Boko Haram. - A gift from darkness: how I escaped with my daughter from Boko Haram

Ive only ever confided my plans to a few people. But now things are out in the open and I have to speak plainly, at least to my travel agent. I want to go to Maiduguri, I say, as non-chalantly as possible.

Where?

Maiduguri in Nigeria, I say, hoping faintly that the poor phone connection is the reason for her question.

Youre not serious, are you?

Sabine, the owner of the little agency in Munich, is used to me by now. Shes been booking my flights for years. And they have regularly taken me, as a journalist and an expert on Muslim terrorism and victim traumatization, to troubled regions of the world that no one would normally visit if they didnt have to. Sabine has organized my frequent trips to Afghanistan, Iraq or Africa without batting an eyelid. But shes unhappy about todays request.

Maiduguri airports been bombed, she informs me. As far as I know nobody flies there anymore.

Oh. I didnt know that. Is there a northbound bus connection?

Are you crazy? Its about six hundred miles away from Abuja. And anyway

Yes, youre right, I cut in. Sabine doesnt need to say any more. It would be too dangerous to drive through Nigeria by car. The A13, the main connection with the northern cities of the state of Borno, also lies on the road on which the terrorist group Boko Haram is active. It leads straight by the notorious Sambisa Forest. This swampland is where they have been holding the schoolgirls they abducted from Chibok, nearly seventy miles south of Maiduguri, in the spring of 2014, in an act that brought the terrorist militia into the worlds eye. Michelle Obama, then the First Lady of the USA, put herself at the head of the Bring Back Our Girls movement, with which parents are trying to free their children from the clutches of the terrorists. Am I going to have to forget my travel plans?

Let me just check, Sabine says. I hear her keyboard clicking. Hm, you might be in luck: the Nigerian company Medview recently started flying into Maiduguri again, but quite irregularly. The flight might be canceled or postponed at short notice if the security situation gets worse.

OK, great! I hear myself saying. Can you book them from here?

I can try. More clicking at the other end. It seems to be working, Sabine says. Do you want me to book it? Or just reserve it for now?

No, I say firmly. Ive been dithering for long enough. For over a year Ive been considering traveling to northern Nigeria. Since the Islamists of the Boko Haram sect in the north of the country began wreaking their havoc, and particularly since the kidnap of the Chibok schoolgirls, Ive thought more and more about interviewing the female victims of the terrorist group. For a foreigner, and a white-skinned woman, such a journey is an incredibly risky undertaking. But recently Ive found someone who knows the area to come with me: I can travel with Renate Ellmenreich, a retired Protestant vicar who lived there as a missionary years ago, and who still has good connections.

Im quite sure, I say to Sabine. Book two tickets for me.

About a month before this I met Renate for the first time at Berlins Central Station. Even though wed only previously spoken on the phone, I recognized her straightaway. She was wearing a tweed jacket and a huge pair of purple sunglasses. The sixty-five-year-old strode energetically toward me, her freshly blow-dried pageboy cut bouncing in rhythm. Im Renate, she said in her sonorous vicars voice.

When were sitting in a caf a few minutes later she tells me about her time in Nigeria. Around the turn of the millennium she and her husband were sent there by the mission in Basle. Renate was assigned to the station in Gavva, a small town at the foot of the Mandara Mountains, seventy kilometers southwest of Maiduguri. Her husband, Gunnar, took a similar job in Mubi, a little further to the south.

With a pencil, Renate does me a quick sketch of the area on a paper napkin. Gavvas here, she explains, and draws a rectangle toward the top left-hand side of the district. And this is the Sambisa Forest, about ten miles away as the crow flies. Im startled by the small distance between the two places. Renates chosen home in Africa is in the middle of the territory where the Islamic sect is terrorizing the population.