The World Was in Our Hands

Chitra Nagarajan is a journalist and writer who writes on climate change, conflict, feminism, foreign policy, migration, Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad region, race and  sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. She has written for The Guardian, New Humanist, New Internationalist, This is Africa and Ventures Africa and appeared on Sky News and the BBC World Service. She co-edited She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak, a book of narratives published by Cassava Republic Press.

Introduction
1.       This is what has become of Maiduguri
2.      Not the society we want
3.      Let me leave now before they bring fight here
4.      The world was in our hands
5.      My whole life was their own
6.      Still hungry to survive
7.       I didn’t know what aikin Allah was but it sounded good
8.      Run and leave it for the child
9.      Because of climate change and because of conflict
10.   Freedom for me
11.    They prayed on me
12.   We take care of each other
13.   At least I have gotten my children
14.   If not, I would have died
15.   I believed we would change the world
16.   We decided, it’s life or death for us
17.   There is so much I do to avoid problems
18.   My life here does not have any sense
19.   We came to hate the whole society except them
20.  It felt good to have this power
21.   I have no freedom
22.  Any country with this level of insecurity is no longer a country
23.  Safely like before
24.  So different from the world we knew
25.  They were real elders - my future is with them
26.  Having a mind of my own
27.  We must stand up and fight for our rights
28.  To keep away the hopelessness
29.  Like the hameji of before
30.  I don’t think we are Nigerian
31.   I am like family to them and they will not abandon me
32.  Determined to do all I could to protect them
33.  The one who saved her daughter’s life
34.  How lucky he is to have me as a wife
35.  A job reserved for women
36.  If they just stopped stigmatising
37.   It was only for a moment I felt sad
38.  It seems that everyone is engaged in doing evil
39.  Nobody knows what happened to me in the bush
40.  To focus instead on the bright future ahead of me
41.   The bloodshed in this land
42.  The last time I saw my daughter
43.  What keeps women there
44.  The Borno we knew
45.  The way to regain peace
46.  I never expected war to be like this
47.  At least here, I have freedom
Acknowledgements