“Mawu! Run!”

“Run fast, Mawu!”

“Faster!”

Ladan, Mawu’s best friend, shouted impatiently while holding out his hand to pull Mawu onto the rickety old truck meant for transporting animals. This was their only chance to escape and leave this godforsaken place. The scorching savannah sun blurred Mawu’s vision as he ran. The land was as dry as the hearts of its inhabitants. It was the height of the hot season and the rains were not expected for another two months. The hardy leaves of the Neem tree that dotted the landscape hung limply, as though they were weeping.

Panting.

Mawu’s pace was getting slower. Subconsciously, he had given up. Ladan’s extended hand was getting further and further away. His face contorted with emotions reminiscent of a person watching a friend die before his very eyes. Mawu knew the feeling only too well, it was that same paralyzing helplessness and pain he had felt while watching his father and brothers mercilessly gunned down by the monstrous Boko Haram soldiers a few weeks earlier. The memories forever imprinted in his mind, always fresh and recurring.

Boko Haram soldiers ambushed their village. They pillaged, killed and razed it to the ground. Their barbaric acts had been recounted by people from other villages. Mawu’s village was warned that the mercenaries were headed in their direction two days before the raid. Many villagers filed out day and night carrying the few belongings they could with them.

Mawu’s father had contemplated moving the family but was reluctant to leave everything he had known and worked for all his life: his recently inherited livestock and the farm that he had toiled and tilled every day since he was a young man. The farm was an integral part of his life, tilling the earth gave him a sense of calm and solace he couldn’t describe. It is all he did, season after season, year after year, until his crooked, calloused hands were no longer effective, and the soil grew less and less fertile.

He was an old man, growing poorer with every farming season. He couldn’t afford farm hands especially because he saved everything he could spare to send his sons to the nearest school in the next village. His daughters had to stay home; there simply wasn’t enough money to send any of them to school and better the boys be taught than the girls.

Like most of the men with large extended families, they stayed put and prayed that somehow Boko Haram’s atrocities would come and pass. No one imagined the extent of the havoc the soldiers would wreak when they finally attacked. Sporadic shooting heralded the convoy’s arrival on the day. The villagers ran in turmoil, creating more chaos, but the shooting only intensified as Boko Haram closed in on the vulnerable village.