Women Who Fled Boko Haram Tell of Devastation and, Rarely, Hope

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/world/africa/boko-haram-nigeria-samantha-power.html

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YOLA, Nigeria — When the boy next door joined Boko Haram, Mummy Ibrahim knew she had to run.

For the past few months, her next door neighbor had been telling everyone in their village just outside of Maiduguri that he was going to force Mummy, a soft-spoken girl with large eyes, to be his bride.

And, she said, he had finally figured out the way to do it: by pledging allegiance to Boko Haram and then taking, by force, the girl he had watched grow up into a gorgeous 15-year-old.

Mummy fled. In the middle of the night, she and her family crept out of their house and ran. It took two days to get to the village of Wuba, where friends hid them for two weeks, and then another week to make it to this town, where the United Nations has set up a refugee camp populated primarily by the women and children Boko Haram has driven from their homes.

On Friday, as Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, toured the camp, she was confronted by hundreds of those women and girls, standing over coal pots, sitting on mats, playing with babies. Ms. Power, who has been touring the region most affected by Boko Haram this week, promised them that President Obama had not forgotten them, that the United States would not rest until all the thousands of women believed to have been kidnapped by Boko Haram have been freed.

At the American University of Nigeria in Yola, Ms. Power donned basketball shorts and sneakers for a basketball game billed as peace through sports. She met with eight of the “Chibok girls” — part of the 276 schoolgirls whose mass kidnapping by Boko Haram two years ago brought worldwide attention to the terrorist group. These Chibok girls escaped shortly after their kidnapping. More than 200 Chibok girls have not been found.

But what was stark about Ms. Power’s visit to Yola was the sheer number of displaced women and girls there — by far the majority of the 1.5 million in and around Yola. In the camp, most of them were kept at a distance from Ms. Power’s security-surrounded entourage, as proud officials showed off the clinic, classroom and the outdoor kitchens with coal pots hanging over fire pits. Each one of them had a story that spoke to the devastation Boko Haram has wrought, particularly on women and girls.

There was another Mummy: Mummy Jabula, 16, standing at the outdoor kitchen and looking curiously at the delegation of Americans. Boko Haram militants killed her parents four months ago, in their village not far from Maiduguri, she said. Mummy Jabula, the oldest of her parents’ six children, had grabbed her little sister and her four younger brothers and fled.

“I am the mother now,” she said. Asked about her parents, she started to cry and said something in Hausa. A woman standing nearby translated: “It pains her heart,” she said. “She can’t talk anymore.”

Nearby, Fatimah Hassan was sitting on a mat on the ground. For four months last year, her village was occupied by Boko Haram. But “I was not raped,” said Ms. Hassan, 51. “I am an old woman. They wanted the girls.”

A few miles down the road, Christiana Joel, 14, said she was at church for a children’s day in April 2015 when Boko Haram fighters attacked her village of Lassa, in Borno State. Her father hustled her and her eight brothers and sisters back to their house, told them to leave only when it started looking really bad, grabbed his gun and took off to fight the Boko Haram militants. When the children eventually bolted from their house, Christiana’s oldest brother, Levi, disappeared in the melee. She has not seen him since, and seemed overcome when she spoke of him. She said he was her favorite brother.

Maria Saidi, 26, kept prisoner by Boko Haram for more than a year outside Maiduguri, said she was whipped — 20 lashes — the first time she tried to escape. Then, four months ago, after more than a year with Boko Haram, she said she was forcibly married to a fighter, coincidentally one with her same last name of Saidi. Early the next day, while her new husband was doing his morning prayers, she bolted. Four months later, she still feels the bruises from the whipping.

But escape doesn’t necessarily bring solace.

Hussaina Jidda, 26, ran away from her village of Madagali in February when Boko Haram came. She eventually made it, with her baby, to Yola. Her four nieces were not so lucky. They were all kidnapped. Three of them remain missing.

One of them got away after two months with Boko Haram, during which she said she was forcibly married, raped and impregnated. The woman, Bilkisu Jidda, 20, returned to Madagali after running away into the bush at night. Her mother, the wife of Mrs. Jidda’s brother, accepted her back again.

Most of the rest of the village did not.

“They keep pointing at her, saying she is the wife of Boko Haram, when she comes out of the house,” Mrs. Jidda said.

Eight months after her escape, Bilkisu Jidda had her baby, a boy. She named him Hamidu. She is taking care of her son as best as she can, but most of the time she keeps him in her mother’s house, away from the village, her aunt said. When mother and baby go out, “everyone calls him Boko Haram son,” Mrs. Jidda said.

“She used to be a happy girl. But now all her friends are kidnapped — she doesn’t laugh anymore.”

Mummy Ibrahim still manages to laugh. Waiting for Ms. Power to walk by as she sat on her mat, Mummy Ibrahim, who had fled her village before her next-door-neighbor-turned-Boko-fighter could get his hands on her, was crocheting a hat out of a purple ball of yarn and discussing her plans for her future.

When she first heard him announce that he intended to forcibly marry her, “I was so scared,” Mummy Ibrahim said. But now, she’s making plans. In preparation for the visit of the American delegation, she had dressed up: lilac eye shadow, kohl-rimmed eyes, rose lipstick and three exquisite scarves around her head, each one echoing colors in her conservatively cut gown.

“I will be a tailor,” she said. Around her, smoke curled from a not-quite-damped fire. Temperatures climbed to 101 degrees. Members of the American delegation were mopping sweat from around their eyes as they trooped to the next stop on their tour.

Mummy Ibrahim looked at their departing backs, smiling. Then she corrected herself. “A businesswoman, I mean. I will be a businesswoman.”