MY ACCOUNT
At A Glance:
Violent attacks by Boko Haram forced Esther's family to flee their village in Nigeria. Young Esther struggled, yet practical support and spiritual care brought her to a turning point. Esther completed her teaching degree and returned to the IDP camp where she had lived to equip the next generation.
Betrayed by a Neighbor
For many years, Esther lived a peaceful life in her hometown of Gwoza in Nigeria’s Borno State.
“We farmed, ate, and drank. We were active in the church as well. I was involved in the choir and [helped] as the church secretary. That was life,” Esther says. Her father was a pastor, and Esther was raised in Christ, following God from childhood.
But when Boko Haram terrorists attacked to her village, Esther’s peaceful life flipped upside down.
At first, the raid was just a rumor, Esther explains. The townspeople – nearly all Christians – were told soldiers were coming to protect them. But instead a fellow villager had betrayed them: “We thought they were soldiers, but people began shouting … they are Boko Haram. Before we could realize and run, people had already been killed.”
At the time, Esther, her husband, and their seven children lived with her husband’s parents. Her father-in-law stayed behind to drive their cattle and was killed.
“They slaughtered him. It was my mother-in-law who buried him. The head was separate.”
Before morning, she adds, everyone had fled.
In Search of Refuge
Stories like these are all too common in northern Nigeria.
The country’s Christian population is highly concentrated, which makes it a target for extremist groups like Boko Haram, which wants to establish an Islamic state. They have burned churches, destroyed villages, and killed and abducted thousands of believers.
The path for Esther and her family led next to an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in Cameroon, the country that borders Nigeria to the east. On the way, they slept inside a mountain cave for two weeks.
The terrorists fired tear gas into the cave. If they hear someone cough, they’ll go and kill them,” Esther says. “But God protected us and that didn’t happen to us.”
In the middle of the night, the family came down from the mountains and walked for an entire day – even “step by step” through the pitch dark – until they reached Cameroon.
“Oh! We really suffered in Cameroon,” Esther recalls. “We sleep outside in the open, even the ground you lie on is full of worms. No mat, nothing at all.”
‘We really suffered in Cameroon. We sleep outside in the open, even the ground you lie on is full of worms. No mat, nothing at all.'
— EstherA Return to Rebuild
After a year, Esther decided to return to Nigeria to reunite with her mother-in-law and with two of her children who had left to attend university. She has now been back in Nigeria for 13 years.
When they first arrived at the camp where they currently live, there was no food and no money for farming. But now, Esther says, “God has begun to open ways.”
A Global Christian Relief local partner provided practical support and spiritual care. Through their youth empowerment program, she received not just the financial means to continue her education, but something perhaps more valuable: a renewed sense of purpose. Esther completed her teaching degree and returned to the camp to teach middle school students.
Today, Esther is able to provide for her family and pay her children’s school fees. With the help of a loan she received, she supports her husband’s farming activities, teaches in the local school, and sells goats at the market. “I can only be thankful. There is progress indeed,” Esther says.
And even now, though her life looks very different from how it once did, Esther still has peace in her heart.
“Sometimes, when you hear that fighting has started somewhere, your mind begins to wonder what’s happening. But here, for us, it’s peaceful. The children in the school, I tell them to hold firmly to the words of God. We should endure, because as we know, we have already been taught.”
Esther now can think about her children’s futures. She hopes to send them to school, buy them a piece of land – and teach them the Word of God.
“As for Jesus,” Esther says, “there is no leaving Him, no matter what.”
Read more: How education empowered Esther's rebuilding her life.
