It finally happened.
For those of you who haven’t heard, Guider, my home for the
past year and a half, has been closed. Peace
Corps will no longer operate there, I won’t be replaced (as I wanted to be),
and I will have to move months before I planned.
Boko Haram struck again.
The third kidnapping and we’re out.
The first was a French family in Waza in the Extreme North
more than a year ago. It’s about as far
north as you can get in Cameroon. The
second was a French priest in Mokolo, about halfway up the Extreme North but
still close to the border. That was
maybe half a year ago, and not very far from us. The third is a Canadian nun and a couple of
Italians from just outside of Maroua very recently. The reports I’ve heard have said it was
between 15 and 40 km from Maroua, which makes it 2-3 hours from us.
I don’t blame the Peace Corps or the Embassy for closing
us. If you have not been keeping up with
Boko Haram, whose name means Western Education
is Sacrilege, you should. They have
been operating for years now, are gaining in power, and operate throughout
several countries in the region, including Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and
Mali. Their attacks have been getting
bolder and have been penetrating places in Southern Nigeria and Cameroon that
they never have before. They have burned
hundreds of villages and raped, killed or displaced thousands of people. There are entire regions that the Nigerian
government have lost or are losing control of, but the only time that most
Westerners hear about Boko Haram is when a fellow Westerner is kidnapped.
Each kidnapping in Cameroon, the only open attacks in the country,
has moved further south and further into the country. Each one has gotten closer to Guider, and the
last couple of kidnappings were only a few hours away. While I don’t feel unsafe, I can understand why
we would need to be moved.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t really make it any easier.
Guider is a great town, and I have loved it since the moment
I got there. While I have had my share
of rough patches during my service, they were never connected with Guider. The town is beautiful and the people are
kind, calm, and welcoming. Despite how
dry it is the streets are lined with trees.
Every sunset turns the sky and my entire house pink. The vast majority of the people have treated
me like a son, brother, or friend since I got there. My work there has been great, and a lot of it
has been meaningful and sustainable. Guider
is a fairly large place with more than 40,000 people in the main town, yet I
have never felt more welcomed and a part of a community in my life.
I’ll miss walking through town and the market, greeting
everyone I see. I’ll miss going over to
my post mates’ houses, hanging out with them or their concession families. I’ll miss giving and receiving random gifts
of fruit with my neighbor. I’ll miss our
favorite hangouts, the people we spent time with, and all of the made-up names
we gave to streets and bars. Both of my
post mates and I have celebrated the good times and shared the bad with the
people of Guider, and none of us wants to leave.
I have no right to compare my experiences with others that
have been affected by terrorism. My
friends and family are safe and my home in America is not in jeopardy. Though I have been forced to leave my home in
Guider, I have other places I can go and people who can help me. That being said, I still feel displaced. I have a new post that I will eventually move
to, but I will undoubtedly be homeless for the next few months, staying in
cases (transit houses) and with friends.
I think if you ask the average Westerner who Boko Haram is,
they would have no clue – it’s just another terrorist group making people
suffer in a part of the world that they don’t need to worry about. Yet everyday, that terrorist group and others
like it are killing, raping, torturing, and displacing people. Our indifference only goes to give them more
power. I don’t have the solutions for how
to fix this, but it’s wrong that we just ignore it. I think I heard it best when I was watching
Boondock Saints (though we should probably take a different route than they
did).
“Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we
must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.”
