Chibok Girls Narrate Life In America

Emmanuel Ogebe, a U.S.-based Nigerian human rights lawyer collaborated with a couple in Nigeria to help bring some Chibok schoolgirls who had escaped from Boko Haram to the United States.

Boko Haram kidnapped Lily and 275 other schoolgirls one night in April 2014. In a remote town in northeastern Nigeria, the radical fighters grabbed Lily and the others as they slept inside the local high school’s dormitory. They stuffed them into trucks and drove off into the night with a convoy of squealing, terrified high school students.

Lily said her heart was pounding, and she closed her eyes and prayed. Hours after her capture, she found the courage to jump out of the moving truck; a friend followed her. She ran through the bushes in the middle of the night, and made her way back home. After that, she resolved never to return to school.

Lily was made fun of after her escape; leaving Nigeria offered her a chance to change the course of her life. Lily and nine other girls arrived in the U.S. last year, between July and December.

“I know I said I would never go to school again but things have changed,” Lily said with a smile. “I am in America!”

The girls recently went back to class after a summer break that included trips to the White House, museum and a national tour with a church choir. Host families housed the girls during the summer vacation.

Murna, 19, discovered she has motion sickness and cannot sit in a car for long. Lily has not acquired a taste for American food.

Sometimes, Lily’s mind wanders to Nigeria, to Chibok, to Boko Haram, to her best friend Dorcas, who was abducted with her and is presumably still in the clutches of Boko Haram members. Dorcas and Lily grew up together as neighbors.

“She is still inside Sambisa,” Lily says. “I miss her so much. She is a very good person.”

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