Delaware State News DOVER — When people think of doing community service, most volunteer at a local soup kitchen or perhaps become a Big Brother or Sister. Not Tommie Little. He went to Africa and almost didn’t come back.
He details his experiences in a book released last month entitled “A Warrior’s Tale: A True Story of a Near Death Experience and Return.” Mr. Little says his 11 1/2-year journey began in 1994 when he got up one morning in his Wilmington home and didn’t like what he saw staring back at him.
“It was seven o’clock in the morning. I looked in the mirror and I knew I hadn’t done enough,” he said. “It’s hard to explain but I just didn’t feel like I had done enough. And corresponding to that, I felt stuck in a job that I was going to stay in for the rest of my life.” Once he got to work, the divorced father of three grown children called the Japanese embassy to ask if they needed a lawyer with a degree in education and an expert in martial arts, but was told his age was too much of a medical risk.
Someone there told him to get in touch with World Teach, run through Harvard University, which connects volunteer teachers with developing countries.
“They sent me a brochure with 12 options and I got to the third one and it said ‘Namibia. Brand new language, brand new democracy’ and I knew that’s where I wanted to go,” Mr. Little said of the country in the southwest corner of Africa. “I knew they never heard of judo and judo was my hidden agenda. I would do anything as long as I could get a chance to do that. I went there blind. I lost $10 (in a bet) because I didn’t know where Namibia was.” But off he went, far from the comforts of home to mud huts and dangerous conditions.
“Everyone thought I was crazy but I knew this was something I had to do. None of my children talked to me for the first two years I was there,” he said.
He quickly got the trust and respect of the high school-aged teens and their parents in Namibia. Aside from English and the Democracy class, he also set up computer instruction, called Cyber University. All 22 of his students later received jobs working with computers. He also achieved his dream of establishing a Namibian Olympic Development Judo team, which is still in existence. And, while there, he ended up marrying and later divorcing a woman 45 years his junior.
But the moment that will stick with him forever is the day he died — and ultimately lived to tell about it. Caught up in an epidemic in which 302 people had already passed away, Mr. Little was reeling from the effects of cerebral malaria. “It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my entire life,” he said of the headaches, which consumed him for a couple of weeks. He writes in his book that the pain was so bad, he was afraid he wasn’t going to die.
Despite the extreme discomfort, he pretended as if nothing was wrong. “Once you're down, you're down and I didn’t want that. I guess it was macho bravado and not wanting to appear a wimp but I refused to be taken down by this,” he said. Finally, friends demanded he go to the hospital in Caprivi, a province of Namibia, on Good Friday. A priest was even brought in later to administer last rites.
It was then that he felt himself rise over the examination table, seeing his own body stuck with tubes and medical professionals attending to him. He then met his uncle Connie, who had passed away shortly be forehand. He was bouncing “a ball of pure light” off Mr. Little’s chest. “I stopped back often to the hospital room and watched people working on my body,” he writes in his book. “ Then off I’d go again with Uncle Connie. He was always smiling like a proud father. He acted as my guide to everything I wanted to see or know.
“He beckoned, ‘Tommie, you will not stay here. This is an introductory visit. You will return.’ No matter how much I begged and pleaded, he insisted I would return to my body.”
Suddenly in the middle of last rites, Mr. Little sat up and grabbed the priest’s robes to the wonderment of the clergyman, who ran out of the room, ironically, on Easter Sunday. Mr. Little said waking up actually angered him.
“It was so beautiful. I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to leave. There was light and music and just such a peacefulness. The whole experience has made me not afraid of dying. I actually can’t wait to die, believe it or not,” he said. Mr. Little said it wasn’t until the writing of the book that he had discussed his near death experience in any great detail. “I didn’t want to tell anybody about it. I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” he said. “I just didn’t want to discuss it. People are funny. I don’t want to push anything on anybody. It was just a great experience.”
After that fateful weekend, he would stay another 10 years until he “just ran out of gas.” He details in his book how he hadn’t seen anyone in six weeks until a boy brought him a tray of cookies and he found out that it was Christmas Day. Desperately homesick, he returned to the U.S. in 2005. “I started crying and didn’t stop until I got to Philadelphia,” he said.
Mr. Little’s book, published by Xlibris, is available in area stores and online at Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble or Xlibris. com.
A true story of a near death experience and return
By: Tommie Little Esquire
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