TRIBUNE
It has been nearly a year since 26-year-old Rabiat left the Boko Haram enclave she was held in for close to a decade.
In her home in Maiduguri, the northeast Nigerian city at the heart of 15 years of fighting by the armed group, the mother of three ruminated on life as a free woman.
Rabiat, whose name has been changed for her safety, was one of 276 girls abducted by Boko Haram fighters from their school in the town of Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014, in what was Nigeria’s most high-profile mass abduction case.
About 90 of them are still missing. Fifty-seven escaped as they were being carted off to the group’s base in the vast, ungoverned Sambisa Forest 60km (40 miles) southeast of Maiduguri.
From 2016 to 2017, 108 were rescued by the Nigerian military or freed through prisoner swaps while about 20 more, including Rabiat, returned in the past two years.
Like many others who have escaped harrowing conditions in Boko Haram hideouts, the girls-turned-women now face a different type of challenge: the struggle to restart their lives when so much has changed.
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