National Geographic UK - 03.2020

Herded into the back of an open-bed truck, they lost their

grip on each other. Amid the mass of frightened students,

Patience heard Esther’s soft voice ask, “What will happen?”

Then someone jumped off the side. Suddenly other girls

were tumbling into the darkness, willing to risk being shot

or lost in the unknown forest to flee their captors. Patience

looked next to her, but Esther had been pulled deeper into

the truck. Patience pushed her way to the edge and jumped

without Esther.

For five years a rebel insurgency in northeastern Nigeria

had terrorized the region and shut down schools. The Govern-

ment Secondary School for girls in Chibok had reopened in

April 2014 for students to take their final exams. In a region

where less than half of all girls attend primary school, these

students had defied the odds they were born into long before

the war reached them. But around 11 p.m. on April 14, trucks of

militants from Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates to

“Western education is forbidden,” forced 276 girls from their

dorms onto trucks and drove toward the lawless cover of the

Sambisa forest, a nature reserve the jihadist group had taken

over to wage a bloody war against the government.

The attack sparked #BringBackOurGirls, an international

campaign embraced by then U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama.

Chibok, a remote, little-known town before the kidnappings,

came to represent some of Nigeria’s most crucial issues—

corruption, insecurity, the invisibility of the poor. Media

covered every development: The 57 girls who escaped early

on; the ordeal of 10 of the girls who wound up in multiple

American schools; videos released by Boko Haram showing

sullen captives; two emotional releases of a total of 103 girls,

reportedly in exchange for money and prisoners; four girls

who are said to have fled later on their own.

Civilian patrols found

Amina Ali, who deco-

rated this photo, wan-

dering in the Sambisa

Forest Reserve in 2016.

She was the first of the

missing schoolgirls to

be rescued. Later that

year the government

negotiated for the

release of 21 girls, and

then 82 more in 2017.

NGM MAPS

200 km

200 mi

NIGERIA

Lagos

Chibok

Yola

SAMBISA

FOREST

RESERVE

Abuja

NIGERIA

AFRICA

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

EUROPE

PATIENCE BULUS AND

ESTHER JOSHUA HELD HANDS

AS THEY WERE MARCHED OUT

OF THEIR DORM ROOM AT

GUNPOINT THAT APRIL NIGHT.

88 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC