by Isha Sesay
The insurgents walked alongside, behind, and in front of her; they were everywhere. Every time Saa looked around, their menacing forms filled her view. Initially, all the girls were steered away from the main road and onto a rambling path overgrown with bushes; the detour was likely made in an attempt to avoid detection. Saa had left the blazing school wearing a pair of flip-flops, but as she realized they were heading to some unknown destination on foot, she decided her footwear would make it difficult to keep up with everyone if the group suddenly had to run. So she grabbed the sandals, whipped off her headscarf, and wrapped everything in the fabric, tying the improvised pouch around her waist. She did her best to move quickly with the crowd along the uncleared trail and eventually onto the main road feeling the sting and burn of thorns piercing her feet and embedding themselves deep beneath the skin. All the while, the temperature was dropping, leaving the shaken teenage girl shivering and in growing pain as the trek continued in silence. Then without any warning—a new threat.
“If you have a phone you’d better throw it! If we catch anyone who has a phone, that person will be punished!”
Most of the girls did as they were told, but Saa refused to part with her one possible means of communication with her family. Tucked away in the pouch with her flip-flops, the cell phone pressed into her waist as she moved.
The girls walked for almost fifteen minutes before they reached the clearing. There, amid the bushes, sat the monster nine-eleven truck, the same one Saa had seen in her school compound being filled up with all their food supplies. Now it was parked alongside almost a dozen cars and pickup trucks.
“Sit down!” the men shouted, pointing to a large tree.
Saa and the others did as they were told and started to lower themselves without making a sound. The sight of the parked vehicles stirred up disturbing new questions. What were these men planning to do next? The insurgents were in deep conversation, but Saa could hear only fragments of what was being said. It was enough to know they weren’t speaking Hausa, the dominant language spoken in northern Nigeria, nor Kibaku, the mother tongue of people from Chibok and the first language Saa, Priscilla, and all the other girls from this town had learned when they were growing up. The sounds she caught were the unfamiliar notes of Kanuri, the language of the ethnic group of the same name, from which significant numbers of Boko Haram members originated.
“Say your last prayers,” the men ordered. At once the startled girls began to shake and whimper. For Saa, that command stirred up images of her beloved family. She pictured her adoring parents and the five brothers she’d fought and loved with such great intensity her whole short life. But she remained dry eyed and bowed her head to pray. Moments later, though, the group was told to get up and start entering the parked vehicles. Saa looked up and realized what was happening. They weren’t to be killed. They were being kidnapped.
“If you refuse to get into the truck, stand and make yourself known! We will shoot you,” said the men, glaring at the girls without any trace of pity. Saa had no doubt she should take them at their word. These men would easily kill any girl who showed the slightest sign of resisting.
The insurgents pointed them toward the waiting vehicles, but only the nine-eleven and a small sedan had space for passengers. The rest were already jammed full of food items they’d swiped from Chibok town. Saa watched as the majority of the girls were shepherded to the vast truck. Given its size and imposing bulk, it was impossible for any of them to actually climb in without assistance. One of the smaller cars started up its engine and slowly inched itself into position, allowing the girls to use its roof as a launching pad from which they could hurl themselves into the body of the vehicle. They moved in clusters. One by one the girls clambered onto the car and, while trying to stay upright, shakily scrambled inside the truck. When it was finally her turn, she stared at Blessing. With her friend’s hand held tightly in her own, the two girls moved forward. It was hard to make her way onto the car and not slide off. Thankfully Blessing’s outstretched hands helped steady her. Eventually Saa hoisted herself into the cavernous truck.
Once inside, she found the contents of their school store: bags of flour, potatoes, rice, pasta, onions, and containers of oil, all of it covering the floor of the nine-eleven and leaving barely any room for the nearly two hundred girls now crowding in. As best they could, Saa and her schoolmates settled down on top and in between the bags of food. Girls seated friends on their laps, limbs mounted on limbs, bodies squeezed in close, making it difficult to tell where one girl began and another one ended. Saa moved farther down in the long truck and wedged herself into a tiny space alongside Blessing and three other schoolgirls who were also from her hometown of Askira. She perched on the bags of food with her limbs twisted beneath her, her figure bent to take up the least amount of space possible. By the time the convoy pulled off, numbness and pain were rapidly spreading everywhere in her body. Dorcas was there too, buried deep in the throng of girls.
Now that the vehicle was packed with stolen children and food, the men were concerned about how fast the overladen truck might move. With that in mind, the driver of the nine-eleven was given a head start and ordered to set off before the rest of the convoy. Meanwhile, the only other available vehicle was crammed with twenty young bodies. Close to a hundred other girls were left without a mode of transportation and forced to travel on foot.
