Elaine Dang thought she was going to die.
Caught in the middle of a siege that would later become Kenya’s deadliest terrorist attack since 1998, the UC Berkeley alumna found herself huddling under a counter, trying to make herself invisible to the gunmen attacking Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall.
“It was this weird kind of competition in my mind where half of my mind was preparing for death and the other half was still yearning to survive,” Dang said in an interview with The Daily Californian earlier this week.
Dang, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009, had come to Nairobi a little more than a year before the attack to work at Bridge International Academies, a for-profit company that builds primary schools in Kenya. Since April 2013, she had been transitioning into a role as general manager for Eat Out Kenya, a Yelp-like startup.
That day — Saturday, Sept. 21 — she was simply trying to judge a children’s cooking competition.
Everything changed with an explosion. About 12:40 p.m., terrorists from the Somali militant group al-Shabab stormed the mall, throwing grenades and shooting indiscriminately. The mall, popular with families and expats, quickly became a war zone.
Dang sensed a large crowd would be an easy target and made the split-second decision to hide under a nearby kitchen counter. She collapsed on top of a woman already hiding and crouched in fear as more people dived on top of her, looking for similar shelter.
As gunshots fired from all directions, the woman beneath her wailed, blood streaming from a fresh wound. The woman was one of more than 170 people injured that day. That total included Dang, who was hit by shrapnel just moments later while sprinting to a different counter.
Bleeding and running on adrenaline, Dang found herself next to a man and his wife, both of whom had been hit.
“Are we going to die?” the wife asked her hysterically.
“I told her, ‘yes,’ ” Dang said. “ ‘I think we are going to die.’ ”
Dang, whose friends describe her as deeply rational, strategized quickly and feigned death. She lay down facing the militants, knowing that if she were shot in the back, it would mean paralysis.
Surrounded by limp bodies, Dang lay there helplessly.
As the gunshots subsided an hour after the attack began, several men charged in to usher the victims to safety.
“I was actually so thrilled that I started crying,” Dang said, recalling her emotions upon making it outside.
Finally safe, Dang was rushed to a hospital and treated for two shrapnel wounds in her leg and arm. Christopher Suen, who knows Dang from her time at Bridge International, met her at the hospital.
“She was physically screwed up, covered in her own blood, but she understood people around her were much more injured,” Suen said. “She was taking it so rationally.”
Halfway around the world, Mary Dang was buying coffee on a routine Saturday morning when she received a terrified phone call from her sister.
Dang was hysterical.
“She was screaming and crying; we were both very emotional,” Mary Dang said. “It was kind of a blur.”
Elaine Dang visits a Bridge International Academies school in Kenya.
Although nearly three weeks have passed since the attack, Dang is still grappling with her experience mentally and emotionally. She has returned to her home in California and is recovering with her family.
“During the day, I’m composed, but I have crying episodes and very emotional times,” Dang said. Nonetheless, she says, she is on a “positive road to recovery.”
Dang says she wants to return to Kenya, a country she considers her second home, to visit close friends who still live there. Seeing how the country has come together in the wake of the disaster despite its ethnic differences has been heartening, she said.
“It was a beautiful thing to see,” Dang said.
Dang is uninsured in the United States and is unable to afford her medical expenses. The Dang family has set up a fundraising website to collect donations to pay for continuing care. Extra funds will be donated to the Kenyan Red Cross.
“Elaine is the kind of gal that when she walks into a room, everyone hears her voice,” Suen said. “She’s a phenomenal person, a great example of the kinds of alums you get out of Berkeley.”
Contact Giacomo Toginini at [email protected].