by Isha Sesay
I calmly introduced myself and then launched into my complaint. “These girls have been waiting for two and half years to come home and now they get here, and you tell them they can’t go home?” I was struggling to keep my composure.
“It is for their own safety,” the brigadier general responded. “We are still conducting operations in various parts of Chibok. It just is not safe for them.”
“But you see how distraught they are. They got on the bus expecting one thing and now this?” My frustration was making it difficult for me to get the words out.
“We are assessing which areas are safe for the girls and once we know, those girls will be allowed home to their families.”
“You obviously knew all of this before the girls got on the bus,” I protested. “I don’t understand why you let them travel all the way here believing they were going to their homes. This was obviously your plan all along. It’s very painful, what you have done.” I hoped I’d somehow be able to change his mind.
“They will be safe here. And their families will be able to come and stay here with them. As I said, those areas we deem to be safe, the girls can go home to those places.” Though Omoigui had a kind face, he spoke firmly.
I felt deflated; this was not the homecoming any of us had imagined, one where only some of the girls could actually go home. Meanwhile, inside the big room, the scene remained unchanged, the girls were still wailing.
It was late in the day, that time when the sun casts a warm, golden glow on everything, including the long line of parents gathered outside the compound, waiting to see their daughters. The fathers huddled together at the front, while the women dutifully took their places behind them. The mix of vivid patterned fabrics—reds, greens, oranges, and yellows—on the mothers brought much-needed relief to a blanched and wizened landscape. The harshness of life was inscribed in the deep furrows on the faces of these parents. The mothers and fathers stood quietly, staring at the compound that separated them from their children. Their eyes brightened as General Omoigui arrived to address them, and a murmur rippled through the crowd. He stood there for a few seconds, sizing them up, his face relaxed and his lips set in a slight smile, taking measure of the situation. He seemed friendly and nonthreatening.
Mallam Nkeki, the chairman of the Chibok Parents’ Association whose niece had also been kidnapped from the Chibok school, stood by the general’s side ready to translate his speech into Hausa and Kibaku, the dominant languages in this corner of Nigeria. He told the parents that their daughters would not be heading home with them. Remarkably, any anger they felt remained concealed. They listened with grim-faced stoicism, laughing only when Omoigui told them he understood how much the mothers wanted to smother their babies with affection and keep them close morning, noon, and night. “But I’m sure it is more important to you that they remain safe,” he said.
All the parents nodded in agreement. There were no objections, no requests for further explanation or discussion. The parents had been waiting years to see their girls back home in Chibok, and they had no appetite to wrangle with the Nigerian military. They just wanted to be with their children. They began shuffling slowly toward the compound gate, where they were lightly frisked before being allowed to enter. I trailed the group, still stunned by how easily these parents had taken the bombshell news, unlike their daughters. Soon, whoops and screams of joy erupted as families laid eyes on each other. Within seconds, the girls were out of their chairs and rushing toward outstretched arms. It was only then, within these loving embraces, that the daughters could exhale and finally accept that they were home.
I did my best to stand out of the way as loved ones rushed all around me and more people poured in. Before long the large space was full. There were scenes of overjoyed girls surrounded by parents, unbridled love and relief on all the faces everywhere I looked. Every few minutes the joyful sounds of celebration would peak as fresh reunions took place, and I was soon overwhelmed by noise. So much so that, at first, the new sounds didn’t register. I heard the high-pitched voices, but it took a couple of minutes before my senses detected that something wasn’t right. I looked through the throng of people and saw Madame Yanna, one of the Chibok community elders, weeping bitterly and being propped up by the arms of those around her. I moved over to see what was wrong. As women’s leader of the association of Chibok girls, she had to be present for this momentous occasion, but the reality of watching joyful parents and children reunite was simply too much for this aching mother who yearned for the return of her daughter Rifkatu and now simply couldn’t control her grief.
I made my way through the crowd and put an arm around her to draw her close. Her chest rose and fell heavily as she sobbed. Hands of the women around us reached out and smeared away her tears as they fell. I knew from the few conversations we’d had before this journey to Chibok that she was a woman of immense faith.
“You have to be strong, Madame Yanna, and believe that Rifkatu will come back, the same way these girls did. Your faith must remain strong,” I said.
She listened and nodded gently, but the tears still came.
More strange sounds drew me to the next room. At the far end, a handful of women were on the ground. It took a few seconds to realize they were crying out in pain. They too were mothers of Chibok schoolgirls who were still in captivity.
I learned that somehow, when word had reached Chibok about the girls’ homecoming for Christmas, it triggered the mistaken belief that all the hundreds of girls in Boko Haram’s captivity had been released and that the entire group was headed home. And because there was no process to screen and verify family members before they entered the compound, these women had walked right past the military into the house to be reunited with their kids. Only now did they learn their daughters were still in captivity.
I crouched down in an attempt to comfort these mothers, but this time my words sounded hollow. “Don’t cry. Your daughters will come back soon.” I wanted to believe in the same way they did—I just didn’t know how long it would take for their daughters to return to them.
