Helping IDPs: Why you should let them In!

Istood up with reluctance in my movements as I hesitantly turned the door knob. Despite the fact that turning a door knob meant nothing on a normal basis, today it was different. The simple act of turning that door knob would change the phase of my life forever.

I know that to be the change, I had to be different, so I opened the door and I let them in, something no tribesman of mine have done in their right senses, not even with a Kalashnikov pointed at him.

I had always had hospitality deep in the marrows of my bones, but the way I viewed hospitality, was different from that of my people’s. Some say tribalism started when the ‘white man’ came, but I believed that the white man had nothing.

Tribalism now seems to be deeply rooted in us, so deep it has become part of our culture and our tenets.

By turning that door knob, I knew I was going against everything my parents had taught me. Everything my community had tried to instil in me. Everything my tribe was against. Everything they believed they had lived for, everything they tried to mould me into.

I knew I was seriously contrasting the colours they had filled in me since forever. I knew I was going against their idea of hospitality, but what I was doing was right. I was redefining it, the whole thing. And to change a lifelong definition of something in just the twist of a door knob, was just like a pinch of salt in the vast ocean, useless, almost useless. But I still went on, and let them in.

The Boko Haram insurgents displaced people in Northeastern Nigeria but most importantly, they misplaced lives - lives having nowhere to run to. Souls alive but not living; my displaced brothers and sisters climbed mountains and hills, old women fell and children wailed, some made it and some didn’t, where? Wherever their legs could carry them to; some passed out and some died, some were just left behind because they couldn’t make it. Families were broken, brothers drawn apart. The victims have been through a lot. They had been through hell.

Finally, I let them in. The displaced! I really let them in. I let strange people into my house because I didn’t see them as the strangers that they really were; I saw them as my brothers and sisters. I let shabby, malnourished people into my abode and yet I still did not mind at all.

With a warm smile plastered on my face, I served them lunch. They ate hungrily looking as uncomfortable as I was sure they felt but I had hope that they would get used to it – we would all get used to it – I hoped.

Later that night as I went to sleep, aware that my flat was now housing more souls – desperate ones - I smiled to myself. The arrangement I had made with the IDP camp in my area did not stop the terror in my country but it did satisfy my conscience.

I had rekindled a fresh fire of hope in just a few peoples’ heart but I still felt good about it. I hadn’t solved the problem but I had let the few that I could in. I knew I couldn’t let the whole camp in with my arms wide open simply because I couldn’t house them. But what mattered was that I did what I could.

From a Global perspective it really isn’t much different from this. I think it really just starts from me and you; the little things we do. So let them in…

Zahra, 16, a writer and an artist from Adamawa State, inspires people in this piece to always let out a hand to the displaced in Nigeria. She can be reached via zarahamidbobboyi@gmail.com