The victims of Boko Haram are still displaced in their own land, suffering from trauma and anxiety. The threat has not passed, but the Church brings them comfort and hope.
ACN.- «There should be no night. I would want it to always be daytime. My nights are full of fear, anguish and nightmares». Naomi is a young Nigerian girl from the Pulka community, settled in the villages bordering Cameroon, about 120 kilometers from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. Like so many of her countrymen in northeastern Nigeria, Naomi relives the drama one night after another: that she is being abducted, that terrorists are coming to her town, that she is being forced to marry a Boko Haram terrorist or that one of the extremist insurgents is murdering someone in her family. «I’m afraid it will get dark,» confesses the young woman, one of more than 30,000 internally displaced people in Pulka.
Charles, a young 33-year-old father of a family, also displaced, admits that he has nightmares over and over again: «I relive the time when we lived in hiding. As the terrorists attacked at night, when it got dark we used to go outside the village, hiding. I still dream many nights that I am in hiding,» he tells the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
Naomi and Charles live in makeshift tents next to the Pulka refugee camp, known by Alpha, one of twenty refugee camps in Borno State and one of six in Gwoza district.
The lives of Naomi and Charles – like those of the entire Pulka community – were skewed by the Boko Haram attacks. In Borno State, the majority of the population is Muslim and in Gwoza they are almost 90%, but Naomi and Charles are Christians. The missionaries arrived in Borno a little over 50 years ago, brought the faith and with it the first schools. They helped the population, which was very neglected, to develop. The extremist group Boko Haram had a definite agenda, one of their goals was to wipe out Christians and education.
Without faith some would not have endured so much suffering, explains Father Christopher, a Catholic priest from the Diocese of Maiduguri who cares for the refugees. «First, they put fear into them and threatened and instigated them to convert. Then, they started to be more violent. The priests had to hide and sleep in the mountains, but the Boko Haram members kept chasing and instigating them. If they converted they would do nothing to them…. they said. The situation became so difficult that between 2015 and 2016 many decided to take their things and leave the country, cross the border. They sought refuge in Cameroon. Of those who did not leave, some were killed and others managed to escape,» the priest recounts.
Naomi and Charles, along with most of the local people, left everything and fled. «The escape was not easy,» says Naomi who fled with her sister, «our feet were swollen, it was too much for us. My sister was captured by Boko Haram, she had a baby in her arms and they let her go because of that, it turns out that baby was not hers, she was just carrying it at the time, but it saved her life. Many others, like my mother, were killed.»
The vast majority of the Pulka community fled to Cameroon; in Minawao alone there were more than 60,000 displaced persons from Nigeria. They stayed there for a few years, until Nigerian army troops retook their villages in Gwoza and encouraged them to return.
But the situation remains precarious: «We were refugees in Cameroon, we came back and we have been here for two years, but the situation is not safe. We are back on our land, in our territory, in our beloved Pulka, but we live as displaced people. We are closer to our home than when we lived in Cameroon, but we live in danger again,» says Charles.
«They cannot go very far out of the IDP camps, security outside the refugee camps is not guaranteed. In the rainy season, it is even more difficult to move around. They go out to tend their crops, because they have to make a living, but there are attacks and they are killed. It’s not easy, it’s not easy for me to get here either. Going back and forth is still a risk, but everything I can do to help these people is important to me,» explains Father Christopher. Father is caring for the displaced, but he is living in an abandoned house because Boko Haram destroyed the church and parish house in Pulka in 2014.
«Life in Cameroon was so difficult that we thought hope would never be reborn. Father Christopher is a source of inspiration for us. When we are down he gives us encouragement, he is a real father to all of us, he tries to fill the gap left by our parents, because many of them were killed. He takes care of us as if we were his own family. God provides and helps us thanks to so many people in the world who remember us. We pray that God will give strength to all those benefactors so that you can continue to do your work and support us,» says Naomi.
Charles, too, whom God has «blessed with 4 children», as he likes to say, agrees that «celebrating Christmas is hard in our situation, most of us who used to live in Pulka have lost everything». But he adds: «the Gospel gives me strength to bear all this suffering, to bear all that we see every day. Jesus Christ announced the suffering we live through. Suffering is part of being a Christian. Our life is in his hands. It fills me with hope to remember the words of Jesus, he will reward us at the end of our lives. Jesus Christ is my salvation, that’s what I celebrate at Christmas».
«It’s beautiful and painful at the same time,» – says Father Christopher – «They are away from their homes, they have lost loved ones, but they live the virtue of hope and celebrate life. They rely on the Church, because it is the one that listens to their cry and always tries to dry their tears. That work of the first missionaries makes them now feel strong in faith and faithful to the Church».
ACN is asking for support for several projects to serve the Pulka community, which includes some 14,000 Catholics. These include a water source for the refugees, the reconstruction of St. Paul’s parish house in Pulka so that Father Christopher can stay there, and help for the families of 23 catechists, who carry out work with the refugees of the Pulka community in Nigeria and Cameroon.