Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

Sarah is Ya Ta’s best friend. They are always together and keep each other’s secrets. Sarah is the only person that Ya Ta has talked about her love for Success, and the girls often braid each other’s hair or pick fruit at the baobab tree together. When the girls are visiting Aisha one day and watching a romance film, Sarah sees the woman in the film acting with complete devotion and servitude for her husband and hopes to be like that one day. The moment is a dark foreshadowing of her later falling for the Boko Haram indoctrination.

At the camp, Sarah and Ya Ta stick together at first, but the longer that Sarah lives as Zainab, the more she becomes like a stranger to Ya Ta. She starts to fall in love with her new husband despite him being a stranger, the marriage being forced, and him being a member of a militant group. Ya Ta tries to be happy for Zainab but cannot bear it when Zainab starts defending Boko Haram’s murders and use of child soldiers. She eventually betrays Ya Ta and tells her husband that she is a blasphemer, which leads to Ya Ta being beaten and raped. Zainab ultimately agrees to wear a suicide vest and leaves on a truck despite Ya Ta’s protests, with the narrative implying that she will not return alive.

Ya Ta’s mama and papa are the pillars of her family and the ones who call her “Ya Ta.” Ya Ta’s father provides by farming and keeps the household order while her mother gets food, cooks, and cares for her children. Ya Ta’s mother’s main principle is her belief in gratitude. She has been through the deaths of several children and lived a difficult life, but she never forgets to thank God for what she does have. Ya Ta’s father is tied to his radio and a conservative man who expects obedience. Still, he is warm and sends his daughter to school, unlike most fathers in the area. Ya Ta’s favorite memories of her father are his tales by moonlight, in which he regales the folktales he was told by his own parents. Ya Ta’s father usually tells stories about the baobab tree and how it came to exist. When Boko Haram attacks, Ya Ta’s mother is safe in the city, but her father is shot in front of her, and she has no time to react or say goodbye. She does not reunite with her mother until after the story ends.

Aisha is one of Ya Ta and Sarah’s closest friends. She is married as a teenager and pregnant when the story begins. She does not attend school as her father-in-law forbids it, but she seems relatively happy in her new life. She is curious and always wants to know what her friends are learning about. When the girls are kidnapped and brought to the camp, Aisha tries to tell her friends to convert and tells them it won’t be as bad as they think. She is naïve and does not yet understand that Boko Haram is not the Islam she knows. Aisha readily eats the disgusting food and obeys orders, trying her best to fit in. Despite her efforts to comply and despite already following Islam, she is treated more horribly than her friends. She is raped and then dies during childbirth with no one to assist her. Ya Ta and Sarah have to lift Aisha’s body into a truck to be carted away, and she becomes only a memory after that.

Boko Haram is a militant jihadist group in Borno, Nigeria. Since the early 2000s, they have led a campaigns of violence against the Nigerian people, government, and neighboring countries to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state under Sharia law. Although Ya Ta’s story is a dramatized narrative, it composed from the real-life experiences of girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram and forced into slavery and marriage. Ya Ta witnesses one high commander of Boko Haram, Al-Bakura, kill several people in front of her. There are also Boko Haram women, particularly Amira and Fanne, who promote the movement and assist in converting the girls over to their side. While Amira teaches the Quran, Fanne teaches the girls how to become soldiers, wear a suicide bomber vest, and tempts them to her side with promises of better food and a safer life. She warns that anyone who does not keep their husband happy will not be pleasing Allah and tells the girls that wearing a bomb vest is a high privilege. Although the camp is infiltrated and many of the girls are rescued in the conclusion, Boko Haram continues to exist and has since committed more mass kidnappings. Organizations continue to call for more action by the Nigerian government to resolve this conflict.