cried out to God, ‘I want my husband home!’ and He did not say ‘no,’” she recalled. “And I believe that God never changed his mind … . He did not say ‘no’ six and a half years ago. He did not say ‘no’ every day, so I kept my faith that Jeff would be home. I lived every day in the faith that he would come home.”

Woodke said he had heard about the pandemic but didn’t know whether his family was alive or da.

Each day since then he’s been noticing little things that are different from the last time he was here. Some of those things are within himself.

“Crowds are a bit difficult for me to handle,” he said, and as an example he described an incident that occurred last week when he and his family visited Pier 39 in San Francisco. “We were sitting there and a child popped a balloon,” he said. “Well, I freaked out.” 

He said he doesn’t have any trouble relating to people one-on-one, though men with big beards freak him out a little bit.

Through it all, Woodke said his family, including his wife, two sons and grandchildren, never stopped working to get him home. “And now it’s time to learn how to be a family again,” he said. “And that’s the journey. We’re on it.”

You can watch video of the full press conference below.

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CORRECTION: This post originally misquoted Woodke regarding how much he’d heard about the COVID-19 pandemic. The Outpost regrets the error.