Three of the abducted Chibok girls, Mercy, Sarah and Deborah are now
in High School at Canyonville Christian Academy, in Oregon,USA.. They
were among the lucky few who escaped Boko Haram captivity .. Grace who
slept through the sounds of gunfire in the night, was awoken when her
roommate Mary prodded her, “Get up!” Grace said.. “They said they were
soldiers. They said they were there to protect us, “They told us all to
stay together.” Terrified, the girls did as they were told. On the way,
they began shouting, “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” It means “God is
great” in Arabic. They lit the office on fire. “We realized they were
impostors,” . “They were not there to help us.” But it was too late to
run. The girls were forced into trucks at gunpoint. She told Mary she
had a plan: She would ask the men if she could go to the bathroom — in
the bush — and then run. Mary wasn’t sure if that was such a good idea.
The men were escorting girls to thebush and could shoot them dead. “I
decided I would rather die trying to escape than be killed by these
men.” She stuck to her plan, running for her life. As she crashed
through the dense, thorny forest, she had no idea where she was going.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see other girls fleeing as well —
shooting off in all directions. Mary was one of them. She had decided
to run after all. But Mary was running in the opposite direction of
Grace. Mercy jumped off a speeding truck as the terrorists drove the
girls to the camp, taking the chance that she might break her legs when
she slammed to the ground. She found her way back to Chibok, hiding in
the bush along the way. I pray to God to forgive them and cure their
hearts,” she says in her native language. “I do not want revenge.” Sarah
was staying with a friend nearby to help with a wedding, she woke in
the night to the sound of men shouting as they torched the school. The
next morning, she went to the charred grounds. “No one is there,” she
says. “They are all gone.” Among the missing was her cousin Mercy — the
same Mercy here in Canyonville. Sarah and her relatives feared they
would never see her again. “Everyone is asking ‘Where is Mercy? Where is
Mercy?’ My grandmother, cry, cry, cry,” she says. She dissolves into
tears. “I don’t like to talk about Boko Haram. They are bad people,” she
says. “Sometimes when you sleep, you dream about them. The girls will
be in Canyonville for two years,where it costs around $40,000 a girl per
year for housing, tuition, and other expenses,
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