13 year old Larama unburied her 10 year old brother, Ibrahim, carried him on her back, brought him to safety after he was struck in the head with a matchet by Boko-Haram insurgent, buried and left for dead.
Ibrahim and his father were tending their cattle in the outskirts of a border village in Borno state when insurgents struck. His father was killed, his throat cut just in front of little Ibrahim. Devastated, Ibrahim fell on his dad’s body and wept. Not yet done, one of the insurgent struck Ibrahim’s skull with a matchete. He fainted and was left for dead. When he came back to consciousness, he dragged himself under a tree and laid helplessly. The insurgents however came back, dug a hole, threm him in it and covered it hurriedly.
His mom and other siblings at the border had no peace. 2 days after, his grandmother and Larama, his 13 year old sister came to look for him and the dad. The village had been razed, Larama and searched and was tired. She sat under a tree to rest and a buzz of flies caught her attention. “It was a human being with the part of the head surfacing above the sand. I was scared, I took courage. I tried to talk to him but he was just nodding. I asked if it was the ‘boy’, because ‘boy’ is my brother’s nickname – he nodded. There was the wound on his head and bloodstains all over his face.
Larama dug him out of the sand and carried him on her back to the village having to tell everybody ‘boy’ isn’t dead. It took over four months for Ibrahim to recover in a hospital in Koza, Cameroon. His family has since moved to a shelter camp in Minawao Camp, Cameroon with some other 30,000 Nigerian refugees.
Please take a picture of Larama and Ibrahim here.
https://tracks.unhcr.org/2015/