## Vows Made in the Dark
The specific vow that Okene made during his hours in the air pocket has been reported consistently across multiple accounts: “When I was under the water I told God: If you rescue me, I will never go back to the sea again. Never.”
The absolute language of the vow — never, again, never — reflects the psychological state of a man who was in those hours not thinking about his long-term career options but about the immediate transaction between a person in extremis and the God he was addressing. Whether vows made under that kind of duress carry the same moral weight as vows made in calm reflection is a theological and philosophical question that different traditions answer differently.
What is documented is that Okene initially kept the vow. He left the maritime industry after the rescue and took a job as a cook on land. For approximately two years after the rescue, he did not return to the sea.
Then something changed.
The nightmares were part of it. Akpovona, his wife, described the nights: she would wake to find her husband convinced they were sinking, telling her, “Honey see, the bed is sinking, we are in the sea.” The recurring dreams were not diminishing with time. The sea had followed him onto land, into the bedroom, into the sleep that should have been the part of his life furthest from the events of May 2013.
The other element was the unresolved relationship with the fear itself. Okene has described, in his more recent interviews, recognizing that the avoidance — the vow, the land job, the conscious decision to stay away from the thing that had nearly killed him — was not resolving what the experience had left in him. The fear remained. The nightmare remained. The question of his crewmates’ deaths remained.