The Orange Ribbon.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.

There are times when life will choke your neck and make you say “Ah ahn,” like one who hands a bite of food to a friend who snatches it, devours it all in your presence, and kicks you a forever taste of their shit-stained shoe.

That evening, I was pushed beyond my limits. Remembering it now, I am still pushed beyond my limits.

To take you down memory lane, let me introduce some backstory.

On the 13th of May, 2023, I came to Nigeria with a plan to spend two months, based on the flight tickets I bought, but something happened mid-plan that extended my stay to four months.

It all started six weeks after I arrived, 2 weeks before my supposed return to the U.S. — in case you were wondering.

My cousins and I had ‘flenjo’d’ all the time. They were the ones who finished my money, and for our rescue plan, we hatched to go to Abuja to lounge in their parents’ big mansion for a week.

The problem came in planning our trip. The plane tickets were too expensive, 150k per person, and in struggling times, it was highly unwise.

So we chose the less expensive route.

We ordered a Prado jeep for rent and managed to bribe two Policemen in a squad car to follow us all the way. Give or take, everything was 180k, meaning we saved 170k — such brilliant economics.

I and my cousins, Uchenna and Ada, and one other guy were set to travel to Abuja, but five days before our travel, their friend, Jimoh, left for Okene because of a wedding, and on our way, we were meant to pick him up.

The journey was smooth all through, we sang and listened to Burna Boy, and the police helped us go easy through search checkpoints.

But when we got to Okene, we found the location for the wedding to be not wedding-like because we were waiting in front of bush for the Jimoh doofus guy.

The seriousness of the matter did not reach us untill thirteen gunmen jumped out from the bushes and scattered the brains of the policemen with multiple bullets.

They started shouting at us in languages beyond comprehension. The fear that swallowed me paved way to fear for my cousins.

I know how situations like these can be, the worst things that could happen are exact and unpredictable, so I mouthed to them as we were dragged away, “Pray, pray, pray,” in the Nigerian style of surviving hard times.

We were taken deep inside the bush to join four other captured souls.

These ones had eyes that were bent, could not make direct contact, shrill thin hands, dry black lips, sunken gazes and darkened over-darkened skins that may have been dipped in charcoal.

They didn’t know how to react to their new kidnappees, so they waited till all things had settled down a bit, and after some weeks, I couldn’t blame them because we started to resemble their colour and attitude.

We were taken deeper into the bush to a settlement with IDP camp tents, those ones with serial numbers on them. (Do your research.)

I noticed their language to be Niger or Fulani, but it was too hard to place, and I know Hausa well because I stayed in Kano when I was smaller than my knees.

They spoke a bit, and separated, eight one way, and five with us. They were all holding massive AK-47s, and from the way they ended those policemen, it was obvious they felt five was enough to rattle us with fear, or maybe they needed eight guys to kidnap more people.

The fact was that they hardly fed us, we ate fruits most of the time, twice, on a very good day. Once, I think someone celebrated a birthday, and we were given biscuit. But we barely had food or water.

But before it happened that we were waking up in the mornings with dry throats that were empty of life till a fruit maybe passed through our lips. We were first given a phone to call our loved ones, who were warned of our death with any involvement of the police.

Their ask was simple. 10 million Naira per head to a total of 30 million naira. Not bad for 180k, eh?

Our parents could not take that money out of their savings without being debtors or sacrificing their retirement plans, and it was hard to negotiate because the only guy who could speak English got confused a lot, and was never ready to argue.

His solution was to make a threat, “I kill you, I kill them, I kill everybody.”

Then he shouted his language in crazy spurts, and cut the call before he received any response.

I imagined, on the other end, the worried faces and dashed hopes, and this produced a lot of constraints because 30 million Naira is not chicken change.

It’s the type of cool cash that turns a fairly rich family into broke. And by this, I mean a family rich off daily labour and pensions, not big business ideas, or even fraud.

So this ask was too much, and I lost hope in rescue. I only turned to God, like a Nigerian man.

And this tirade went on, we watched these guys who seemed quite young, at least looked younger than me, dance to radio tunes, smoke weed, and barely eat anything but fruits.

“Where was all this money going?” I thought.

I prayed and prayed and prayed but on one of those tired cold nights — for there was no blanket, and no fire — two guards came towards my cousins.

It was like our co-kidnapees knew what time it was for they bent their heads and hid their eyes.

I used the moment to surmount all my courage, I prayed to God, “Please don’t let this happen.”

They came even closer and rubbed Ada’s leg. I coughed and one of them winked at me as if motioning me to try my best and stop them.

I had to do something, I had to act, but I prayed again. “Lord, please free these young girls. They have long lives ahead, please don’t let this happen. Don’t let their state of mind be broken even further.”

