Experience and Stories Shared by those shared in the camps
My name is Haphsat Illiayasu. I came from Gwoza.
Boko Haram came to our village at 4 (pm/am), we were confused, all we could hear were bullets and bombs everywhere. They had been in the village for a time, the men thought they had left the village but they were still in the village. They entered alleyways and everywhere in the village. There was nowhere you couldn’t see them. Our men came out thinking that boko haram had left as the shooting had stopped all night until 7am in the morning. Our men came out and what the boko haram would do to them was catch them on the road, cut off their heads, and keep their heads on their backs. Others would be killed on the spot.
So our men started retreating back into the house and we started dressing them up as women. We would crowd together, the men pretending to be women and the women and we would take them to hide in the mountains. So any time we saw men and boys we would dress them up as women and take them to the mountains for safety. Even small boys, 5 year old, were not safe from boko Haram.
When they finished killing all our men, it was only the ones that escaped that were alive. There was no food, no water, only God had mercy on them. For example when it rained on them, the water that fell on the ground they would gather up and drink. That’s how they survived
Like my husband was eating leaves and “Samiya “leaves to survive. Even the chief of my village was among them on the mountain, he spent 8 days there and thank God there was heavy rain one night, and they escaped, it was said that the rain stopped Boko Haram’s guns from working. To escape they went through the bush not the road. They went to Madagali.
The (Boko haram) women that remained in Gwoza said we should leave the town, that if we don’t leave they would take us with them to where they were going. Then we said how could you take us, when you have killed all our men. They said they had brought us religion, but how can they bring us religion when we have our own. They said all of us were unbelievers and they had come to save us with their religion.
They came into our houses and broke everything looking for men. We decided to leave. If they found a woman refusing to leave they would beat her. They beat us and beat us.
I am Hadiza Hamman, local government Bama
Boko Haram came to us at 6am. We all went to the bush, children, the elderly, all of us. We spen 2 nights in the bush and we didn’t get an opportunity to go back to our houses. From the bush where we didn’t eat or drink, that’s how we escaped. We travelled along the road to Maiduguri. We now got to a river we had to cross. There were some children that didn’t make it, the current pulled them away. It was a very difficult crossing. We started travelling through the bush again; we spent 4 nights going through the bush. Any area we found we would lie down to rest and early in the morning we would start travelling again. We spent three nights like this. We finally arrived in Maiduguri. My husband is still in the camp in Maiduguri, he hasn’t been able to travel here to meet us. I have 9 children all of them survived. We had to dress my first son, Abubakar Sadiq, as a woman to survive, that’s how he arrived in Maiduguri dressed as a woman. But all of us arrived safe.
My name is Aishatu Saidu, I came from Gwoza because of Boko Haram.
I was standing at the edge of the market , near one mountain, because in our town there was no phone service. That day I was standing near the mountain.
The day that Boko Haram came to our town, they had brough service. My husband had left town on Monday and the next day Boko Haram came to the town. I climbed the mountain to call my husband to check whether he had arrived at his destination in Abuja safely. We were on the phone for a little while, then I saw these men had climbed the mountain to where I was. They looked like soldiers and they were also making phone calls.
A lot of them gathered where I was and started to make phone calls. Suddenly I heard gunshots and bombs in the village below. They the men started running, some would fall down , some would break their bones, it was just chaos and people were running and trying to come down from where they were making calls.
The village was full with the sound of gunshots. Everyone stayed quietly in their houses. My husband was not around, I was all alone with my children and we were next to the mountain. In the morning everything was quiet. So the men felt safe to come down to check their homes, to see if everything was okay. (They had spent the night in the mountain. ) Just when they were returning to their homes the Boko Haram men came back , they had been waiting for the village men to return.
It was at the entrance of the market that the men had come down from the mounains. And it was there that Boko Haram caught the men and cut their necks near some of the market stalls. There were about six men that they slaughtered at once. The other men that were coming saw this and started running. Some would go back up the mountain, others on their way to their homes would be caught by boko haram and killed. Some escaped too. We really struggled. We spent 5 nights at home and our food finished as there was no market to buy food. Sometimes I would go to my fathers house to find food to feed my family.
I saw at the entrance of my doorway where I make phone calls there were 2 corpses of soldiers that were killed.
It scared me . so I locked my house packed my things and went to my fathers house. In my fathers house everyone was crying because they had killed my brother. They told us to go and look for his body. When we were looking they blocked us and said they killed my brother and 3 other boys, the children of the chief.