A review by liralen
The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria by Helon Habila
3.0
The Chibok Girls covers, in brief, the events of April 14, 2014, when nearly three hundred girls were kidnapped in Nigeria. The kidnapping spawned a 'bring back our girls' campaign, but as of late 2019 more than a hundred of the kidnapped girls are still missing—in some cases still captive, in others dead.
Habila comes at the events as a reporter, digging into Nigeria's history to explain the rise of Boko Haram. It's a really useful background. That said, the title of the book is misleading: it's not about the girls. It's not even really about the kidnapping. At the very very end of the book, Habila talks about a chance he had to sit down with three of the kidnapped girls, who managed to escape the night of the kidnapping:
I assume that Habila simply didn't have that kind of access—he talks about the hoops he had to jump through just to do the on-the-ground research he was able to do for this book. When he visited Chibok, the town was still under heavy guard and journalists weren't welcome. In some ways Habila was in a good position to write a book about Boko Haram and the Chibok kidnappings (having grown up in Nigeria, he was familiar with the area and the cultures, but he also had outside perspective and resources), but in other ways...perhaps someday one of the girls who escaped later will be in a position to write a book, or a journalist will tell the stories of the girls and their families and as much as can be known of what has become of them. In the meantime...this is useful, but mostly for background.
Habila comes at the events as a reporter, digging into Nigeria's history to explain the rise of Boko Haram. It's a really useful background. That said, the title of the book is misleading: it's not about the girls. It's not even really about the kidnapping. At the very very end of the book, Habila talks about a chance he had to sit down with three of the kidnapped girls, who managed to escape the night of the kidnapping:
There was really nothing new in their story. Except for the particular details, it was the same story I had read in the papers, the same story told by the girls in America in their various interviews. They woke up to sounds of gunfire, they were herded into trucks, and they jumped off and ran into the night. There was nothing more to tell. Surely, their interviewers must tell themselves, there had to be something more some individual act of valor, some unique observation? But there wasn't. The shocking banality of it.
Hauwa, Ladi, and Juliana were ordinary girls, young enough to be my daughters, who had been raised to almost mythic status by their extraordinary experience. The same could even be said about many Boko Haram members, who were ordinary boys in dirty shirts and slippers, shooting at whatever they were told to shoot at by their handlers. ... Hauwa, Ladi, and Juliana were ordinary girls who had taken a leap of faith off that truck and into the night, and that had made the difference between them and those who were taken. Like most things in life, it all came down to chance, opportunity, and desperation. There was no single explanation. (109)And...gosh, my feelings are mixed. On the one hand, no, these three probably have no more story about the day of the kidnapping than they've already told. On the other hand, if a book is indeed meant to be about the girls in question...there are a lot more stories to tell. I knew nothing, going into the book, about the lives of the girls at the girls' secondary school in Chibok—their lives at school or their lives at home, their personalities, their families, anything like that. And...I know nothing more about their lives, having finished the book.
I assume that Habila simply didn't have that kind of access—he talks about the hoops he had to jump through just to do the on-the-ground research he was able to do for this book. When he visited Chibok, the town was still under heavy guard and journalists weren't welcome. In some ways Habila was in a good position to write a book about Boko Haram and the Chibok kidnappings (having grown up in Nigeria, he was familiar with the area and the cultures, but he also had outside perspective and resources), but in other ways...perhaps someday one of the girls who escaped later will be in a position to write a book, or a journalist will tell the stories of the girls and their families and as much as can be known of what has become of them. In the meantime...this is useful, but mostly for background.