IFEANYI ESIMAI

Sambisa Escape

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A work of fiction inspired by the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram.

 

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears. At Akarika girls secondary school, something went terribly wrong.”

 

Ngozi Balogun Bashiru became an orphan for the third time by the age of six. Taken in by an uncle, she cooked, cleaned, and washed; her transformation from cousin to servant complete by her sixteenth birthday.

 

 After a domestic spat, she’s had enough and runs away from home, but soon learns that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. She is taken captive, and the freedom she desperately sought wrenched from her grasp.

 

  Now, Ngozi must dig deeper inside herself to find answers before it’s too late, and her voice and that of those that matter to her are silenced forever.