Our Lives in the Village

Amina was lucky to escape. Her grandmother, too old to move quickly, had to be left behind. The attackers were setting their homes ablaze, and Amina lost her grandmother to the fire. After hiding in the bush for three days with no food or water, a few of her family members fell ill. Distant relatives soon came to their aid, providing the traumatised family with sustenance.

After some time in their relatives’ care, Amina and her family returned to their burnt village to survey the damage and salvage what was left.

“When we ran away from our homes, we didn’t take anything along with us. We had left all our property, including our food, and they came and burnt them all so we found nothing at home when we returned. We were left with no food to eat.”

Homeless, her family, like many others in the village, had to wait until new homes were constructed for them. Some families had no houses constructed for them, and to this day remain without a home.

“Before the crisis, we had houses finished with a ceiling and a roof, but now we live in a house without a ceiling – only the roof that allows dust in.”

Many of Amina’s peers could not return to school due to the destruction of their property and modes of income. They were forced to drop out.

“Before now I used to go to school and I hawk fresh cow’s milk (nunu), but as a result of the crisis, now all I do is sit back at home.”

Drinking and cooking with unclean water caused many of them to fall ill, but the conflict has made it impossible for Amina’s community to use the resources of their neighbouring community in the same manner they did before the war.

“The way we lived in peace with one another before is not the same anymore, for example, we used to go for their ceremonies and they came for ours too but now the unity has been severed by the crisis– now if we took our cow’s milk to them, nobody would buy anymore because of the crisis. Even when we went to the hospital to seek medical attention, they did not attend to us.”

With no more farmland left to their name, Amina’s community now has to rent farmland to cultivate their crops for food to eat. Their way of life has been permanently changed, but Amina is determined to unite the communities once again in a bid for coexistence.

“I want us to come together to regain the peace and unity that was there amongst us before the crisis.”

Kashimana Jacob was only a teenager when the conflict between nomadic pastoralists and the sedentary farmers destroyed her life as she knew it. During 2014 to 2015, everything that was familiar to her went up in flames as the violence between farmers and herders escalated to a fever pitch. Homes, crops and shops were burnt to the ground, cattle were slaughtered, and the loss of human life was insurmountable.

After fleeing for their lives on foot to Asukunya, what was left of Kashimana’s family reached safety, but soon discovered a host of new challenges to overcome.

The aftermath was, in many ways, even more devastating.

Before the crisis began, families like Kashimana’s were earning a living through various businesses, and Kashimana had been attending school as any teenager would. Houses that were in the process of being built by the farmers were left, abandoned and unfinished, after the rampage. Now, with her parents’ livelihood up in flames, Kashimana’s family had no way of paying her school fees. Even the few crops they managed to grow were not harvestable, and could not be sold nor could they be consumed.

Hunger was also becoming a growing issue. Very little food could be grown after the farms and crops were destroyed, and healthcare – even for basic ailments – where also proving to be life threatening.

 “Before the crisis, the manure from the animals’ dung was used to fertilise our crops, and that gave us a good yield, but now that they are gone our yields are no longer good because we do not have fertile soil.”

What little food that was fit for consumption was sold in order to take sick children to the hospital for treatment. Kashimana’s mother, injured from a fall as she fled the violence in her hometown, was unable to see a doctor due to the family’s lack of income. All she could do was watch her condition worsen.

“After this crisis we don’t even have good healthcare centres here anymore, and some of the people that did come to treat us from time to time also stopped coming. They even stopped bringing medical drugs for us, so if someone should fall sick we can’t get drugs to treat that person and sometimes in the course of taking the sick person to a better healthcare centre, we lost that person in the process.”

During the crisis, some girls of Kashimana’s age went missing altogether. Some of the others decided to marry in order to escape poverty, but many of them contracted illnesses from their new husbands, and suffered abuse in their own households. Other girls fleeing from the crisis fell pregnant and would then have to undergo a risky abortion – some of which ended with the death of the pregnant teenage girl.

The lack of income and food were overwhelming enough, but the invisible suffering – mental trauma – would also go unaddressed.

 “This crisis has brought us serious challenges, like food scarcity and our brothers that we lost because of the crisis, are always fresh in our memories, and some of the young people in our communities can no longer go to school because the hardship is too much and their parents cannot afford their school fees.”

Kashimana also watches her parents struggle to make a living at a market that is no longer frequented by a decent number of visitors. They now sell firewood.

Through all of their hardships, Kashimana’s vision for the future of her community is simple.

“The government should provide us with good health facilities: fully equipped and with trained health personnel. They should provide security for our people so we can go back to our farms, and lastly they should build us a new school because the ones we had have been burnt down. They should be replaced so we can go back to school and also school fees should be reduced.”