For Boko Haram victims, escape is a mixed blessing
YOLA, Nigeria —“Bring Back Our Girls,” say the placards in the park and the tweets read around the world. But for thousands of girls and women who’ve escaped Boko Haram’s clutches, the message they’ve sometimes encountered at homecomings has been “Stay Away.”
As U.S.-backed African governments make military advances against the Islamic extremist group and rescue more and more of the kidnapped and enslaved, aid groups and activists say a new challenge is mounting: rehabilitation.
Perhaps no group is as stigmatized as those abducted, raped, forcibly married or otherwise mistreated by the militants.
Sometimes they are called “Boko Haram wives” or even “epidemics,” in their native communities, and few organized services are available for their care. Sometimes even fewer people are willing to embrace them as survivors.
“No one helped me, just one person who got me these clothes,” said Maria Saidu, a 32-year-old woman who was held by Boko Haram for more than a year before escaping three months ago.
Finishing up a weeklong tour of the Boko Haram-affected countries of West Africa, Samantha Power, America’s U.N. envoy, highlighted efforts to assist the victims of Boko Haram.
In the eastern Nigerian city of Yola, where displaced people far outnumber native residents, Power met Friday with several people from the group of Chibok schoolgirls whose kidnapping two years ago sparked the world-famous “Bring Back Our Girls” social media campaign.
While 219 remain in captivity, the ones Power lauded for their courage are now receiving free education at the American University of Nigeria. They speak of becoming doctors or chemical engineers or undertaking other careers.
Few who were once in their shoes have been so lucky.
“There is nothing we can hold on to,” said Mon- ica, a 22-year-old from northern Nigeria who declined to give her full name, whose monthlong captivity ended in a long flight through Cameroon on to Abuja, leaving a dead child in the bush along the way. “We are just here. We are alive but not living.”