By Barbara Goldberg
When you’re president of a safe water nonprofit that works exclusively in rural Niger, West Africa, and a visit is due, you plan the trip. When you’re assured ahead of time by your trusted partner, the large, security-conscious humanitarian organization, World Vision, that it’s safe to go, you don’t think twice.
But when Boko Haram crossed the border from Nigeria into Niger just a few weeks before my scheduled departure, I should have thought twice. I didn’t. Not even when my family and friends begged me to re-consider. I knew that the outbreak of fighting was far away from where we’d be and our partner assured us that I was correct in that assessment. I also knew that our small team of four women would be traveling with ten armed guards from the Nigerien military, with serious weapons and very serious faces. They protected our perimeter, wherever we went, whenever we moved. That never happened on previous visits to Niger which began in just six years ago. We walked the public markets freely, feeling no threat to our personal safety. Sadly, we were not allowed to do that on this trip.
Scary, huh. What was 73 year old woman doing in a place like this? Someone formerly from Park Avenue and now Bel Air going into remote African villages? It wasn’t exactly part of my life plan. Not something I envisioned doing in what are supposedly my retirement years. (I never retired.)
Back to the country of Niger. It’s strange to think that people working as an armed escort, up close and personal, are risking their lives to protect you. After two days, I felt compelled to thank them, not only for protecting us but for so much more. I told them that in our country, the newspapers reported on the terrorist activities of Boko Haram about once a week. The Niger military has committed to keeping them out of its country, to driving them out of the eastern villages that they recently occupied. I told them, “I know you’re doing this for the security of your country but, in reality, you are fighting for all of us–countries around the world who are threatened by random and unprovoked acts of terrorism on innocent people, many of them children. We all owe you a huge debt of gratitude.
So, did I feel at risk? Was I at risk? Not at the beginning. On the third day, unbeknownst to me, we were in an area of high risk. And we had stayed for too long. Long enough for word to have gotten out that foreigners were in the area and perhaps a good target. Our security team was uncomfortable, and so we left—abruptly. As we passed military checkpoints on our long drives to visit remote villages, we realized that this was a country on alert to attack—a country carefully monitoring the comings and goings along a road linked to Nigeria in the south. I hope that Boko Haram is wiped out in West Africa and especially Niger. The people in the rural villages live in dire poverty and have enough hardship in their daily lives, especially if they live without safe water.
