Finding Home after Boko Haram's Terror

By Gbemisola Abiola

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark 
home is the barrel of the gun 
and no one would leave home 
unless home chased you to the shore 
unless home tells you to 
leave what you could not behind, 
even if it was human. 

—Excerpt of “Home” by Warsan Shire 

When you flee terror, you do not run in a straight line. The decisions you make under this condition are not informed by months of strategy or planning—rather, you feel the rush of your breath as it pierces through your chest, rushing down your limbs, and giving strength to your feet. You flee what is definitely certain death, or a much worse fate: forced abduction. This terrifying thought pushes you to keep on moving, and to keep on living. 

Binta¹ was engulfed in fear as she ran. All her thoughts were rolled into one: how to save herself, her son on her back, and her daughter cradled in her hand. She had heard about Boko Haram’s brutality in other towns, but she did not believe she would be a victim. For her, home was no longer a place of safety but had instead become the mouth of a shark. And so she fled, on foot, to Nigeria’s Borno state capital city Maiduguri, where her husband’s distant cousin lived, almost 155 kilometers away. It was where she would claim refuge. It was also where she would be given a new identity: Internally Displaced Person (IDP). 

This became her reality in 2014 when her town, Gwoza, was invaded by heavily armed Boko Haram fighters. Gwoza—a vibrant and thriving town nestled in the far southeastern region of Borno, and a well-known hub of trade and farming production—almost overnight had transformed into a caliphate of Boko Haram. Dressed in military fatigues, Boko Haram fighters ransacked the stores in the town. They pulled people out of their homes, beat them, and shot them. 

Believing itself to be the vanguard of puritan Islam, the defender of Muslims and Islamic tradition, Boko Haram sets out to systematically purge towns and the people of the corruption of Westernization and Western education. For the terrorist group, it was an all-or-nothing battle, with only one goal in mind: the establishment of a pure Islamic state. And so, boys and men were the first targets. They were forcefully conscripted or killed. Next, it was women and girls. They were targets of abductions. They were either forcefully married off to Boko Haram fighters, or compelled to be domestic slaves. In the frenzy of the attack, many fled; some ran through uneasy paths to neighboring states, others went through dirt roads or highways, even crossing rivers to get to Cameroon. The rest were not so lucky as they were trapped in Boko Haram-claimed territories. 

People in villages a few kilometers away from Binta’s town, and who had heard about the terrifying ordeal some of their neighbors, friends, and relatives had suffered, decided not to wait their turn. They also fled. Though violence and death did not meet them in their homes, their lives were just as ruptured as they were forced to flee to places somewhat unfamiliar, and helped by people of cultures somewhat unshared. As attacks continued, the road away from home became the salvation for many people, as many of the towns and villages emptied out, some before dawn.

Binta, like many others, represents the over two million people who have been displaced by Boko Haram’s violence to date.² Many of these people have been displaced for almost a decade; understanding their conceptualization of home is crucial to comprehending the long-term impact of displacement. What home is, as a concept, can sometimes be difficult to articulate. But somehow we know that—regardless of whether it is our experience or not—home is a place where we feel nurtured, where we find order amidst chaos, and where we are equipped with the tools with which we make sense of the world. How then do people, whose lives have been upended from years of enduring displacement, think about the concept of home?

My ethnographic study (which I concluded in August of 2021, right before many of the sites were shut down by the state government) of internal displacement in Borno, the state most impacted by Boko Haram’s violence, provides insights into what comprises the making of home. Home making is not simply about grounding oneself in a built environment, or feeling a sense of rootedness to a place. It also is about being emotionally and psychologically connected to the immaterial elements of home. 

There are many ways displacement creates ruptures—in memory as it is connected to identity, cultural practices, religious rituals—such that the quest for home becomes an exercise to heal these ruptures. These ruptures have reshaped the ways in which relationships are conducted and negotiated. 

Displacement is an event, a process, and a condition that is exemplified by loss. In the context of northeast Nigeria, the experience of forceful displacement was not a one-time event per se. IDPs currently resettled mostly in different parts of Borno, were not all displaced at the same time. Indeed, there is no single displacement story. From Binta’s retelling of events, we see that as towns and villages were systematically pillaged, scorched, and ransacked, others emptied out because they heard the news of what had become of their neighbors. 

While not all IDPs experienced direct violence, the number of people in this category pales in comparison to those who did experience direct physical and psychological harm. What is common to all, however, is the uprooting from their homes, within their nation’s borders. The sights and sounds, look and language of their new settlements are familiar yet they trigger a sense of alienation. To be displaced, then, is to be in this liminal space.

As a process, displacement is an experience that is both situated and embodied. When people become displaced, there are three sites they either get to settle, or are resettled in: camps, informal settlements, and host communities. Camps are securitized sites directly organized and managed by state agencies and international aid organizations. Informal settlements are ‘enclaves’ within established communities that are self-governing and self-protecting, and are sometimes recipients of aid. Host communities are towns that accommodate a greater number of the population of IDPs. Some hosts are benefactors to IDPs, offering them free living spaces; a few are landlords; and others are familial relations (or even sometimes those with fictive kinship ties). Transnational aid organizations and state agencies rarely engage with this population. Instead, private philanthropists and local NGOs sometimes distribute relief resources to them. 

