by Isha Sesay
The fear of death constantly tormented all the girls. But for the Christians among them, it wasn’t simply the thought of their lives summarily ending that stalked every waking moment. Embedded in their fears was the deep, irrevocable belief that death would bring with it the moment they would be held accountable for their actions by God. So good deeds and religious faithfulness mattered—above all else. Born into devout Christian homes, they had felt anchored by this faith throughout their existence and had used it to chart a course for life in a turbulent world. Now being unable to joyfully worship, read scripture, or get lost in uninterrupted prayer robbed each girl of her sense of true peace and left in its aftermath a feeling of extreme dislocation. As a result, the lost girls eagerly awaited nightfall each day, when, under the cover of darkness, they would gather together under the tree in the collective joy of worship and prayer. But they had yet to learn that Jida was equal parts caretaker and spy. This inconspicuous man shuffled about the place, peering and prying into everything the girls did. So when he eventually uncovered a nighttime prayer session, he slunk off to inform their captors.
The next day, the captors arrived with a message: “We will kill you if we ever catch you performing Christians prayers again.” Priscilla believed every word of the threat. Petrified, they could no longer find it within themselves to gather in the dark in large groups, but they refused to abandon the practice altogether. They continued to look for opportunities to replenish their faith. When the moments presented themselves, Priscilla found they were almost always unannounced and involved no more than two to three girls. They weren’t regular occurrences, but these impromptu worship moments provided not only peace and succor to distressed souls, they also brought the spark that kept the spirit of defiance burning within the group.
A month into their captivity, the first rains of May heralded a new source of torment, as well as a battleground, for the girls. Trapped as they were beneath the tree, Priscilla could only watch with growing distress as the ground beneath her feet became waterlogged and flooded. Slowly a reservoir of water appeared and in time submerged the girls in waist-high puddles. Jida was dispatched to summon their captors. The men duly appeared to witness the girls’ plight, but they brought little to actually ease the girls’ suffering. Instead they offered them plastic bags. Flimsy sheets of torn-up polythene were given to the group to protect them during the near-constant downpours, and once the rains eased, the coverings were to be promptly handed back to Jida. Enraged, the girls decided to turn their suffering into a source of aggravation for their captors. Whenever Jida showed up with the flimsy plastic, the girls accepted the sheets without saying a word, then tossed them aside the moment he was out of sight.
Now they waited.
In the middle of the night, when the rains fell and rivers formed around them, the girls let out ear-piercing screams. They shrieked and wailed till men came running from their grass shacks all over the camp.
In a state of panic when they arrived, the men shouted, “What is happening?”
The darkness hid the mischief that filled their eyes, and the girls screamed louder.
“What is wrong with you?”
“It is the rain . . . We are suffering . . . Release us!” they howled, their shrieks fueled by satisfaction.
“Be patient. Just a few more weeks. You will not be here for much longer.”
“We are dying!” By then their throats were raw and yet their screams grew louder still.
The men struggled to gain control of the situation, alternating between consoling and chiding the girls. This went on till the men ran out of patience and shots rang out in the night. Satisfied, the girls paused and smiled to themselves in the dark. Then they waited long enough for their captors to exhale, wipe the sweat from their brows, and believe they’d quelled the uproar—at which point the girls started screaming all over again.
Chapter Fifteen
FOR HOURS AT A TIME THE GIRLS SAT IMMERSED IN WATER. THEIR teeth chattered and the cold invaded their soaking hijabs before seeping into their bones. One by one the girls were brought down by chills, coughs, and fever. The rains were still falling two months later in July when the men appeared and roused them from their damp quarters.
“We can see you are tired of this place and that the rainfall has been disturbing you. So let us take you to a new place. Here you’ll never have these kinds of challenges.”
If the militants had been expecting displays of joy and gratitude, they soon experienced otherwise. The girls exploded in anger.
“What do you mean taking us to a new place? Aren’t you taking us back home?” Some of the girls were already crying.
“Don’t worry! We are only changing your location because our oga is still not back.”
By this point, neither Priscilla nor her schoolmates believed a word that came out of the men’s mouths. It had been three months since the girls had first been stowed away beneath their arboreal prison, and now the teenagers were rounded up in the sunlight and marched to a new place in the forest. Priscilla walked solemnly, and many of the others cried bitterly along the way. When they stopped fifteen minutes later at their new location, the monstrous tree they’d lived under was still in view.
Two crude single-room structures stood out in the open. This was to be their home. Priscilla had seen “houses” like these countless times before. They were the same ones that littered the landscape of the Boko Haram camp, with no windows, doors, or toilets, only walls made of brown woven grass and wreathed roofs covered in tattered strips of plastic, held in place by several large stones. The men had moved them from the overbearing tree out into the open to spare them the torment of the rain. What they hadn’t told the girls till they arrived at this new location was they faced a brand new threat.
“The Nigerian military frequently drops bombs in this place,” they announced without emotion.
“What?” the girls shrieked.