But, in front of me, they were already kissing Uchenna’s shoulders. I begged under my breath, “Lord, give me strength.”

I raised my hands in front of them — you know that pose you see in American movies when a policeman says freeze? That’s how I moved between them and my cousins. “Please,” I begged, without spitting out the words.

A rush ran up to my head as the butt of an AK-47 crashed into me with the motion of a baseball swing aiming for a home run.

I crashed to the floor like a fridge falling over, stiff and lost, seeing stars in their multitude. (Let me say something about stars, they don’t come out in their usual bright shining way, they are smaller like ants or a rush of mosquitoes, and they don’t brighten the darkness you see when you get knocked out.)

In my delirium, I could only hear a rage of shouting languages which I could not understand and which was zoning in and out of my ear like a bunker alarm.

I did not know what to do, nor what to say, and could not feel anything except the pain.

So I started shouting.

“Jesus is Lord. Praise be to God. Alhamdulilah. Praise be to God.”

Then I noticed a silence, slowly I was coming to be, and when my eyes opened, I saw the back of the two men walking away in blurred vision.

I could only hear my cousins surround me and help me rest. Uchenna even placed me on her lap to soothe the pain.

From that day on, our co-kidnapees started talking to us. One guy had applied for a job from Lagos to Abuja. He had used the plane to come over, but the Uber from the airport brought him straight to a bush of gunmen — his first time in Abuja.

His name was Clinton, dark, and very handsome. I couldn’t believe how attractive he’d be if he had not been forced to a fruit diet.

He was the life of the party, and at a point, I felt that my cousin Ada was feeling him.

He spoke about his Dad being a local government chairman, and he expected him to pay the 10 million on his head.

Three days later, the only English-speaking kidnapper, directed his father to drop the funds with their contact outside the forest.

We were all happy for him and a little bit envious, but on the day of his release, something unexpected happened.

All we heard was a discussion between the English-speaking kidnapper and someone who seemed to be Clinton’s father on the phone.

The kidnapper was enraged.

Apparently, his contact outside had found a tracker inside the bag of cash dropped by Clinton’s father.

With another shout of, “I kill you, I kill me, I kill everybody,” he dragged Clinton by his hair and shot him dead in front of our eyes.

From that period, the quiet that dwelled over us was deafening, settling on the air, resting in our hearts.

We could not mourn properly, we were afraid for ourselves, for what did we really know about Clinton apart from what he told us?

No one talked to each other again, and I assumed it was so the next death may not be as painful.

We continued onwards with our fruit diet, and I started losing faith in my prayers. I could see the bone in my belly which once had abs.

One morning, around 6am, just as the morning light was coming up, I woke up with a sudden urge to shit. It felt like a crazed force had descended over me, and with the cold, and the harshness of the terrain, I could only signal to one of our kidnappers who was awake, for his aid.

He walked with me, till we moved to enough distance for privacy. The shit came out with a force, and I felt a harsh pain in my anus. It felt like I had developed a pile from our fruit diet.

I swore and cursed, asking why in my mind. Why God? Why after all my faithfulness. The suffering, the hunger, the fear were not enough, why add this bodily pain to my troubles?

Right at that moment, as I stood up to wipe my butt with a leaf, I noticed an orange ribbon that caught sharply the corner of my eyes.

There was nothing special about it. It looked old, worn out, depleted, and the yarn was already escaping from the thread.

But then, my ears opened. I realised that while I was sitting, and thinking of my severe predicament, the kidnapper watching me had started a phone call.

He was talking to a woman - his girlfriend - and he was angry at her, he was pained by her behaviour, he was cussing her, but what was most spectacular about this was I could hear him, I could understand him, for he was speaking Hausa. The same Hausa I had learnt as a child in Kano.

The joy within me erupted because, through my years in Kano, I had learnt that when the Hausa man found an outsider speaking his tongue, he became calmer to him, became filled with admiration, and interested in his welfare since learning his language also meant you were interested in him.

I immediately blurted out, “Dan uwa, kada mace ta damu da kai.” — “Brother, don’t let woman worry you.”

He quickly turned to me with a kind of surprise, something close to confusion, like he was considering whether I deserved a slap, or if he should just ignore my words and continue his conversation.

After a short pause, he replied, “Amma ka sani, idan babu mata, menene namiji zai kasance?” — “But you know, without women, what will a man be?”

From then on, we developed a friendship, and I learnt that one of the things men can easily bond over is the hardship each of us suffers at the hands of women.

This friendship saved me a lot, as the barrier of communication now became broken. Through him, I was able to negotiate for a lower price. Of course, this came after long weeks of interactions and bonding, four weeks after I caught sight of the orange ribbon.

Finally, we were released to our parents, and we paid 12 million in total, four million per head.

There were more difficulties I experienced in that time, but for the sake of my trauma, this is all I will share.