--- tags: HH23 --- # Gbemisola Lookbook HH23 ## key links * [Gbemisola's Google Drive Folder](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qmU3_AvDAemrVc93vc-tbrlaJ-4AHF8b?usp=sharing) * [Gbemisola's Airtable Record in the HH Base](https://airtable.com/appwIObT71aBHeEtu/tblS1resjotcEHRvc/viwQdnPbIlkZCWaW1/recSMLCFlQhOICkX3?blocks=hide) ## microproject docs * [HH Visual: Gbemisola - Photo Enhancing](/FlcT3SaRTqiNfvkd_-5wzQ) * [HH Visual: Gbemisola - Sites Map](/wig-apl2R4uhkMhLTxSfBQ) * [HH Visual: Gbemisola - Narrative Animation](/CnEWi27cRMSmh98JB2c1Dw) ## Text from Slack When you flee terror you do not run in a straight line. The decisions you make under this condition are not informed by months of strategy or planning, rather, you feel the rush of your breath as it pierces through your chest, rushing down your limbs, and giving strength to your feet. You flee what is definitely certain death, or a much worse fate - forced abduction. This terrifying thought pushes you to keep on moving; and to keep on living. Binta was engulfed in fear as she ran. All her thoughts were rolled into one: how to save herself, her son on her back, and her daughter cradled in her hand. She had heard about Boko Haram’s brutality in other places, but she did not believe she would be a victim. For her, home was no longer a place of safety but had instead become the mouth of a shark. And so she fled, on foot, to the capital city - Maiduguri - where her husband’s distant cousin lived, almost 155 kilometers away. It was where she would claim refuge. It was where she will be given a new identity: IDP - internally displaced person. An identity so foreign, so demeaning, that she rejected the idea of it. How is it possible that a woman like her, independent, a business owner, with a full life, with plans and dreams for her family, for her children, be labelled a destitute. But this identity became her reality in 2014 when her town, Gwoza, was invaded by heavily armed Boko Haram fighters. But in 2021, it is an identity she has made peace with and learned to accept. She remembers how her home town, Gwoza, a vibrant and thriving place nestled in the far southeastern region of Borno, and a well-known hub of trade and farming production, almost overnight had transformed to a caliphate of Boko Haram. Dressed in military fatigues, Boko Haram fighters ransacked the stores in the town. They pulled people out of their homes, beat them, and shot them. Boys and men were the first targets. They were forcefully conscripted or killed. Next, it was women and girls. They were targets of abductions. They were either forcefully married off to Boko Haram fighters, or compelled to be domestic slaves. In the frenzy of the attack, many fled, some ran through bush paths, others though rocky roads, to neighboring states. The rest went through dirt roads or highways, even crossing rivers to get to Cameroon. A few were not so lucky as they were trapped in Boko Haram claimed territories. People in villages a couple of kilometers away from Binta’s village, and who had heard about the terrifying ordeal some of their neighbors, friends, and relatives had suffered, decided not to wait their turn. They also fled. Though violence and death did not meet them in their homes, their lives were just as ruptured as they were forced to leave to places somewhat unfamiliar, and be helped by people of cultures unshared. As the attacks continued, the road away from home became the salvation for many people, as many of the towns and villages were emptied out, some before dawn. Violent displacement within national borders unsettles both the ‘natural’ and national order of things (Malkki 1998). In fact, the reality of the burden of trauma caused by displacement and borne by both adults and children, creates deep feelings of despair, not only in those who are enveloped in this condition, but also in those who experience displacement vicariously by witnessing or observing the plight of others. To deal with this intense feeling of discomfort and helplessness, we very often find ourselves driven by the impulse to lump the experiences of displaced people into mappable constructs in order to make the impact of displacement graspable, bearable, and understandable The form of displacement in northeast Nigeria, is arguably different from displacement in other places. Upon displacement IDPs here settle in any three different types of sites: camps, settlements, or host-communities. These disparate sites are anchored, in varying degrees, by state emergency agencies and humanitarian organizations that ‘manage’ the displaced and inject resources into the affected communities and local economies. As sites that differ in scale and infrastructure, they are home to a diverse array of local modes of philanthropy, enterprise, political representation, and organization. In addition, different forms of social relations – involving gender, age, ethnicity, and religion - emerge within and across them. To better elaborate, Camps are securitized sites directly organized and managed by state agencies and international aid organizations. Settlements are segregated ‘enclaves’ within established communities that are self-governing and self-protecting, and are sometimes recipients of aid. Host-communities are towns that accommodate about 60 percent of the population of IDPs. Some hosts are benefactors to IDPs, offering them free living spaces. A few are landlords of IDPs, and others are hosts who IDPs have familial relations or fictive kinship ties with . Transnational aid organizations and state agencies rarely engage with this population. Instead, private philanthropists and small local NGOs occasionally distribute relief resources to them. ### mk notes 20230210 - infographic element to ask about (with stats) - this project tracks trajectory of why people move to where they move to - do the move because of provisions of camp? - or to live amongst family? - map of nigeria - lean more into survival strategies - what becomes of their trajectory? -