“So every day you must wake up early in the morning and leave this place. Go and find a place to sit under these trees that are nearby here.”
In their entire three months under the tamarind tree, the girls had heard only the loud whirring of helicopter blades—they’d been unaware of any bomb attacks. Hidden away behind a pile of leaves and branches, they had felt their biggest concern to be the heat and the rain. Now they were being told that they were living under unfriendly skies and could die at any time.
Priscilla, like most of the group, was simply dumbfounded.
Sleep and wake early? She couldn’t even see how hundreds of girls would fit into the two small spaces in front of her.
“Half of you will stay in this room!” the men shouted suddenly.
The girls were divided into groups without warning or explanation.
“And the rest of you will be in this other one.”
With the living arrangements in place, the men melted away. They retreated to their positions in the distance, from which they monitored the hostages. As with before, it was left to Jida to live with the girls and keep them in check.
Priscilla and Bernice found themselves in the same room, alongside more than one hundred others. Back in Chibok, they’d both been house captains in their respective dorms, so Priscilla had often seen Bernice, a shy, soft-spoken girl, when meetings were called for all the captains—but they’d never spent much time together, and neither girl counted the other as a friend. The inhabitants of the respective spaces busied themselves with plucking the overgrown grass sprawling across their new “home” while there was still daylight. When they eventually willed themselves to lie down on the cold, craggy earth on that first night, their fears were confirmed—it was a very tight squeeze.
Old traditions ushered in this new phase of life for the girls. Just as he’d done every morning for the past three months, Jida’s reedy voice accompanied the approaching dawn. He drew the hostages from their cramped spots on the ground to a standing position to pray. Just as before, when it was time for Qur’a
nic classes, the imam duly appeared and gathered all the girls outside their new dwellings. While Boko Haram’s commitment to fostering Islamic fervor remained unwavering, Priscilla and the others quickly realized that several other elements of their existence in Sambisa had suddenly shifted.
Back at the tree, the men had delivered food, water, and firewood. Most days the girls were left wanting more of each, but their basic needs were met. This was no longer the case. Now the schoolgirls could only count on the men showing up at some point in the day with either rice, beans, pasta, or corn flour, and even then, the delivery times fluctuated wildly. When it came to water and firewood, the girls were completely on their own—those deliveries stopped altogether. It all happened suddenly, and the girls demanded an explanation.
“Why?” they asked the men.
“Because when you first got here you didn’t know where you were—that’s why we did those things for you. But after all these months, we know you can do these things for yourself.”
The girls had an entirely new situation on their hands. When they’d first arrived at the camp in April, the girls had divided themselves into groups of ten at mealtime. Now these mealtime buddy groups were assigned specific duties: Some had the sole mission of heading into the bushes in search of wood. Others set off with plastic containers in hand to collect water they could use to drink and cook. The girls were still refusing in protest to bathe, which under these new conditions was actually a welcome relief because it lessened the girls’ water needs. Within the first few days of roaming through the bushes, they discovered a small pond. But the amount of water it provided fell short of their daily requirements. Ultimately, the very rains the girls had feared would be their demise under the tamarind tree had become critical to their survival. They lined up open plastic containers and prayed for the rains to pour down on them.
As the days went by, finding water became a pressing issue. In much the same way, food was also a growing ordeal. The girls didn’t have enough to eat. With depressing regularity, the teenagers found themselves sitting out in the open, waiting for hours on end, sometimes all night into the next morning, for deliveries of food that never came. Sometimes the lack of food lasted a few days. Other times, they went a couple of weeks without a proper meal. The physical impact on the girls was stark. Hunger whittled Priscilla and the others down to skin and bone, leaving them with pallid complexions, gaunt and listless. While the girls’ bodies broke down, their captors looked on dispassionately, offering no words of comfort. Instead, they preached forbearance: “You must endure! We cannot go out to loot for supplies with these military boys everywhere. They are all over the place, so you must bear it!”
All they had was their faith and the forest, and now the girls decided to lean on both of them. Before the call to prayers when the luminous predawn light lingered over the forest, small groups of girls crept out of the two rooms and into the bushes in search of kuka leaves. The ancient kuka tree, with its vast, wide trunk and tapered wiry-looking branches, all bent and twisted to form a sort of fantastical headdress, has long been famed for its medicinal and nutritional properties. Dubbed the “Tree of Life” by some, the kuka has provided nourishment and hope to people in Africa, Asia, and Australia throughout the ages, all from the same leaves now sought by the girls. They had to walk for over an hour to reach the nearest kuka trees. When the group finally found them, faint from hunger, everyone knew they had to act fast and get back to camp before it was time for prayers under the watchful eye of Jida. In desperation, the girls scrambled up the handful of kuka trees to gather their precious leaves. Back in the rooms with their treasure, the ravenous girls moved the leaves from the folds of their hijabs onto the ground to dry. Once dried, the ravenous girls ground them into a powder with the help of a smooth rock. They all waited impatiently for the pot, filled with water, to start boiling. This was the welcomed signal that it was time to add the kuka powder. Stirred and left to boil, as soon as the slimy substance cooled down, it was poured into a bowl—the bottom half of a damaged yellow plastic container—and passed around the group. When each girl got her turn, she eagerly slurped down the green slop. Priscilla sucked it down greedily, grateful for the space it filled in her aching stomach.
