By Janet Crago

Personal Note:  This story was especially important to Tom and Janet Crago because Saratu’s goat herd got its beginning in 2007 with a donation of $100 from Florence Crago, Tom’s mother, who was moved to help a widow in Nigeria when she heard her story.

Saratu and Rita

It was Oct 3, 2014.  They first came as thieves, and were dressed as soldiers.  They surrounded the whole village of Gavva East.  Saratu and her mother were at home.  It was 8 o’clock in the morning and Saratu was taking her bath.  When they started firing their guns, the sound of gunshots came from all over the village.  Everyone started running for the mountain.  The Boko Haram insurgents killed some people and kidnapped many women and children that day.  Saratu was one of the lucky ones.  Her mother was with her and they were fast enough to run and escape captivity.  Saratu tells of gunshots passing very close to her and how panicked she felt.  She ran until she thought she would burst from lack of breath.  It is a steep climb up the mountain.

After that day, the Christians from Gavva East did not return to live in their village.  They were too frightened. They stayed on the mountain.  They didn’t want to leave their home area and were hopeful that the Boko Haram had gone away for good.  This area of northeast Nigeria has had a very lucrative farming history.  They grow guinea corn, sesame seed, and onions.  But the Boko Haram were persistent in their aim of driving Christians from the area.  They came again on Oct 14, 2014.  They dressed in football (soccer) uniforms and pretended they were Christians.  They told everyone to come out and that it was safe, but the ones who came out were killed or captured.  Many more women and children were kidnapped.  The men were killed.

The word spread that the Muslims from Gavva East went to the Sambisa forest and joined Boko Haram.   So, the neighbors and former friends of Christians in Gavva East had now become their enemies who were trying to kill them or drive them away from their homeland.  The Boko Haram insurgents came back to the mountain hideaway on Oct 24, 2014.  They came from all directions around the mountain and surrounded it.  Saratu and her mother hid in a small cave.  The Boko Haram spent one week of relentless searching by surrounding the mountain and calling out to people to come out.  They would cry out every day saying, “Come out, come out, you will not be killed if you convert to Islam”.  But if you refused to convert they would slaughter you (cut your throat) and throw pieces of your body into the community’s mountain spring water source. They spoiled the water for everyone.  Saratu and her mother never came out.  They remained true to their Christian faith.  They stayed hidden while trembling with fear.  They refused to convert.  During this horrible week of intense fear, other insurgents were in the village of Gavva East looting houses.  They took away everything valuable, including the zinc roofs of the houses.  Then they set fire to the Christian homes.  It was a very difficult week.  The Christians in hiding would come out in the dead of night to search for a way to Cameroon.  Finally, they left on their trek to Cameroon.  Because they didn’t have water, they kept their eyes open for wet spots on the ground.  When they spotted a wet site, they would dig down until water started filling the hole.  When the water filled the hole enough, they would drink the water.  They did not eat for a week on this trek to Cameroon.

Survival in the Cameroon, too, was difficult. The town where they went was predominantly Islamic.  They discovered that if they could do a little work for a Muslim home, they would be given a little money for food.

At one point, a Muslim man who took passengers to Yola told them that he would take them to Yola for 5,000 Naira ($25) each, but he just took their money and disappeared.  Many others fell for this trick as well.  Finally, Saratu and her mother were able to arrange transport for the two of them to be taken to Yola for 18,000 ($90) each.  Saratu’s father was able to send them the money.  When they got to Yola, it was easy to arrange transport back to Maiduguri.  By that time, Saratu’s girls had not heard from their mother for 6 months.  They had lost hope that she was still alive.

Saratu is a widow with four daughters.  Her husband, Daniel, was killed in a road accident

Twins Walla and Wassa

when Saratu was just 27.  Walla and Wassa are her oldest children and twins. They are attending university.  Rita has just completed secondary school and is staying with an uncle.  Her youngest, Renate, is attending boarding school.  Saratu left 22 goats behind when she had to flee.  Losing her goats was a big concern because she was using the money from the sale of goats to pay for her girl’s school fees.  They also gave her a source of protein for her own family.

Saratu is now about the business of recovery.  She recently got a job at the Center for Caring and Empowerment Initiative (CCEPI) in Jos, run by Dr. Rebeccah Dali, the wife of EYN’s President.  She is very happy to have work again.  Before her escape, she had been employed by the Literacy program in Gavva.  This program was a function of EYN providing much needed education in the Gavva area.  That program doesn’t exist any more because all Christians have had to leave the area and all the buildings have been destroyed.  The Christians of Gavva East are still mourning the loss of the Literacy program.  They now have to focus on moving on with their lives in another area.  Please pray that God will bless them in their new workplaces and that their industry and Godliness will have a huge influence in the new place.

Written by Janet Crago

We recently had an opportunity to visit one of the EYN resettlement camps at Luvu Masaka, located near Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja, and collected several different stories about how people ended up there.  All of the people interviewed had fled from the far Northeastern part of the EYN Mission area, located near the Sambisa Forest and Gwoza, the self-proclaimed Capital of Boko Haram’s Islamic State.  The people in this area have endured attack after attack from Boko Haram over the past several years.  And, as this is written in August of 2015, the area is still considered to be unsafe for these Christians to return. Many Christians think they will never be able to return to this area.  The stories are hard to hear, and even harder to imagine, but I’m reporting their stories as told to me.

