Fleeing Boko Haram, Thousands Cling to Desert Road
scattered by the violence have come seeking safety here in the Diffa region alone, with tens of thousands settling along National Route 1, a sleek, paved highway in a part of the country where roads are usually nothing more than scratches in the sand. Families have fled four or five times before arriving here.
“I was there when my husband was killed,” Kiari Yamangou said. She first started running two years ago, when Boko Haram invaded her village. She and her husband frantically piled their eight children onto a single motorbike and sped away, she said.
The militants chased, shooting at them until they stopped. Thinking they wanted the bike, he handed them the keys. “We told them we would give them whatever they wanted,” she said. “They didn’t want anything. They wanted his life.”
Eventually, she and her children wound up at the road. It was as far from the fighting as her money would take them. “This is not like a village,” she said. “It’s just an empty space.”
There are reasons to stay. Niger’s military regularly patrols this paved stretch. So far, Boko Haram has kept its distance. For the tens of thousands here, living next to the 70 kilometers of asphalt offers a sense of security and calm.
“We can sleep now,” said Fati Fougou, a 40-year- old mother of seven who was chased from three different villages by fighters before settling along the road with her children, “because no one is shooting.”
A handful of aid groups help. Unicef trucks in water. The International Rescue Committee hands out bags of rice, sardine tins and powdered milk. Doctors Without Borders runs clinics. But formal camps don’t exist. The first home along the highway, a hut made of rotting millet stalks belongs to Hadiza Mani, a 60-year- old widow. She moved here a year ago with her five children after Boko Haram gunned down her husband.
“If we live by the road, people will pass by,” Ms. Mani said. “If anyone wants to give us something, they’ll know we’re here, at this first spot.”
The rush of newcomers has turned tiny specks of roadside villages into growing towns of want, overwhelming ground wells in a place where water is scarce and few crops endure the brutal heat. Some brought their herds and f locks when they f led. Cattle, goats, donkeys and chickens compete with people for food and water. A few months ago, a fight over well water ended in death.
Many of the displaced people came from along the Nigerian border, a fertile area near Lake Chad where they made a living as fishermen or pepper farmers for generations. Despite major advances by militaries from several nations, the lake’s shores remain a Boko Haram holdout. Now, these lake people are stuck in the desert.
Handmade signs attached to sticks along the highway mark entire communities, uprooted yet still banding together. The road’s first large settlement, Assaga, is one of them.
Assaga is the name of two towns — one in Niger and one in Nigeria — divided by the Komandougou River running along the international border. After Boko Haram attacked the area in January 2015, the dual communities fled in tandem. They wound up along the road.
Farther north, the Village of Traveling Barbers, or Garin Wanzam in the local language, was settled long before the displaced people arrived. The village chief, Shettima Fougou, and his relatives were the only ones who lived there.
Mr. Fougou remembers the moment everything changed: 10 a. m. one Thursday morning in 2015. Six families on the run from Boko Haram showed up inside his small compound of five mud- brick homes. “It was not a good situation,” said Mr. Fougou, 45. “I worried Boko Haram would follow them.” But he offered them food and shelter and hoped for the best.
Two years ago, his village had 20 people. Now, it has 13,000. “They come in the morning. They come in the afternoon. They come all night,” he said. “It’s so hard. Many people come with so many children. But I’m obliged to give them something to eat.”
Generosity abounds along the road. Oxfam International, an aid group, estimates 80 percent of the displaced people in the area around Diffa are being fed and sheltered by local communities, which even in peaceful times are among the continent’s poorest.
Ibrahim Lawan was 10 years old when he came home after a fishing trip with his brother to find their village burned to the ground by militants. The brothers spent months on the run from Boko Haram, hopping from village to village in search of safety. One day, Ibrahim’s brother went fishing alone and never returned.
Abari Koyomi, a 54-year- old who has repeatedly fled Boko Haram as well, spotted Ibrahim sleeping under a makeshift mosquito net. Though barely able to care for his own 14 children and grandchildren, Mr. Koyomi invited the boy to live with his family. “He gave me food. He gave me everything,” said Ibrahim, now 11.
By the time Marem Ari Gambo, 25, arrived at the road, the strap on one of her flip-flops had popped out after hours of walking. Barefoot, she pushed the only belongings she and her four children had — sleeping mats, some clothes — in a wheelbarrow.
But while possessions are sparse along the road, boredom is plentiful. There are few fields to tend, and harvest season is far off. A few bustling markets sell wood, fabric and vegetables — accepting the currencies of both Niger and Nigeria — but many people have no means of buying anything. Aid groups run a handful of activity centers, some with a volley- ball net and basketball hoop. But the blazing sun limits the hours of play.
Fewer than half of the 137,000 children estimated to be living in the region are in school. Village schools are largely inoperable because the government hasn’t paid teachers for months. Unicef has set up 27 small schools along the road.
Many families send young daughters to roam the scrub in search of thorny acacia trees for firewood that they carry home on their heads. The practice is so common that soon all the trees will be gone.
Moussa Kiari, 65, escaped Boko Haram over a year ago, when fighters swarmed his house in Nigeria and killed six members of his family. He, his daughter and a few other relatives fled across the border. They hoped to fish in Lake Chad. But the government, concerned about security, closed down the fishing business. Word was spreading that the military patrolled National Route 1. That became their destination. Along the way, Mr. Kiari’s daughter fell ill and died, leaving behind her 13-year- old son.
Now, the old man and teenager live together, in the last house on the road. The roof of their hut leaks during the rainy season, and sometimes food is scarce, Mr. Kiari said.
“I just don’t have the strength to move again.”