Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 28
years afterwards, and it was not at all a surprise considering that Boko Haram means 'Western
education is forbidden'. In the light of the atrocities committed by Boko Haram, the loss of
my research station is, of course, a minor footnote in all of this. The whole circumstance has
now inspired me to safeguard as much of the Dghweɗe oral history as possible, and to retell it
in such a way that much of the authenticity contained in my fieldnotes is preserved. We see in
the chapter section 'For the survivors of today and the historians of tomorrow' how the
unfolding events have led me to the way I want to write. But first it is necessary to give a
background account of how some of the main events unfolded between 2010 and 2016.
Plate 1c: Dzga primary school indoors
Plate 1d: Dzga school outdoors, with Stella
During that last visit we were told that the local Muslim community had fortunately asserted
itself against a minority of youth who had come under the influence of fundamentalist
preachers. Quite some time before the 2009 crackdown, these preachers had come into the
mountains from outside the Gwoza area to preach radical Islam. The fact that they had
become increasingly influential was underpinned by various stories, including a public bookburning by radicalised girls at Dzga primary school.1
Plate 2a: Islamic teaching facility
Plate 2b: Teachings by radical preachers
During our visit we also went to see the now abandoned radical Islamic teaching facility high
up on the hillside of Ghwa'a (Plate 2a/b). On the way back a young man came to greet me,
only to disappear again. I had an odd feeling because it was strange that he had not come to
my house to greet me there, after all he was one of the talented children we had supported
with small grants a couple of years before. He was a Muslim boy who had converted to Islam
although his parents were still Traditionalists. We had made a particular point to be nondenominational with our little learning support charity, and were rather shocked by the
situation we encountered in December/January 2009/10. Whether the young man had at one
point become a sympathiser of the deadly Boko Haram ideology, and was now too
embarrassed to talk to me, being a white representative of Western education, I will never
know for sure. The young man himself had profited from our joint educational efforts.
1
Andrew Walker (2016:157ff) quotes my observations about the incident in his book Eat the Heart of
the Infidel by addressing the historical and cultural factors which drive insurgencies like Boko Haram.
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