Jeff Woodke

Born on the 13th of November, 1960, to Mike and Patricia Woodke, I rushed into life a couple weeks early. No one can fault me for being eager, and my small 3-pound, 13-ounce body soon began to grow. We cannot choose our names at birth and by my grandmother’s choice I was to be Jeffery, or Jeff. I’d rather I had another moniker, although I couldn’t tell you which one. The name has managed to stick with me for all of these years.

I grew up and went through High School in Fremont, a suburban town on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, in California. A creative child, I loved to write and make art. Yet those seemed to be poor man’s occupations. Running towards dreams which hopefully paid better, I moved to northern California in 1979, where I attended Humboldt State University. Wild, wet and isolated, the forests and beaches of Humboldt held me close while I studied. Eventually I considered the place as my home and the center of my Universe.

I found faith there in 1982, at 22 years of age. I became a Christian, and exchanged one set of dreams for another, seemingly more adventurous, one; I decided to go into missions, or perhaps better said, God decided I was to go. Faith for me was about living out what I consider to be the bottom line of Christianity; Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. I didn’t just want to go and preach; I wanted to go and serve in love. I simply needed to finish my degree before leaving.

I received my Bachelors of Science in Wildlife Biology in 1985, and immediately left for Belize, Central America, on a one-year internship with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The jungles of Belize were an adventure indeed, and I decided to go further. The desire for adventure tugged at my spirit. I traveled to Morocco, to learn French and be integrated into Muslim culture. My hope was to establish a work for YWAM in the Republic of Niger, a very underdeveloped country in West Africa. I wanted to love the poor and work with them to solve the problems that they saw as important. There seemed no better place than Niger.

As I prepared for my task, my path took me to Amsterdam, where I met my wife-to-be Els. In 1987 I traveled across the Sahara by truck and laid the initial foundations for the organization I was to establish. By 1989, Els and I were married, and the two of us, along with her two children from an earlier marriage, David and Tim, moved to Niger. We began Jeunesse En Mission Entraide et Développement (YWAM Relief and Development). It was a Christian humanitarian organization, or non-governmental organization. We had two more children, Matthew and Bob, making four boys all together, raising them initially in Niger.

I began working with nomadic pastoralists up in the northern grasslands of Niger in 1990. Based in the small town of Abalak, my small team and I did everything from digging wells and establishing primary schools, to land regeneration and famine relief. Working with Tuareg and Fulani nomads was challenging and rewarding. It turned out to be dangerous as well.

One thing led to another, and after earning my Masters in international development, I was soon advocating for climate change adaptation funding as a lobbyist. I attended many United Nations Climate Change conferences (UNFCCC or COP conferences) in that capacity, and I did quite a bit of published research as well. I won a Sasakawa award from the U.N. for disaster risk reduction in 2009, for my work in Niger.

My wife Els and three of our four children had moved back to Humboldt County by then, as we’d purchased a house in McKinleyville in 2006. We live there to this day. I traveled back and forth from my home here, to my workplace in Abalak, doing two months in Africa, and three at home. While in Humboldt, I did administration for my projects and I also worked as a research consultant at the Arcata Marsh Research Institute (AMRI https://arcatamarsh.wordpress.com/).

By October, 2016, I was a year away from retirement from Africa. I planned to seek full time work in the US. It never happened. On October 14th, I was taken hostage by Al Qaeda linked terrorists, and held by Al Qaeda in northern Mali for 6.5 years. Released on March 20, 2023, I came home to my wife, children and grandchildren, Odin and Aris, with PTSD and stories that needed telling. From Nowhere to Forever is the first of what I hope will be many. Currently I write fiction, non- fiction and poetry (@ The_ransomed_poet  on IG).

The rest is yet to come.