Beneath the Tamarind Tree

by Isha Sesay

  I still wasn’t sure how I was going to make that happen. Based on the level of difficulty other journalists had experienced in trying to get to Amina, the Chibok girl who’d escaped to freedom in May, I knew that this wasn’t going to be easy. The Nkeki family had been complaining for months about their severely limited access to their daughter. Despite the rising family tensions and intensifying questions from journalists, the Nigerian government’s public position never wavered. The Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar, announced, “We have to safeguard her and give her all the necessary security for her to recuperate well.” And with that brief, uncompromising statement, Amina remained out of public view and essentially out of reach in an undisclosed location in the Nigerian capital.

  Now there were twenty-one freed girls. It seemed a foregone conclusion that the government would have rings of security surrounding them. All of this set the stage for a monumental battle as journalists from around the world sought access to them. As the plane carried me across the world, I was also wondering about my volatile relationship with former president Goodluck Jonathan and his administration. Had the deeply embedded ill will toward me by previous officials found a home within the new administration? I had no way of knowing. But by the time I finally fell asleep on the plane, I’d made up my mind. It didn’t matter how Buhari officials felt about me. One way or another, I was going to pull off a meeting with the girls.

  Fifteen hours later, as the plane started its descent for Abuja, I felt a knot of tension form in my stomach. I dug into my hand luggage and pulled out a dark baseball cap, which I quickly put on and pulled low over my eyes. I wanted to minimize the attention I often found myself subjected to in Nigeria. To my relief and surprise, I made it through immigration without incident. Once my luggage and I were in the car, the driver was off within minutes, racing through traffic toward the CNN workspace.

  Adrenaline fuels just about every waking moment a journalist spends out on the road covering a big story. The only thing that matters is the story and how we can bring it to our audience in the most compelling way. The ugly truth is, most television journalists are preternaturally ambitious, which sets up two challenges: First, to outdo the last story you covered. The unacknowledged industry mantra is “You’re only as good as your last story.” Second, to report the story before anyone else can. Or, at the very least, to gain exclusive access or details that leave fellow journalists kicking themselves and sick with envy.

  The driver took me to CNN’s temporary communal workspace that we’d set up in one of the big Abuja hotels. When I walked in, it was already packed with bodies, camera equipment, endless reels of cables, and laptops. The medium-size suite felt like it was about to burst wide open.

  Our Atlanta bosses had deployed two separate reporting teams so there’d always be one available to provide live updates and analysis across the news shows on CNN USA and CNN International. David McKenzie, one of the network’s longtime Africa correspondents, was already there. He’d head up Team McKenzie. The six-foot-plus, sandy-haired South African had flown in from Johannesburg the day before with his producer, Brent Swails, a dark-haired American who’d relocated from Atlanta to South Africa a few years earlier. Running camera for that team was Fridah Okutoyi, a brilliantly talented and wickedly funny Kenyan photojournalist. David was live on the air when I turned up.

  Dominique van Heerden, the assigned producer for Team Sesay, would coordinate logistics and liaise with our Atlanta overseers. I’d never worked with her before, but she had a reputation for boundless bravery, and I immediately liked the straight-talking South African. Our cameraman was Fabien “Fabs” Muhire, a soft-spoken Rwandan I’d enjoyed working with many times before. He’d been home with his family in Kenya when the news of the twenty-one girls broke. Like all of us, he dropped everything and jumped on a plane to Abuja. Rounding out the CNN crew was the digital producer, Stephanie Busari, the only Nigerian among us—her principal focus was writing content for CNN.com. Based in Lagos, she’d also been covering the Chibok girls’ story for a long time. Thanks to her dedication and warm, easygoing nature, she’d built deep, well-placed relationships within the Chibok community.

  When I entered, the room was already full of frenetic energy. While David provided TV updates from the balcony, everyone else was busy on a phone, on a laptop, or fiddling with a camera. Once the hugs and hellos were out of the way, my team quickly settled down to figure out how we’d get ourselves into the room for the reunion between the twenty-one girls and their parents.

  “What are your sources saying about the plan to reunite the girls with their families?” I quizzed Stephanie.

  “I haven’t been able to get too many details. The only thing we know for sure is that the girls’ parents are on their way to the capital right now, and are expected to arrive tomorrow, Saturday. I’ve been on the phone all morning, but I don’t know where or when exactly that meeting is supposed to happen. Right now it seems most likely it will happen at DSS.”

  The DSS is Nigeria’s Department of State Services, the nation’s primary domestic intelligence agency.

  “We know the girls have been staying in a hospital, there on the grounds of DSS headquarters since yesterday when they arrived in Abuja,” she told me.

  This was unwelcome news. It was about as easy to stroll into Nigeria’s state security complex without an invitation as to simply waltz into the FBI’s headquarters in the United States. The situation left us with just one option: we’d have to sneak our way in.

  “Can I help you?” the gruff official shouted over to us. Team Sesay had crammed into an SUV and was now parked in front of a makeshift barrier blocking the entrance to the DSS grounds. The official walked toward us, stern faced. He peered through the driver’s window. The situation suddenly felt very tense.

