Olympic wrestling champion Daniel Igali arrived back in B.C. on Wednesday after recovering from stab wounds suffered in an attack at his brother's home in Nigeria.
He was in the African country where he was born and raised to work on the school he recently opened there.
Daniel Igali returns to Vancouver after being victimized by armed thieves in Nigeria, where he has built a school in his home village.
(CBC)
Speaking with reporters at Vancouver International Airport, Igali said he has almost recovered from the attack, but that emotionally it will take longer.
"It's more the emotional aftershocks that are more difficult to deal with now than anything else, and I'm hoping it doesn't scare me in any way."
In late October, four men broke into the home where Igali was watching TV with his brother and demanded valuables before hitting him in the head with the butt of their guns and then stabbing him in the back of the neck.
They escaped with more than than $13,000 in cash and phones and laptop computers.
Ready to return
Following the attack, Igali had said he might never return to Nigeria, but now says that was just an initial response at the time.
"When you have such a traumatic experience, your initial thoughts are negative. But the next day I started thinking, and the reason I was there [was] to influence the lives of kids so they don't turn out to be like the people who attacked me."
Igali recently finished building a new school in his home village in Nigeria.
He says while he still gets nightmares, he plans to return to the African country in a week to help government officials staff the school.
Igali won a wrestling gold medal for Canada at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Last year, he tried his hand at politics, running unsuccessfully as a candidate in Surrey for the Liberals in the provincial election.