It was a strange and uncomfortable scene: pockets of suffocating grief surrounded by family members laughing, bright eyed, hugging and squealing with delight. Tim turned on his camera so I could record another piece.
“There has been such an outpouring of grief amid the joy. The piercing screams of mothers realizing that indeed, they are not to be reunited with their daughters on this day, which has turned what should have been an overwhelmingly happy moment into a bittersweet one.”
Andrew looked over at me and pointed to his watch. We needed to wrap things up and get going. The girls were now spread out among the different empty rooms, some sprawled out on the floor, others with their backs against the walls and their shoes off, all surrounded by loved ones. Among the returned, their anger seemed to have melted away. I wandered about to say goodbye and share warm embraces with “my sisters,” as my mother always called them.
In a corner of the main room, I found Priscilla kneeing beside her father’s feet, her head bowed. When I reached her side, she looked up. It was clear she’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?” I gently touched her shoulder.
She refused to explain, pressing her lips shut and shaking her head. I later learned she was upset that her mother wasn’t there with her father.
Her father, a painfully thin man with angular features and dressed head to toe in white, took my hand in both of his and held it there, speaking a language I didn’t understand. I could read the warmth in his eyes, though, and the phrase he kept repeating touched my heart. He was saying thank you again and again. He said the words and shook my hand vigorously to emphasize his gratitude.
“You’re welcome.” I smiled in return. “You’re welcome.”
My team had stayed longer in Chibok than we were supposed to. It was already five p.m. The families were all happily engrossed in each other, so no one looked up as I left. In a flash, I was back at our car parked
outside the compound gate, my bulletproof vest in place.
I’d had no time to process what had just happened. The mix of emotions had been overwhelming. I had left my mother in a hospital bed in Lagos, on the promise of a joyous homecoming and the page being turned on years of horror and heartbreak. And I wasn’t entirely sure of what I’d actually found in Chibok. The girls had been denied the one thing they wanted above all—the chance to return to their own homes, to sleep and worship among their loved ones. And if anything, I had encountered much more pain, with the sharper, deeper sting of mothers trying to remain hopeful as they watched other families reunited while their daughters remained out of reach. I was grateful when our car doors slammed shut, and the open-backed vehicles of our police escort took off flying down the road. We followed the trail of dust. Despite our breakneck speed, the skies above us grew dark while we were still driving to Yola. But by this point, fatigue had gone a long way toward numbing my fears, and I simply refused to worry.
The next evening, the traffic around the Lagos airport was just as horrific as it had been when I’d left for Chibok a few days earlier. It took well over an hour to reach the hospital. When I finally saw my mother, nothing had changed. Her eyes remained closed and she lay on her back, the tops of her bare shoulders peeking out from under the off-white sheets, her arms solidly by her sides. My eyes burned with tears that wanted to fall but were stuck. I reached for her hand. “Mum, I’m back from Chibok,” I told her. “I’m safe.” Standing by her side once more, I felt gratitude. She was safe and I’d been able to take a story full circle—one that would always mean a great deal to us. The trip to Chibok hadn’t been the emotional high I’d hoped it would be, but I had come back with a heart that was full. I’d seen the indescribable joy of parents and their children reunited, and I’d done something that would have pleased my mother and pushed my heart toward bursting with joy. “Mum, I took the Chibok girls back, and now I have come back to you.”
I longed for a miracle, a sign, no matter how small, to show me she heard my voice, but there was nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
MY MUM WAS FINALLY STABLE ENOUGH TO BE MOVED TO THE UNITED States a couple of months after my trip to Chibok. We left Lagos on February 26, 2017. She’d spent almost twelve weeks in Lagoon Hospital’s intensive care unit and had been in a coma for more than half that time. When we finally boarded our flight, I found myself altered immeasurably. I knew that some of the changes only I was aware of, and others you could spot from a mile off, like my strengthened faith. Then there were other smaller, subtler alterations that emerged later, once we were settled in Los Angeles and my life slowly shifted to a new version of “normal.”
While I juggled hospital visits, consultations with doctors, and seemingly endless hours of covering the Trump presidency for CNN, which at times felt like covering a raging Dumpster fire, I thought a lot about Priscilla, Bernice, and the other nineteen girls from Chibok. Thanks to relationships I’d formed over the years with several people in their orbit, I could keep track of their progress. Once I started work on this book, trips back to Nigeria for interviews and research allowed me to see for myself the ways in which the girls were adjusting to life far from the forest and their captors. With their straitened circumstances undoubtedly front of mind, the parents of the twenty-one girls turned over to the Nigerian government the cost and responsibility of educating their freed daughters after they were released in October 2016. For almost a year they were kept in a government-run rehabilitation center in Abuja, where a staff of teachers, doctors, psychologists, and others made their academic studies, as well each girls’ physical, emotional, and psychological well-being, the priority.
