Boko Haram grave digger’s horror

I single handedly buried over 40 corpses, woman escapee from Gwoza recalls

At only 35, this woman has more hellish tale to tell than could be imagined. Her hell is that, created and

operated by Boko Haram, particularly in Gwoza, Borno State.

In Gwoza and other Boko Haram blighted parts of the North East of Nigeria, the culture is that men are massacred and women spared to dig the grave and bury the bodies of their men as a routine.

That she lived in the innermost part of hell after members of the terrorist group captured their village in Gwoza, Borno State, might be an understatement, as she did not only witness the brutal killings of her beloved ones, she was conscripted by circumstance to bury their bodies. They kill the men but because only the women were left, they could not stand the debilitating stench from the decomposing bodies of their loved ones scattered all over the town. The women therefore,  deviced the service of burying the dead bodies because the killers only fell them and went their ways.

To adhere to this brief, she was meant to dig the graves and bury about 40 bodies of her kinsmen and relatives slaughtered by Boko Haram. Many of the bodies she interred were already decomposed and in bad shape.

At the last count, she had buried over 40 and when she could no longer stand the horror, until she and other captured villagers escaped to Adamawa, where they lived in one of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), camps before she got free transport that brought her to Abuja.

Today, she and some other escapees from the North East, live at the Dagba Village, near the Area 1 Church Village in Garki.

New life in Dagba

A mother of five, Hajia Hauwa Dauda, who now lives from hand to mouth having lost all that she had, lives in one of the makeshift buildings with two of her children.

Even though life has not been easy especially when she has to cater for herself and her two children, Hauwa, says she is happy to be away from the heavy gunfire and free from the horrible sight of the Boko Haram boys who patrol the their villages with heavy weapons.  And most of all, she says she is happy for escaping the gory sight of how these insurgents slaughter their fellow human beings especially the men. Before the crisis in Gwoza, the young woman was doing pretty well in her little enterprise and well off in her own standard with a modest transportation business with two tricycles (Keke NAPEP)

She also operated a little business with grinding machines for grains from her shop where she sold daily need food items.

Impoverished

But all she had gathered to make a living came crumbling soon after the terrorists invaded their village. That is how she lost all that she had laboured for.

Hauwa Dauda who vends food at a spot in Dagba Village told Abuja Metro how she had in the past lived in Lagos, Port Harcourt and some other cities and later relocated to her village to settle down but got chased out by the terrorists.

In a culture where women have no business engaging in the burial of corpses, which is strictly for men, this woman has not only engaged in burying the bodies of her loved ones, but also turned a grave digger as a duty alongside other women since most of the men of their village had been killed while the few that managed to survive escape for dear life leaving only the women and children.

And so with no men in the village and several dead bodies littered all around, Hauwa and her fellow women decided to take the bull by the horn, to give their dead relatives and fellow villagers a befitting burial even though she said they could not dig the grave as deep as it should.

Narrating her ordeals in the hands of the deadly terrorist group, she said: “I am a native of Gwoza town, in Borno State and I have lived in Dagba for about three months now.

“I had to escape from my village following the invasion by the Boko Haram terrorist group. I have lived in Lagos where I did business and also in Port Harcourt, before I finally decided to return home. I am married, and I had five children but three of them are dead, not as a result of Boko Haram, while two are alive, a boy and a girl.

After relocating to my village having stayed out for so long, I engaged in businesses that will bring me money so I bought three Keke Napep.  I also bought big grinding machine which I used to grind grains and other things.  I also had a provision shop and was doing well and living peacefully until Boko Haram took over our village.

Death to all men

It was a terrible thing because they killed our boys and our men randomly. Sometime they shot them with guns, and at other times they kill them with cutlass as if they were goats.

It was really terrible because they killed our young men daily for the slightest offense of not respecting them and so when the thing got too much, some of them decided to escape from the village. They used to carry heavy guns patrolling the village without any molestation and go into houses to search for men and if they find any, they kill them within seconds.

They did not engage in killing the women and so when all the men ran away, it remained only the women and the children and dead bodies littered everywhere.

Sometime we do not come out of our houses for five days for fear of being killed or beaten and when we feel that the town is a little bit safe, we come out to get fresh air.

In the four or five days that we stay inside our house because of fear, we don’t sleep, we just stretch ourselves on the wall and remain like that until whenever God hears our prayers.

Endless horror

And each time we came out, we would discover so many dead bodies in every corner of the village. Some would have been there for over one week and since there were no more men in the village and the insurgents were  only interested in killing but not burying, we the women decided to start burying the bodies of those killed.

We start by digging the ground and carry the bodies to the grave. I never got involved in burying any dead body earlier. But I had seen where dead bodies are buried, so I used the picture of what I have seen and put it to practice.

Asked if they carry out the usual rituals of bathing the corps or holding funeral service before they bury these bodies, she said “where is the time to do all these? All we are interested in is to bury the bodies as fast as we can.

I alone counted about 40 dead bodies that I buried apart from the ones that other women and I buried jointly. The situation was so bad that when we saw that we were not making headway in the mass burial task as a team, we  had to split and did it individually.

Tired of burial

We lived constantly in panic until one day when I joined other villagers to escape. We escaped through the bush and trekked for three days and three nights to Madagali, and other villages until we got to Adamawa from Gwoza.

When we got to Adamawa, we were taken to a camp where we stayed for some days and from there they provided us with government transport that brought us to Mararaba, and dropped us there that we will be safe.

I stayed at Mararaba for some days before I heard about this place, Dagba, and that most of the people here are from Gwoza, so I decided to come down here with my two children.

For now I cannot say things are easy with me having lost everything that I had, but I thank God that I have peace here and so to keep body and soul together and to be able to provide for my children, I sell cooked food. I sell beans and rice and it is not much because the people buy on credit, they don’t pay cash because they too are not finding things easy.

I cook only one mudu of beans and rice because I cannot afford a huge quantity. And it is from what I cook that I and my children feed, so life has not been easy.

But I pray that peace returns to my village so I can go back home because there is nowhere like home. Even though I have lost everything that I have, I know that I can bounce back if normalcy returns to our village.

I am also appealing to the government to please assist some of us with whatever they can so we can start life all over again.

Look at the kind of place that I live in with my children, it is not good enough, compared to what I have in the village but I just have to manage in the situation.