Singer, Survivor, and Real-Life Wonder Woman: Kechi Okwuchi

by Elaine Meyer, Editor in Chief of Unity’s Daily Word

Born and raised in Nigeria, singing was always an important pastime in Kechi’s life. That pastime turned to therapy after a fateful day in 2005. Kechi, along with 60 of her fellow classmates from Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja, Nigeria, were traveling on Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145, when something went terribly wrong:

Fifteen minutes to the end of the flight, the pilot announced that we would be landing soon in the Port Harcourt airport. I was sitting in an aisle seat next to my close friend Toke. Suddenly everything seemed different. We were going down way too fast. Someone in the back shouted, “Is this plane trying to land?” I turned to my friend and we held hands. I asked her, “Maybe we should pray?” but before we could start, there was a loud sound and the next thing I remember was waking up in Milpark Hospital, South Africa. To this day I don’t remember the actual impact of the crash.

The plane, carrying 109 people, had slammed into the ground and burst into flames. Kechi was one of only two survivors and suffered burns over 65 percent of her body.

Finding Faith

Kechi spent the next seven months in the hospital with a majority of that time in intensive care and has endured more than 100 surgeries. She credits her faith, family, friends, and singing for keeping her going.

Before the crash, Kechi was content to view God through her mother’s faith, viewing God as an entity to be respected and feared. During her hospital stay she developed her own personal relationship with God, learning to associate God with pure, unconditional love rather than something to be feared.

There’s truly nothing like prayer. It reinforces faith, which gives you courage. It calms you when things get really hard to deal with. If there’s one thing I learned through this experience, it’s the value of faith.