Every time I saw Priscilla, she was a little more whole. I could see the sadness receding, while joy and confidence showed more of themselves in her personality. She was increasingly able to hold eye contact, and her voice was no longer just a faltering whisper. During our interviews, we would invariably collapse into a fit of giggles after she subjected me to a long, quizzical look or a sideways glance loaded with ridicule—her response to a question I’d asked. I called those our “lost in translation moments,” but as her understanding of English improved and she became more capable of fully expressing herself, these moments occurred less often. Eventually Priscilla would hug me warmly every time I turned up. There were always selfies to be taken with wide smiles and beaming eyes before another warm hug, and she would then disappear out the door. Then and now, I struggle to fully make sense of the warmth and openness this girl from Chibok still possesses after all she has endured.
For Esther Yakubu, there has been no progress; she doesn’t have stories of her daughter’s healing to share. More than four years have passed since Dorcas disappeared, and Esther continues to count the days until her beloved returns. During these long years of separation, this mother of five has slowly morphed into a ghost of her former self. All joy has ebbed away, leaving her lifeless. She laments that God keeps her in a world without her firstborn by her side. She does her best to wade through the unending anguish, to be present for her remaining four children, all of whom miss their big sister terribly. They also mourn the mother they lost the day that Dorcas disappeared.
When Esther learned her Dorcas wasn’t among the twenty-one girls released on October 13, 2016, she was heartsick, but her faith steadied her through the tears. She continued to profess that her daughter would return to her soon. But she was as surprised as the rest of us when the Nigerian army announced the sudden appearance of two more Chibok schoolgirls within weeks of each other. Maryam Ali Maiyanga and her ten-month-old son, Ali, were discovered by the military on November 5, 2016, among a larger group of men, women, and children—all of them escapees from Boko Haram captivity. Eight weeks later, on January 5, 2017, Rakiya Abubakar Gali and her six-month-old baby were found among a group of more than one thousand Boko Haram suspects detained by the Nigerian military during raids on camps in Sambisa Forest. Rakiya was the twenty-fourth Chibok girl to gain her freedom. Like Amina Ali Nkeki, who escaped in 2016 with her young baby, all of these girls are believed to have once been wives of Boko Haram fighters and their children the products of those unions.
On every occasion that Esther learned of more freed girls, she wept bitterly but consoled herself with the thought they might bring with them some news of Dorcas. But once photos of Maryam and Rakiya were made public, the young women disappeared from view. No further information was ever released.
When on Sunday, May 7, 2017, the Nigerian government broke the news on Twitter that another eighty-two Chibok girls had been set free, as part of an exchange deal “for some Boko Haram suspects held by the authorities” after “lengthy negotiations,” Esther and those closest to her felt hopeful again. The tweet by the presidential spokesman Garba Shehu announced, “The released #ChibokGirls are due to arrive in Abuja today Sunday May 7, and will be received by the President.” Maybe this time Dorcas was on her way home. They all held out hope for better odds because the group of girls being released was so much larger than before. Everyone in the small, tightly knit community of Chibok, where so many people were related to each other, joined in prayer as they waited for the girls’ names to be made public. Esther, now living in Abuja, sought comfort from the Bring Back Our Girls family that day, which had gathered at the Unity Fountain in Abuja for its daily sit-in. The hours went by. No names emerged.
Esther was interviewed by the BBC and sounded decidedly sanguine. “Whether she is among the freed ones or not, I am very happy,” she said. “We started this year with twenty-four [returned girls] and now we have one hundred and six. It is a large number, and we have hoped that, if they are alive, they will come back. I have never been happy in my life like today. I am a mother. I accept any child that is back. My baby will be back soon, if she is among them or if she isn’t.”
It was late Sunday night by the time the office of the president put the eighty-two names on Twitter, a somewhat curious move give
n that many people in a place like Chibok have limited access to social media.
Filled with anxiety, Esther immediately went through the list. Her baby’s name was not there. Again. She looked several more times before her hope turned to sand. She had to accept that her girl was still someplace else, far from home.
To a woman whose public grief had in many ways come to represent the agony felt by the hundreds of Chibok mothers, it was another monumental blow. A few days after the world learned that eighty-two schoolgirls had been exchanged for five Boko Haram commanders who had been in Nigerian custody, we also learned through another video released on May 12, 2017, by a Nigerian journalist, Ahmad Salkida, that a number of other girls in captivity had actually rejected the opportunity to return home. Roughly three-and-a-half minutes long, the video features four girls in full-length black veils who are completely covered except for their eyes. One of the girls casually holds an AK-47 and answers questions posed to her in Hausa by a man off camera, said to be Shuaibu Moni, one of the five commanders handed over by the Nigerian government in exchange for the eighty-two girls.
Moni: Which school were you attending?
Girl: GSS Chibok.
Moni: Why don’t you want to return to your parents?
Girl: I don’t want to return because they are living in the city of infidels; we want them to come and follow this religion for us to have rest in heaven.
Moni: Some people are saying that you are being forced into marriage, is this so?
Girl: No. It is not so. Among us are those who agree and accept to get married.
Moni: What is your message to your parents?
Girl: My message to them is for them to repent and follow Allah’s religion for our salvation.
Moni: What is your appeal to Nigerians?