Ashley Judd is recovering from a “catastrophic” fall – which almost cost her a leg – she suffered while doing conservation work in Congo’s rainforest.
Judd, 52, described “55 incredibly distressing hours” in a lecture on Instagram Live with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof from his ICU bed in South Africa. Judd explained that she tripped over a fallen tree in the dark while working for track down bonobos, an endangered species of great apes, breaking the leg in four places and leaving it with nerve damage.
Judd’s ordeal – which she said left her “at the edge of my border” also included being carried in her hand and transported by motorcycle at some points, during which she bit a stick, “howling like a wild animal”, while losing and regain consciousness and repeat a passage from the Bible. (Psalm 23 “The Lord is my shepherd, I will lack nothing”, for the curious.)
However, the actress stressed her privilege to have access to medical care, saying that a Congolese person in the same position would probably not even be removed from the village and would have lost her leg and potentially her life.
“The difference between a Congolese person and me is the disaster insurance that allowed me 55 hours after my accident reached an operating table in South Africa,” she said, noting that many villages in Congo have not only electricity, but also medical equipment like painkillers, a point she reiterated in a separate post on her Instagram.
“Bonobos are important,” she said. “And the same is true of the people whose ancestral forests live and the other 25,600,000 Congolese who need humanitarian aid.”