  Five pairs of eyes stared back at him. None of us moved a limb or said a word. A shiny rifle swung loosely from a strap, slung over his shoulder. Just behind him, a few feet away, stood a group of armed men huddled together with a couple of others sprawled on a bench beside the road. Each was smartly dressed in a button-down shirt and nice trousers, not a single army or police uniform in sight. While they appeared relaxed and nonchalant, it was clear from the multiple times they glanced over at us that they were paying very close attention to our exchange with their burly colleague.

  Before we’d left the workspace, we’d learned from one of Stephanie’s contacts that the parents and their newly freed daughters were to meet that afternoon at a hospital located somewhere in the sprawling DSS compound, all of which lay on the other side of the entrance barrier we faced. All clearly out of bounds to us.

  The burly man stared at our team, waiting for an answer.

  In the absence of a better plan, we remained quiet until our driver spoke up. “We’re meeting some people at the hospital,” he said.

  I was crammed uncomfortably between Dominique and Stephanie at the back of the car. I slowly turned my head to the right and glared at Stephanie, prompting her with my eyes to back up the driver’s statement with any small detail one of her contacts had given.

  She spluttered, “Hello, eh, yes, eh. We’re coming to meet someone at the hospital. They told us to meet them there.” She was completely unconvincing.

  “Who are you meeting?” the official asked.

  “A friend,” Stephanie mumbled. “Are we in the right place for the hospital?”

  I tried not to squirm. The situation was unraveling. Fast.

  The man ignored Stephanie entirely. He looked each of us over, slowly. Then he growled, “You’re in the wrong place.”

  “Let me just call our friend to confirm.” Stephanie pulled out her cell phone.

  But our interrogator was out of patience. “You can’t stay here. You have to leave.”

  We dared not argue or say another word.

  Our driver put the vehicle into reverse and slowly backed away from the entrance. Once out of earshot, we quickly discus
sed what our next step would be. The agreed plan was to stay in the area and be on the lookout for the Chibok parents’ arrival. We settled on a parking spot under a shady tree, still on the main road, but a little way off from the DSS entrance.

  It was early afternoon and the heat was unrelenting. Inside the car, things were tense.

  “Are you sure we were at the right entrance?” Stephanie asked the driver. “Could there be another way in?”

  I was wondering the same thing. Could he have taken us to the wrong place?

  “No, this is right. I know it is.”

  Fabs, who was siting up front in the passenger seat, also pressed the driver.

  “Let me just call my friend who works for DSS and confirm,” the driver said.

  The entire team shouted, “No!”

  The last thing we needed was someone we didn’t know informing Nigeria’s secret police that a bunch of CNN journalists were sitting under a tree outside DSS headquarters, planning to sneak themselves inside. We stressed to him that we didn’t want him to do anything. Then we sat in silence and scanned the main road, hoping we’d spot a convoy of vehicles carrying the Chibok parents through the entrance.

  “If we can’t get inside, then at the very least we need to capture the images of the parents arriving or leaving,” I told Fabs.

  Meanwhile, Stephanie was still trying to reach her main contact to confirm that we were in the right location, but the contact’s cell phone was switched off.

  I was distressed. For a long time my heart had been set on witnessing the moment the girls were reunited with their parents. I wanted to share this new, hopeful beginning, the moment that faith and resilience triumphed over evil and despair, with the world.

  “Be sure your camera’s ready,” I reminded Fabs yet again. “The parents might show up without any prior warning.”

  If we didn’t return with images of the parents arriving or leaving, the entire day would be a bust. And there’d be some very unhappy bosses back in Atlanta. Again the vehicle fell silent. Fabs readied his smaller, lighter camera and everyone went back to scanning their phones.

  Occasionally I looked up, straining to see who was entering or leaving the DSS compound. But there was so little movement in the area, I needn’t have bothered.

  An hour later, with still no sighting of the parents, the level of anxiety in the car began to rise. “We need a plan B,” I said.

  Dominique and I talked over our options, while Stephanie tried to reach her numerous Chibok community contacts, and Fabs kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road. We’d all been deep in conversation when we suddenly realized our driver was on his phone talking to someone. It took a moment or two for us to understand what was happening.

  “I’m outside with some people and they are trying to get to the hospital. They are looking for the Bring Back Our Girls people. Are they there?” he asked cheerily.

  I looked around the car in panic. The driver fell silent a few seconds later, before responding. “We’re parked just outside on the side of the road. Okay, we’re here.” Then he hung up and beamed at the rest of us with pride.

  The car erupted.

  “What are you doing? We never told you to call your friend!” Fabs screamed.

  “Why would you call?” I yelled.

  Our rage barely seemed to register with him. “My friend is coming. He’s on his way.”

  We quickly weighed the risk of being exposed to the Nigerian authorities. Maybe it would be best to leave the area now. Before we could reach a decision, though, a sedan headed straight toward us. It quickly pulled off the main road and parked right in front of our vehicle.