The open-air nine-eleven moved slowly, navigating the craters in the potholed road with great caution. It actually wasn’t much of a road, more a dirt path eked from a landscape that became increasingly overrun by spiky bushes and sprawling trees the farther the convoy traveled. Saa stared long and hard into the darkness, but gave up after a while because she couldn’t find any clues as to where they were headed. She had no way of knowing how long they’d actually been traveling in the truck, but it seemed like hours. Even so, Saa felt they were still somewhere in the vicinity of Chibok. Those suspicions were confirmed from time to time as an occasional girl in the truck suddenly perked up and pointed excitedly at her village as it retreated in the distance and the convoy rolled by. When they eventually left Chibok town and headed into Sambisa Forest, Saa was none the wiser. She had no idea they were entering a massive forest enclave that covers parts of four Nigerian states and borders the nations of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon—or that its harsh terrain of sand and low-lying savanna brush made it the most inhospitable of places.
The girls from Askira—Saa’s hometown—were all squashed together in the truck and kept asking each other, “Where are we going? What should we do now?” As the minutes ticked by, their despair deepened. In the darkness, Saa heard a bloodcurdling scream cut through the night. She quickly turned. One of the girls was howling in pain and frantically clutching her thigh. While Saa and the others had squeezed themselves into body of the truck, this girl had preferred to sit above the others on the side of the vehicle with her legs outstretched. She never saw the large branch before it swooped down and slammed into her leg. As her screams grew louder and more desperate, Saa could tell from the way her leg was dangling that it was broken. Doubled over in pain, the wailing girl was brought down into the belly of the truck.
In time, Saa heard the sound of other engines trailing them. The convoy continued to move toward an unknown destination, and the girls in the nine-eleven found themselves ducking and cowering as the forest vegetation drew closer around them and thorny branches plucked scarves straight from their heads or found exposed arms to scratch and cut. When the truck came to an abrupt stop, Saa couldn’t tell whether the crumbling shacks in the surrounding vicinity had occupants; she never saw anyone. The entire area seemed deserted. But within seconds the structures were on fire and the flames were greeted with cries of “Allahu Akbar!” and much rejoicing. As the smoke rose into the night sky, one of the girls alongside Saa whispered and forlornly pointed at the outline of her own home off in the distance. All they could do was stare. Both of them knew the girl’s house might as well have bee
n on another planet, as there was no chance of reaching it from where they sat in a convoy surrounded by lawless men.
When they finally got going again, the truck, laden down with girls and stolen provisions, continued at the same slow pace, as the talk among the girls in the truck turned to escape. Saa listened carefully as her fellow students encouraged each other to jump and make a run for it. She nervously contemplated the idea with the rest of the girls from Askira. They all knew there was no guarantee of success. If anything, there was probably a greater chance of winding up dead. Saa followed the back-and-forth conversation, thinking about the anguish her disappearance would cause her loved ones.
Two of the girls from Askira were sisters and the only Muslims in their group. They argued strenuously against the idea of jumping.
“No, don’t jump!”
“What if you were to get injured?”
“If you jump and these Boko Haram boys see you, you could be killed.”
“If any one of you jumps, we will tell the Boko boys what you have done.”
The threat of exposing the others shocked Saa; why would they even think of blocking their schoolmates’ bid for freedom? It was unclear how the sisters actually planned to tell the insurgents anything when the girls were alone in the back of the nine-eleven. The convoy was still edging forward, creeping deeper into the sprawling forest. At times Saa could make out what looked like farms and settlements between the trees, but never anyone moving about. Where was everybody?
The mere thought of jumping off the massive, high truck made Saa light-headed. She was still playing scenarios over in her mind when girls started leaping. Openmouthed, her heart pounding, Saa watched as girl after girl announced she was going to jump, got up, crawled to the side of the truck, then without warning threw herself over, to be swallowed up by the darkness of the forest. Each time, Saa waited for screams or the sound of gunshots, but each time she heard nothing. She was now trapped in a battle with her deepest fears.
I could break my legs or even my neck. I could even die from doing this.
If the other girls have jumped and we haven’t heard anything, maybe they are making their way home. Why not at least try?
Let me sacrifice my life. I will either live or die.
Saa so badly wanted to go home. In the end, it was her family she was thinking of, the pain her abduction would cause. She leaned over and whispered to Blessing, “I am going to jump.” She’d made up her mind. “I will follow you,” Blessing whispered back.
Without saying a word Saa moved to the left side of the truck and paused. She felt the relentless motion of the vehicle and stared out at the bushes and trees passing by. The ground looked so far away. She had no idea how it would feel to land on it. But she came back to the one guiding thought: I’d rather jump and die out in the forest where there is at least the chance of my body being recovered, than let Boko Haram take me and my parents never see me or my body again. With that, she jumped.
Saa landed in the middle of the road, winded and disoriented. For the briefest of moments she just lay there, a little shocked she was still alive. Then she remembered that the other militants in cars and on motorbikes at the rear of the convoy were approaching. She mentally scanned her body to make sure she wasn’t injured, then half slithered, half ran into the dense growth on the side of the road. She hid beneath a mass of thick bushes and waited. Saa lay absolutely frozen in the dirt until the rest of the insurgents swept past. Even then she didn’t dare emerge from her hiding place. She waited till she could no longer see the lights of the convoy. Only then did she stand and try to make sense of her pitch-black surroundings. Looking around, she could distinguish only bushes and trees. There were also lots of weird noises she didn’t recognize. She was overwhelmed. I’ve jumped—now what?
