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 MAPS200 km200 miNIGERIALagosChibok
YolaSAMBISA
FOREST
RESERVEAbujaNIGERIAAFRICAATLANTIC
OCEANEUROPEPATIENCE BULUS AND
ESTHER JOSHUA HELD HANDS
AS THEY WERE MARCHED OUT
OF THEIR DORM ROOM AT
GUNPOINT THAT APRIL NIGHT.
88 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC