WRECKED 41 THE HEALING…

Nothing moved or breathed anywhere that they could see. The only trac now was a military truck. In the previous weeks, the highway had been witness to a vast human exodus. Tens of thousands of displaced indigenes had ed north towards Chad.
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Now the roadside grasses were sprouting in every direction, leaning out into the highway so that they brushed the windows of the car. The rains had brought forth a great tangle of vegetation. With nobody to cultivate the fields, the weeds and wild grasses were sweeping across the countryside. In less than five minutes, they had gone from a town where people were going out into the rice fields, gathering wood, cooking food, walking and enjoying the new morning, to a place where nothing stirred.

Only the breeze rising occasionally to flatten the rampant grasses and steady hum of the car engine interrupted the silence. It was as if a giant hoover had been directed down from the heavens and sucked away everything that moved. Apart from the immense silence, Laraba recalled two things very vividly about those first moments inside Chibok: there were thousands of yellow and white flowers, peeking out from the grassy wilderness, and hovering above them were wave after wave of butterflies dancing in the indescribable quiet of a town where nobody was home.

There is silence here than the absence of noise. This is the quiet of death and abandonment. The women pass empty house after house. Outside most of the buildings are scattered pots and pans and broken furniture, the scraps of clothing the occupants could not carry when they fled. Some of the houses are built from mud with roofs of thatch or corrugated iron. Houses belonging to people who will never come back to reclaim them.

But it would change soon, dramatically. The sound of shooting had been replaced with silence, and that too would be replaced with the ancient chorus of African village life: crying babies, whinnying goats and interminable crowing of the roosters.

She saw where her home had once stood and thought of her family. Gone forever. She did not cry for justice because it was beyond her, the horrors of genocide had been reduced to a mere manslaughter; no justice could bring back her sanity and life. She hoped that wherever they lay, they had more peace than she would ever achieve; pain and sorrow could never reach them again.

Two weeks later, Laraba stood before a gathering of African Youth Leaders and told her story. She ended an hour's speech by saying, "Chibok story is more than a straight forward commentary on humanity's capacity for evil. This should never happen to anybody. History has a way of repeating itself, don't allow it. By remembering me, you remember all those innocent victims. Moving forward and forgetting what happened is forgetting me. Then there will be no reason for me to live. I live to bear witness, to tell my testimony. Once, I was wrecked, maybe I still am, but now, I have hope. As for my son, whenever I think about his future, I don't know, and that is my biggest problem. If there is anything that tortures me, it is the tomorrow of my son. My mother usually said, Komenisan dare garizaiwaye. No matter how long the night, morning will come. I'm waiting for my morning."

Chapter end