Saa stood in the dark wondering how she would get home and what lay in store for her deep in the forest. She was searching for answers and trying to solve the riddle of the strange sounds when she heard her name. She froze. It was Blessing! In the shadows of the forest, her only guide was the sound of the strained, barely audible voice of her friend. Saa nervously felt her way along in the dark and found Blessing lying in a crumpled heap near the road, injured and crying hysterically. She’d sprained both of her ankles. Still, a sense of relief flooded both girls now that they’d escaped the truck and found each other.
Blessing couldn’t continue to lie out in the open. Saa bent down to help her friend to her feet, but the pressure made the girl groan in agony and her tears fell even faster. They moved farther into the forest, ultimately settling under a large tree surrounded by thick bushes. They sat there on the forest floor, terrified of snakes and the unidentifiable growls, screeches, and squawks coming from every direction. As the hours passed, the girls grew colder, and they held each other close. Saa spoke encouraging words to Blessing throughout the night, but there was nothing she could do to ease her friend’s pain. By the time the sun rose high in the sky the next morning, neither girl had slept. Saa needed to get help for Blessing. The cell phone she’d flouted orders to keep with her turned out to be useless. She later discovered that Boko Haram had permanently damaged three of the four telecom masts that loomed over the Chibok town center before heading into the forest. So right then, her phone, the one thing Saa thought would save them, was about as useful as a rock.
Daybreak brought an instant smothering heat, and for the first time Saa could properly take in their surroundings. She and Blessing were completely alone amid clumps of savanna grass mixed with short, wiry bushes. Trees that ranged from scrawny to full bodied were scattered among the rest of the vegetation.
Saa would have to go in search of help by herself. She refused to sit there and die in the forest after summoning up the courage to leap from a moving truck. Besides, Blessing was still gripped by pain, unable to move. Saa was very afraid, but once again, she thought back to her family, who would be worrying, and she reminded herself that she would do whatever was necessary to get back to them. Saa was convinced that if she walked through the bushes, she would eventually find someone. She assured Blessing she would be back soon, then looked all around and listened. She could just about make out the sound of chickens clucking and decided to let that sound be her guide as she took off in search of help.
Saa had been walking only a short time when she came across a small, decrepit shack. The one-room lean-to was made from scraps that appeared to have been scavenged from the forest. Nomadic Fulani herdsmen have long roamed Sambisa Forest using the land to graze their cattle, and these traditionally fair-skinned people most times live in temporary dwellings spread throughout the trees and wild bushes. Inside the ramshackle shelter, Saa spotted a woman cooking while packing her belongings. From her complexion Saa readily assumed she was a Fulani and called out to get her attention. When the woman emerged, the schoolgirl immediately launched into a rapid-fire explanation of her situation, pleading for help.
The whole time, the woman, who looked to be somewhere in her forties, remained expressionless and just stared at the animated girl. When Saa finally paused, using a series of gestures and random words, the woman let Saa know that she didn’t speak Hausa and hadn’t understood a word Saa had said. At that moment the woman’s husband emerged. Unlike his wife, he did understand Saa, who once again dove into her story, explaining to the equally baffled-looking herdsman what had happened, the condition Blessing was in, and how they needed to get home.
“Can you help show us the way home or even take us somewhere so we can find our way back?” she pleaded.
“No,” he replied.
Saa was taken aback and stood there in shocked silence. The man explained that they never stayed in the same place for long and they were busy now, preparing to leave. The best he could do was to offer advice: “Do not to take the road that brought you into the forest. Rather, go through the bushes until you reach one village.” Then he pointed the way they should go. As he spoke, gunshots exploded off in the distance and
they all flinched. Saa felt the panic rising once more. Boko Haram was still nearby! Later she learned that a vehicle in the convoy had broken down, and while they tried to fix the mechanical problem, the men had started wildly firing off their guns.
Saa stared intently at the couple and decided she wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer. Not after everything they’d been through. She started up again, explaining there was no way Blessing could walk anywhere with her injuries, let alone make it through the forest. Plus Saa wasn’t strong enough to carry the other girl on her own.
“You’re the only one who can help us,” she told him and then stood there, refusing to budge. Much to her relief, something she had said got through to him, and he finally relented. The man grabbed his bicycle, which lay nearby, and the three of them headed off to rescue Blessing. She was exactly where Saa had left her, curled up under the tree. Together, they carefully lifted her onto the bicycle. The man and his wife pushed and steered while Saa followed along behind. Eventually they reached a village, where they found a man willing to make the journey back to Chibok with the girls on his motorbike. The long trek took them through dense bush. The whole time Saa was consumed by thoughts of her loved ones.
While she was fighting to get back to them, her family was likewise overcome with panic and grief. Hours earlier, as soon as Saa’s father had ended the call with her, he’d called her back. Baba dialed and redialed her number, but she never answered, and suddenly the line went dead. That same night, Bitrus, one of Saa’s elder brothers, had received a phone call from a friend living in Chibok who told him about the mass abduction. Early the next morning, he set off for Chibok. There, Bitrus found a devastated town of heartbroken parents.