John  – In Barawa, John had a flat with 4 bedrooms. But, in 2011, Boko

John

Haram came and burned his house.  He ran one way while his wife and children ran another.  John ran to the Cameroon mountains with other refugees where he stayed for about a year.  Then, Boko Haram found them there, and killed many more people. Eventually, he heard from his wife and learned that she had gone to Autabalfe in Nasarawa State located south and west of Jos, which is right in the center of Nigeria.  Six children are with her.  He traveled to Autabalfe to be with them, but they don’t have a place to live yet.  He came to the camp hoping to find a place to stay.  He is a farmer but he says he is willing to do any kind of work to support his family and will accept any type of accommodation.  He is desperate.

Adamu

Adamu  – On March 13, 2013, Boko Haram came to Gavva West and burned and looted their church.  Four people were killed.  Then, in April of 2013, Boko Haram came again and burned his son’s house and car.  And, in September and October of 2013, they came and chased everyone away, when they burnt the entire village, killing another 15 people.  Adamu finally fled to the neighboring village of Gavva close to the Cameroon border.  When Boko Haram came to Gavva, they burned two EYN churches and many houses.  This time, when they were chased from Gavva, he fled to Michika.  Then Boko Haram came to Michika and he fled to Maiduguri where he spent about four months while his son supported him.  When he left Maiduguri, he only had 2 trousers and 2 shirts.  He’s now come to the resettlement camp at Masaka looking for a place to stay.  He has seven children and his wife living with him.  He thanks God, and the relief team, for his very survival.  He got transport money from his sons and was able to come to the camp at Masaka, where he is looking for a new place to settle.

Zakariya  was not at home in Gavva when the Boko Haram attacks came.  He

Zakariya

had been studying in Maiduguri, where he graduated with a Higher National Diploma in Banking and Finance.  He related the story as told to him by his relatives.  Boko Haram came to Gavva East in Nov of 2013 and destroyed 18 houses and killed three people.  Then they left and many people stayed.  In Sept of 2014, Boko Haram came back.  Anyone that ran away was shot. They killed all the men they could find and burned the houses of all the Christians, looting personal property by taking TVs, clothes, cars, cows, and stores of food. People were forced to convert to Islam or die.

Those who were able to get away ran to the mountains.  Older people who couldn’t climb were killed.  They weren’t killing women, but forced them to convert and enslaved them.  Some people escaped to Cameroon.  Some who escaped to the mountains are still there, where many have died of hunger and some can’t get out.  As Zakariya was telling his story, one man who spent many months in the mountains volunteered the information that he and another man repeatedly came down into Gavva in the night to search for food left behind so they could carry it back up to the mountains to be shared around.  This is how they are surviving.

Zakaria’s mother initially refused to come out of the village but has now gone to live in the mountains.  Another person reported to him that she is alive, but he hasn’t heard from her in many months.  If they have a fire to cook something, the smoke from the fire will reveal their presence and get them killed.  He doesn’t know if she is surviving.

Musa

Musa  – On June 13, 2014 many people were going to church when Boko Haram came with their machine guns and attacked.  Three people were killed before the people of Attagara chased the Boko Haram away, killing some of the Boko Haram in the process.  The Christians were so angry that they burned Muslim homes in Attagara and chased them away.  Before long, though, Boko Haram came back and chased all the Christians away, killing 84 people in the process.  All the survivors fled.  The Boko Haram looted goods and burned all the houses where Christians lived.  Musa fled into Cameroon.  After some time and a difficult journey, he has now come to the camp in Masaka.  He has been assigned a home and has a job working in the Gurku camp.  He has a wife and 4 children.  He has committed everything unto God and is enduring.

The day we were at Masaka, we witnessed a distribution of food and supplies to the residents of the camp.  All these supplies were provided by the EYN Relief Distribution Team who, receive funding from CAM (Christian Aid Ministries) and the COB Crisis Relief Fund.  Families in this camp feel very fortunate to have a small home that they can move into.  Those homes were built with funds from the COB Crisis Relief Fund, and some land around the houses was also purchased.  It requires hard work to till, plant and harvest but there’s still time to plant some things and get them harvested before the rains end in October.  Our prayer this day was that God will bless the new homes that are being established, and provide these people with a bountiful harvest.

Distribution of household items at Masaka

Footnote:   This is a little history of the tribes in the Gavva area.                                     The people in this area have a very rich tribal history.  Most of the villages have their own language.  In the days of the slavers (the early 1800’s) where they were trying to capture people to sell into slavery, the Islamic slavers had horses they used to chase the people and capture them by running them down.  Soon the people retreated to the mountaintops where they could live in relative peace.  There was water on the mountaintops and they only had to come down sometimes to plant and harvest crops.  If the slavers came while they were on the mountaintops they could throw rocks down on them or throw spears at them, making it much more difficult for them to capture people.  While living on the mountaintops, each mountaintop developed its own language, different from all the rest.  So today, if you are from a small area in northeast Nigeria, you share a common language with only a few people.  This creates a very strong bond.  This area has a rich farming background where these people have been farmers for many generations.