  Two men leapt out. One made a beeline straight for us; the other remained by the car. The chubby man approaching us was dressed in khaki pants and a dark golf shirt, a handgun nestled in a pouch on his left hip. He had the self-assured air of seniority. The scowl on his face made it clear that this situation had suddenly become very dangerous.

  He launched into a heated exchange with our driver in a language none of us understood. As the official’s tone grew harsher and the pace of his speech faster, our driver, “his friend,” looked more and more afraid.

  Then the DSS man suddenly turned to the rest of us in the car, his eyes flashing with anger. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “We’re just trying to meet up with someone at the hospital over there,” replied Fabs, feigning an air of casualness.

  “You’re breaking national security rules by being here. You could be shot,” he replied.

  Now it was my turn to be afraid.

  As we didn’t know his name or where he’d appeared from, Dominique tried to find out more. “Do you work here?” she asked gently.

  He swatted away her question. “What I do is of no importance. What I am telling you guys, is you shouldn’t be here,” he spat back.

  He wanted to see our identification cards. We all knew that handing over paperwork revealing we were journalists could well be the tipping point in an already precarious situation. We all mumbled at once and shuffled in our seats as we apologized.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have ID cards,” I explained softly.

  His eyes bulged in anger. He screamed more unintelligible words at our driver, who shrank into his seat and pleaded with the man in an increasingly strained voice.

  “Why would you bring them here? You should know better!” the officer bellowed.

  Dominique and I exchanged nervous glances, thinking the same thing. This was getting out of hand. The man with a gun took a step back, and from his facial expression, I could tell he was deciding what to do next. Someone needed to defuse the situation.

  “We’re so sorry, we had no idea about the rules. It is our mistake. We are so sorry.” I spoke slowly and deliberately, doing all I could to convey humility and regret in my tone and with my body language.

  Dominique immediately chimed in, underscoring my apology. “We are so sorry, yes. We didn’t understand the protocol.”

  Playing humble, regretful, and dumb was the strategy. We waited nervously to see if it would work.

  The officer stood silently for a moment or two, eyeing us through narrowed eyes. Then he spoke. “You can’t just come here, you have to follow official channels.”

  We sensed a softening. We continued to apologize profusely, even offering to leave the area immediately and to put an end to all the trouble we’d caused. He appeared to be on the verge of buying our act. But then he shifted his attention to Fabs.

  “Where are you from? Are you from Nigeria?” he barked at him.

  “No.” Fabs shook his head.

  “He’s from Rwanda, not Nigeria,” Dominique and I confirmed. The officer retreated into conversation with his partner, who’d been standing next to the car. I felt we were a heartbeat away from being ordered out of the car and detained. Meanwhile Stephanie had remained engrossed in her phone throughout the entire ordeal.

  “Get off your phone!” I hissed at her.

  By the time the man turned his attention back to us, he’d made a decision. “Leave this place now,” he ordered.

  Knowing his decision could be reversed just as easily, we told our driver to get moving. But the driver looked back at the officer who, only moments before, had been abusing him. “I will call you later,” he said sheepishly.

  Alarm bells went off for the whole team. Was our driver an informant for DSS? The truth was, we didn’t have a clue about his identity, where he was from, or how he’d come to be our driver that day. As there was so much we didn’t know about him, we decided to conceal where the CNN team was staying and instead asked him to drop us off at a decoy hotel.

  The roadside encounter left me shaken and reminded me of the risks that come with covering certain stories in Nigeria. I was more discouraged than ever about my chances of seeing the Chibok reunions happen. Unbeknownst to me, the girls had actually been reunited with their parents long before we’d even left our hotel that Sunday. The gath
ering had taken place early in the morning, far from DSS headquarters, at another DSS location hidden away in Abuja.

  On our way back to the hotel, Stephanie found images of the emotional reunion posted all over social media. There was a lump in my throat. I couldn’t believe it. We could have been shot or detained trying to gain access to a meeting that had already happened. We weren’t even in the right place!

  When we walked into our hotel lobby half an hour later, video from the reunion was playing nonstop across all the TV screens. The whole crew stood openmouthed, watching pictures of the girls singing and dancing while fathers and mothers hugged their long-lost daughters.

  This was the climax of the Chibok story. And we’d missed it.

  For such a monumental moment to occur and not be there to bear witness to it felt like a colossal failure on my part. We later learned that only China’s CCTV, the Associated Press, and various members of the local Nigerian press had been invited to cover the reunions. All other networks, including CNN, had been excluded. I was peeved. As I made my way back to the workspace, I wondered whether CNN had been intentionally kept off the list because of my history with the country’s last administration.

  I’d missed what was likely my only chance to meet the girls. I was in a foul mood when I walked into the room, but the whole place was abuzz with activity.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Dominique was being redeployed to Iraq, I learned, in preparation for the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul from ISIS. I was stunned.

  She wasn’t the only one leaving.

  Team McKenzie was also being pulled out. David and Brent were headed back to Johannesburg, and Fridah had been told to stand down because there wasn’t enough interest in the story of the released Chibok girls across both CNN USA and CNN International to justify the costs of keeping two reporting teams in place.