Uprooting women survivors of Boko Haram conflict from hopelessness

The atmosphere in the spacious Dujima Hall became deeply emotive as the film previewers watched the character of Ruth Stephen telling her story of fortitude and resilience, which enabled her to wade through life from her earlier years as a lass entirely subjected to the dominant cultural norms and traditions of her Gwoza community, to […]

The atmosphere in the spacious Dujima Hall became deeply emotive as the film previewers watched the character of Ruth Stephen telling her story of fortitude and resilience, which enabled her to wade through life from her earlier years as a lass entirely subjected to the dominant cultural norms and traditions of her Gwoza community, to the debilitating hardships and hopelessness the Boko Haram insurgency plunged her family into in the IDP camp when the insurgents sacked the Gwoza community at the end of December, 2013, before she elatedly stepped her feet on the shores of economic empowerment raising her capacity to participate in decision making in the family.

The character of Ruth took the previewers on an exciting trip of her striking recent life, treading carefully on the path of fate to raise and sustain the previewers’ appreciation of her tragedy-turned-comedy life as a typical representation of the colossal population of the women survivors of the 9-year Boko Haram conflict in the Northeast.

Ummi Bukar’s PAGED Initiative presented the one-hour documentary film to a combined preview audience of the media, civil societies, security agents, government officials, and local and international NGOs for the first stage of validation. It featured the characters of Halima Bukar from Bama; Ruth Stephen and Zainab Hamidu from Gwoza; and Hadiza Mustapha from Baga to convey to the public the silver-lining story of the life of the women survivors of the Boko Haram conflict in a completely novel way that wholly departs from the established practice of telling the story of women and children as the most pathetic victims and survivors.

Through the three stages: pre-insurgency, insurgency and post-insurgency life in the IDP camps and host community, each of the quartet told her striking story of how the Boko Haram insurgency disrupted the seamlessness of her cultural life in her traditional community, cast her into the depth of wretchedness and haplessness as and IDP, a traumatising life of untold challenges which destiny converted for her into opportunities for empowerment and status of performing roles traditionally regarded as the fort of the men over the ages.

Sheer fortitude and enviable resilience guided them to gradually subdue their grief and trauma of losing whatever they held as very precious and fear to them, pulled all of them from the abyss of complete wretchedness and misery and gradually raised them to levels of commanding the respect she had never hitherto thought of commanding.

The character of Ruth Stephen is now a prosperous street food vendor, frying bean cakes, yam, and potatoes, from which she sometimes realise a daily gain of N2,000 to N5,000. So economically empowered she is now that her husband respects, loves and wishes well in all her undertakings more than ever before, and he now even confidently keeps his wallet and ATM card within her reach, because she us now so economically powerful that most times, he doesn’t have think of bringing anything more than rice, yams and other staples before he comes home and take a delicious meal

Ditto, Halima Bukar, now a thriving petty trader making her husband smiling; Hadiza Mustapha, now employed as a teacher by an NGO; and Zainab Hamidu, now one of the most revered female civilian JTF members. With sheer fortitude and resilience, they have all subdued the Boko Haram conflict-inflicted grief and trauma and now look far into the future of higher prosperity.

The documentary film, ‘Uprooted’, the very first project of PAGED Initiative, is a participatory film that projects gender roles as a result of the Boko Haram conflict in the Northeast. The local NGO itself maintains an unapologetic gender focus. This is significantly deliberate because when men were killed by the insurgents, women were spared to survive, throwing them into the scorching hardships of catering for themselves and the surviving members of the community, like the children and the elderly. These women, according to PAGED Initiative, are still destabilized, having watched their husbands and children slain by the insurgents.

In flight from the insurgents, these women watched their children die of severe malnourishment as the pregnant long them went through the severe agony of childbirth.

They experienced intense trauma and dislocation physically and mentally, as they underwent intense hardship in search of relocation and protection, faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenges of developing new relationships in camps and host communities. The mental relocation is more agonizing than the physical.

The documentary showed how women performed roles in their respective communities before the insurgency, and even during the insurgency, considering the fact that when Zainab Hamidu and her fellow women were fleeing from their sacked Gwoza community, they helped a man to flee by dressing him in ladies’ attire, including the head tie called in Hausa, ‘A chuchi maza’. That was how he was able to flee by cheating the insurgents into thinking he was a lady when they accosted them.

The previewers of the documentary perceived the burning issue of gender violence as more pronounced, some prominent previewers arguing that women are the homemakers and should, therefore, be more resilient and more antagonistic to the conflict that happened. This is most especially as young women are mostly used as suicide bombers. Women should, therefore, drum it to ears of the entire society that the entire practice of suicide bombing is bad. 

During the discussion session, a story was told to illustrate the fact that most female suicide bombers engage in the devastating act in search of a means of escape from their situation.

A protection worker accosted a young female suicide bomber on her way to detonate an IED as a means of escape from her miserable life. The protection worker asked: “do you know that you are going to kill other people?” The young woman replied: “yes!” Then another question: “Do you know that you are also going to die?” She replied: “yes!” All these was because she just wanted to end her life.

Her father recruited her into Boko Haram. Thereafter, she was forced to marry six insurgents in succession. All of them died. This plunged her into a situation of life from which she wanted to escape.

The salient lessons drawn from the film included: conflict proves social cohesion, love, understanding, unity and respect among family members. It strengthens the bond of family togetherness. 

Challenges become opportunities for empowerment, as the Boko Haram conflict has taught women to break the gender bond deeply embedded in cultures and traditions in a patriarchal society where men are treated as superior and cultural norms arrogated forts to men which women do not hither go near.

The documentary film, which is also to be shown to the communities from where the characters were drawn for feedback and corrections before it is finally shown at the national and international level, significantly shows trauma healing. It is intended to give conflict survivors hope. 

Previewers criticized the font size of the subtitles and lack of proper proofreading, among others, but the producers replied that it was not the final version, and that they would do what needs to be done towards improving it to global standard.

As ‘Uprooted’ uprooted the characters from the grief and trauma of the Boko Haram conflict, and the sticky mire of hopelessness, it promises to uproot its audience from their misconceptions on gender roles and resilience.