the mall got quiter. petra picked up the phone and was playing with it and gigi was trying to take it away from her and then the shooting started again. it got underneath our bodies and i couldn t reach it. so you couldn t text anybody? i couldn t text anybody. i couldn t get ahold of anybody. i was texting her and then other people started calling me and saying this is really bad. we have seen pictures of people being killed. and she s not responding to you? no. just down the corridor, another mother struggled to keep her children quite. we re thinking about our survival and also thinking of running to an area that s safe. but there s nowhere else for faith and her children to go. she told them being quite wasn t enough. she made an incredible decision, they would all play dead. her then 9-year-old daughter could understand how porn it was to stay still.
focus on keeping her daughters quite so they wouldn t attract attention. were you hiding? yeah. we were laying down on the ground trying to hide so they couldn t see us. portia kept her fingers in her ears. gigi layed there and she said i want my mouse and my blanket and my flashlight. she said she wanted her brothers. i told her that we d see them later. catherine could only hope that was true. half a world away a phone range in a hotel in north carolina. catherine s husband phillip, a tech entrepreneur had gone back to the u.s. for business meetings leaving his wife alone in nairobi with their five kids. i was woken up at 6:00 a.m. from a phone call from a dear family friend, so i knew it was nothing good. do you remember what he said? there s an attack going on at westgate and your wife and sons
phillip because she knew he was too far away to do anything and knew she would only panic him. back in north carolina all phillip could do was wait. it was 6:00 a.m. and news of the attack hadn t hit the u.s. yet. i m trying to imagine the feeling of getting that phone call and being so far away. helplessness is a pretty accurate word. you know there s nothing that you can do. i was so worried that the girls would just be screaming uncontr uncontr uncontrolably panicking and drawing attention. exactly what catherine was trying to prevent the girls from doing. i kept telling them to stay little and stay very quite and the lady with portia kept patting her and soothing her and gigi was curled up in a little ball. her breathing was so quite and so shallow. i kept rubbing her back and touching her because i was like maybe she s hurt and i don t