Of all the northeastern states, Borno is currently home to over 1.6 million IDPs.³ This is unsurprising since Borno is the epicenter of Boko Haram’s operations and the location inhabited by the Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP), the factional group that broke out of Boko Haram (and also currently absorbs it). Nearly 50 percent of this number are housed in camps and informal settlements, while a little over 50 percent live among host communities.⁴ By implication, there is a large humanitarian presence in this state. In order to dispense resources and aid, displaced people are classified within the humanitarian protection framework as IDPs. Undergoing the exercise of being identified, registered, and ‘managed,’ especially as a resident of a camp, is the quintessential marker of displacement as a process. 

During my field research, I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing IDPs across different ethnicities, demographics, gender, and religious lines, at different settlement sites. And even though they did not use the word memory to articulate their loss of home, through our conversations it became clear that the experience of displacement ruptures memory. As a condition, the ruptures of displacement become more evident, and the quest for home becomes most salient. Memory is a component of our identity, a reservoir for our religious rituals, and a conveyor of cultural practices, from one generation to the next. In fact, it is a central element or essence of the self. To lose that is to almost lose oneself. The material elements on which memory is formed and built include notable landmarks, flowers and trees that bud and bear fruit at certain seasons, and the quintessential corner shops. It is the conversations that ensue around those places. It is the relationships built, the memories created, all fused together to create one’s identity, solidify one’s attachment to a place, and one’s orientation to the culture eventually becoming a part of daily life. 

This memory rupture was clear during my second visit to Bakasi camp in Borno in 2018. I met Aminu and his son, a little boy no older than ten years. One day, when I was waiting for Aminu on a bench under a tent, I witnessed an interaction between them. The boy was upset that his friend didn’t want to share his toy with him. Perhaps in frustration, he threw a tantrum and was yelled at by his mother. In tears, he ran to his father. Among the many things Aminu said, he made a statement that still remains memorable to me: “Do not forget who you are and where you come from. Where we are is temporary. Do not forget home.” The boy was immediately appeased—he seemed to understand what his father meant. His father’s words struck me in ways that I did not immediately realize. As I talked with more people, I discovered how crucial the question of memory is as it relates to identity and religious and cultural practices. 

With this knowledge, I tailored my interview questions to try and understand the depth of the ruptures that displacement produces. Hence, I asked my respondents what they missed about home. “I miss the way I could pluck mangoes from trees,” said Abubakar, a lithe teenager who had just turned sixteen. “Here in Maiduguri, everything is expensive. Even our water in Gwoza is very clean, and it is sweet.” 

For these teenagers who were children when they left home, displacement truncates their rites of passage to adulthood as the centers of reinforcement have been replaced with a way of life that is altogether jarring and confusing. The ones born in displacement or too little to remember rely on the stories of older children and adults, and they are constantly befuddled by what they think are tall tales about a home they have never known. 

For Binta, the memory of her hometown has been sullied by a memory of profound violence that she would rather keep buried. In talking about what she misses about her home, she shares how she misses the way holidays are celebrated. “I remember that during Easter, we used to go to the mountain, I mean Gwoza or Mandara mountain, to do our church service. Everybody will be there singing, praying, and after that there will be plenty of food. We will eat together. It was just so good. I miss that.” Going up the mountain, though a literal expression of faith in the ascension, is not only this—it also represents a time of physical, relational, and spiritual flourishing. 

Because they have been displaced from their worship spaces, religious leaders—and perhaps their local communities of faith—form new communities that mirror the old. They set up camps or settlements such as those managed by the Tariqa Islamic order, EYN (Ekklesiyar ‘Yanuwa a Nigeria), and CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria), all doubling as safe spaces and religious communities. These sites replicate the order that once marked their lives; provide children and youths with a sense of the existence of institutions; and give everyone a sense of structure that sometimes quietens the feelings of loss.      

References

1. The names of participants in this study, including the names mentioned in this article, have been changed to protect their privacy and identity.
2. Source: Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), June 2022. 
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Captions

1. Binta Ali [editor note: unrelated to the Binta in this article] is a beneficiary of emergency relief items to displaced families hosted at a camp in Borno State, in northeast Nigeria. Credit: European Union (photo by Samuel Ochai), Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
2. A view of Jamina Road in Maiduguri, Nigeria, from the view of a Keke NAPEP (tricycle/rickshaw), underneath a banner that reads “With gun you can kill a terrorist, with education you can kill terrorism” (quotation by Malala Yousafzai). Credit: Gbemisola Abiola
3. Cross-section of Bakasi camp in Maiduguri, Borno state, Nigeria, prior to the camp’s closure. Credit: Gbemisola Abiola