The thing with Amina – another Chibok story

She tries not to drag her feet in the sand, she really wants to but she keeps hearing her grandmothers voice, telling her how only lazy people drag their feet. Her scandals have been discolored by sand, it’s polished bright brown colour gone. A few more steps and she’ll be in the hostel after a long days work.

WAEC is coming up soon and she must be prepared. Her brother failed WAEC till they could No longer afford to buy the forms for him and so he moved to Lagos with Uncle Musa to help manage his kiosk there. But she didn’t want to manage a kiosk.

Amina wants to be a lawyer, passing this exam and getting a scholarship into any university for law is her dream, she is going to make money and put her family through school. She would take her mum and brothers to Lagos and build a house close to Don Jazzy’s for them in Lekki. She stopped to remind herself, that one day she would be Don Jazzy’s neigbhour! But not today, today she had to pull an all-nighter at least, till she understood geometric progression.

Amina examines the level of Kerosine in her lantern as its light begins to dim and flicker, her all night would have to be cut short. Someone must have used it without telling her. She checked her watch and it was 1:05 in the morning. She begins to pack her introductory mathematics text book into her bag, when she hears a pop sound in the distance. She freezes.

The bad men surely must not have come to her school.

The pop sound is followed by a rapid succession of what is unmistakably gun fire. Amina, screams in attempts to wake up her room mates, but resorts to slapping some of them in the face since they were unresponsive. She looks through the windows as Toyota hilux trucks pull up in front of her hostel.

Three men, covered from head to toe, leaving only room for their eyes move toward’s them. Amina can’t believe it…the bad men are here.
It happens all too fast, in between staring down the barrels of loaded guns that she can’t recognize and being forced into a truck with all the girls in her school, Amina is… shattered.

Her dreams of being a lawyer, putting her younger ones through school, taking her mother to Lekki and living besides Don Jazzy flash through her eyes, as the truck begins to move.

She tries to tell herself, Uncle Musa will come and get her. Surely the nice soilder she met the other day will get his commanding officer to help them. He had told her that he was there to stop the bad men, he would come wouldn’t he? Someone would surely tell the president! Wouldn’t they?

Her eye lids became heavy, the aftermath of two days of no sleep. She couldn’t believe how someone could be drowsy in life threatening situations. She doesn’t try to fight, maybe by falling asleep she would wake up from this nightmare.

And she wakes up, 550+ days later.

Amina wakes up, after having dreamt the same dream every night. She still doesn’t know where she is. She had hoped that by appearing on camera with the other girls, people would have a rough idea of where they were. But that was along time ago.

Everyday she prays to Allah to let her escape, and keep her mother and grandmother alive.

The bad men came and took her from Chibok while the world slept.

 

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail