Several rescued Chibok girls continue their education at private Oregon boarding school

SEVERAL of the rescued Government Girls Secondary School Chibok pupils who were fortunate to escape from Boko Haram when their classmates were abducted last year have begun rebuilding their lives in the US thanks to a scholarship programme.

 

On April 14, Boko Haram abducted about 234 schoolgirls from their boarding school as they slept at night and whisked them off to an unknown location. However, on the way, one of the vehicles broke down and about a dozen of the girls managed to escape, while three months later, local hunters rescued another 30 after stumbling on their camp.

 

About 200 of the girls are still being held by Boko Haram but those who were fortunate to be free have been offered scholarships and several of them are now pursuing their studies in the US state of Oregon. Four of the girls named Mercy, Deborah, Sarah and Grace are now studying at a private boarding school in Oregon and adjusting to their new lives in America.

 

Thanks to the efforts of a Virginia non-profit organisation called the Jubilee Campaign and Nigerian activists, these girls are slowly recovering from the trauma of their kidnapping. Supportive counsellors and school administrators in Oregon are hoping that they get scholarships to college but in the meantime, they are still navigating their new world.

 

Grace revealed that she slept through the sounds of gunfire in the night, exhausted from her exams but she awoke when her roommate Mary prodded her. Suddenly, the girls saw a gang of men spreading across the school grounds, saying they were there to protect us them and terrified, the girls did as they were told.

 

Later, the men made their way to the pantry, grabbing all the food and then they headed for the administrative office. On the way, they began shouting, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, at which point the girls realised they were impostors.

 

Today, Grace is living a world away from all that, at a high school in Canyonville, Oregon, a town ringed by mountains and towering redwoods. She and three other Chibok girls are quietly finishing their education at the Canyonville Christian Academy, a cosy boarding school with students from more than a dozen countries.

 

For the girls, arriving in America was like landing on Mars as they had grown up in deeply poor, rural villages with no Internet access and in some cases a sole landline phone for the entire village. In Oregon, everything was new including winter weather, puffy coats, remote controls, trampolines, yogurt-covered pretzels, cheerleaders, ice skating and karaoke.

 

Mercy, the first of the Chibok girls to arrive came in November and school president Doug Wead recalls her first-ever encounter with an escalator. As she stepped onto the moving staircase at the airport, she panicked and dropped her bag.

 

For now, the girls, all of whom are Christian, live in constant uncertainty, unsure whether relatives are alive or dead, whether their homes have been burned. They keep in touch with loved ones by phone when possible amid the chaos.