In her previous life, long before Boko Haram decimated her world, one of Priscilla’s favorite pastimes at home had been cooking kuka leaves for her entire family. In fact, few things had filled her with as much pride. Back then, as they all gathered around to eat the popular Nigerian dish she’d so lovingly made with pungent spices, pepper, onions, and meat, none could have foreseen a time when Priscilla’s very existence depended on drinking those leaves in the presence of a whole new family made up of hundreds of kidnapped sisters. Still, she was thankful for the bonds that knit the group together, borne not of blood but fashioned instead from hardship and suffering. These ties were just as strong as blood relations and held the group close. In fact, as time went by and the girls’ discomfort and frustrations mounted, their sense of sisterhood grew even stronger.
At the top of Priscilla’s list of frustrations were the living conditions, in particular being forced to sleep on the cold, hard ground. They were without blankets or ground covering, and the exposure to the elements left every joint and muscle in her body stiff and aching. Priscilla dreaded nighttime, when she entered a battle with sleep, fighting against its grasp even though she knew it would ultimately force her to embrace the ground. The girl longed to sleep in a bed under the warmth of a blanket, feel the tenderness of her parents’ loving embrace, and savor the taste of a home-cooked meal. Time seemed to move at a pace that made every day feel interminable. The months gradually piled up, as painful yearnings emerged and embedded themselves within the ebb and flow of despair. Priscilla’s life in the forest had been stripped of every comfort. All that remained was fear, cold, exhaustion, and hunger.
Her bonds with the other girls, though, became Priscilla’s lifeline. When they were first taken, she’d spent almost all of her time with a gang of eleven from her Chibok neighborhood. Being able to share her personal fears with the group became a major source of comfort for her, and this clique in turn leaned on each other for the strength to navigate their despair and survive life in the forest. But alliances were reordered when their captors moved them to the two rooms in the forest and Priscilla and Bernice found themselves together. In the forest the casual friendship between these two girls deepened and blossomed. Soon they were inseparable and spent long hours whispering secrets, giggling, crying, and comforting one another.
When the girls finally decided they wanted to sort through the tangled mass of hair on their heads, Priscilla and Bernice turned to each other. The duo took turns picking through their knotted and twisted hair with sticks carved into prongs. It took hours of pulling and shrieking before they eventually reached the point where they were able to braid each other’s manes.
After weeks of deprivation and suffering, the girls suddenly wanted to see what they looked like. With the sun high in the sky and a sense of curiosity burning within, Priscilla and Bernice among handfuls of other girls sidled over to an area not far from their rooms where Boko Haram had abandoned its broken-down motorbikes. The girls knew their captors were watching as they crowded around the bikes’ small rearview mirrors. They stared, wide eyed, at their own reflections, almost as if they didn’t recognize the faces staring back at them. When Priscilla finally looked in the mirror, she was shocked by how much she had changed. The girl in the mirror looked nothing like the girl who’d been at school in Chibok. From time to time a schoolmate would actually turn up with a broken-off rearview mirror hidden away in her hijab. In those squalid spaces where they lacked everything, the mirror became a prized possession, passed among the girls excitedly. Jida was all too aware of what was happening, but rather than confiscate the mirror, he would gently chide them. “Put it away,” he said whenever he spotted them gathered together and engrossed in their reflections. “It will only make you think m
ore about what you have left behind,” the old man always added. But for the girls, staring at the round disk was more than a frivolous pastime—it was also a means of reconnecting with the girls they used to be, another lifetime ago.
Still, the day-to-day pace remained much the same. Time ticked by, the days passed, the girls wept and missed home. Hours sometimes leapt past and at other points dragged with a maddening numbness. Nothing much changed.
Then one day the Nigerian government turned up the pressure.
It was after morning prayers. Priscilla, Bernice, and dozens of other girls were in their shack readying themselves for the day ahead. A handful of others were milling about outside, others having already disappeared into the forest to seek refuge from the bombing threat. At first, there was nothing to indicate that a military aircraft might be approaching. By the time Priscilla picked up on the sound of low-level droning, the ground was already shaking and flames had engulfed the girls’ second structure. In seconds everyone was fleeing wildly into the forest. Hordes of men appeared the moment they realized a bomb had fallen on one of the shelters. But by the time they got there, the girls were screaming and running uncontrollably everywhere. The men yelled for them to stop and turn back, but nothing was going to make these girls stop. We have been bombed! What these men have been telling us is true! Priscilla thought. The girls dispersed, deeper into the forest than they had ever ventured before. The aircraft that dropped the bomb was still hovering above them, and the captives became convinced another bomb would fall shortly.