“If you want a happy ending,

that depends, of course, on

where you stop your story.”

– Orson Welles

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Nigerian Girl

by Akin

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The Nigerian Abduction:

82 Chibok Girls Released

by Kendall F. Person

Flight or Fight

When blue skies give way to rolling black clouds and howling winds drown out the sounds of the city, we know a storm approaches, so we race to safety. Driving across the tracks, lights and sounds of an approaching locomotive, sends alerts from the brain down to our feet, triggering an immediate reaction of pedal to the metal. And when we hear the sound of glass shattering, we know we are in danger and are bodies either stiffen with panic or strengthen from a rush of adrenaline.

Flight or fight, a psychological reaction occurring in response to a perceived harmful event, attack or threat to survival. It allows the ability to mount a defense or counterattack. If it is nature’s wrath upon us, flight or fight reasons, that even the strongest man could not out box a hurricane Katrina, so the flight indicator is selected….then we run.

But even our natural-born instincts have their hacks. Cunning, patient and misguided sense of entitlement, people who take what they want, but only from those that are defenseless, blindsided or both. They infiltrate the immediate surroundings, blending in with the appearance of the average man. Crafty, shifty, cunning, lying low like a tiger, analyzing the environment, prepared to pounce. Sociopathic, brainwashed, terrorist, a bad person or dead inside, the actual definition or plea, makes no difference to their victims or a humane society, when they ambush innocence: stealing the fight, then blocking exits to prevent flight.

April 13, 2014 Chibok Nigeria

He Abubakar Shekau orchestrated the kidnapping of 276 young girls from a Nigerian Secondary School in a rural part of the country by them Boko Haram, a terrorist group if there ever was one. The Chibok girls – as they have come to be known – were just students, kids learning from their teachers arithmetic and writing, having no idea that hell was on the horizon.

Killing two guards in a lengthy gunbattle, Boko Haram then took what did not belong to them, then beat their chest in a mock bravado, with the audacity to invoke the name of Allah “There is a market for selling humans. Allah commands me to sell.” All the world could do was wonder and hope that time would not run out; and #BringBackOurGirls rung out around the globe.

3 years later

As it turns out, the April 13 2014 Chibok girls abduction was big enough to bring an ongoing Nigerian problem to the world’s attention. But according to Amnesty International, about 2000 boys, girls and women have been kidnapped by Boko Haram in the same time period, with many used as sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers. Nonetheless, the families and nation must be overjoyed to know they are alive and home. But the reality is clear: school girls before their brazen and merciless kidnapping – but now, some are mothers, and others, according to reports, appear to be traumatized and shellshocked, unable to talk about the atrocities endured.

But they survived. And we hope they are able to heal, from an unimaginable ordeal.

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To our many neighbors and friends in Lagos, please feel free to express your thoughts in the The Neighborhood forum below or on post in The Neighborhood facebook. Much love, more hope and most prayers, that the rest of the girls are brought home safely and that this story within their story finds a happy end.

— The Neighborhood

References

When the Abuse Stops, The Neighborhood

VOA Africa

BBC News Africa

Al Jazeera

Amnesty International