You used to spend long days on the farm, planting a variety of crops and bringing home a full harvest. Now, you work only a few hours under the watch of soldiers. You can’t go far from town, and you can’t plant tall crops anymore because they can conceal terrorists.

So you plant only beans and groundnuts, but the yield is never enough. And each time you step onto the farm, you know you might hear gunshots, and you would have to run for your life.

You flee for your life when Boko Haram attacks your hometown in Adamawa, northeastern Nigeria. By the time you return, a neighbour had already begun building on your family compound.

When you protest, he bribes the authorities and dismisses you, telling you that you have no one to inherit the home. Your son, who used to be your main caretaker, went missing during the war, and you have not heard from him since.

Which weighs more heavily: grieving a missing loved one without knowing if he is alive or dead, or facing daily struggles that come with losing your caretaker? Either way, the consequences are crushing. So how do you cope with grief, poverty, and injustice, all at once?

You are at home, preparing for a quiet evening after your night prayers. Life is hard, but at least your family is together. Then, without warning, armed men storm into your village. They yell commands you can barely process.

Panic sweeps through your body like fire. You run into the darkness, heart pounding, hoping, praying to escape. But the night offers no shield. They find you. They drag you out. And from this moment, life as you knew it changes entirely.

This episode of Vestiges of Violence tells the story of Huraira and her days in captivity.

You’re at home with your husband and four children, preparing lunch like any other day. Then armed terrorists surround your town.

They storm homes, steal farm produce, and kill anyone who resists. You flee into the bushes, scattering with your loved ones in different directions. When the dust settles, you are told your husband’s body has been found. Home is no longer safe, so you leave to start over. But what would starting over look like?

The most precious thing a war can take is a loved one. Sometimes, the violence is even more brutal when it offers no closure: no corpse to pray over, no grave to visit. When someone you love goes missing, and after years of not knowing and not hearing from them, you still hope for a reunion; it becomes a slow, painful wait.

But what happens when it has been over a decade of waiting, and your memories feel like the only proof that they ever existed? What do you do when there is no proof of life?

You are married to a soldier with whom you’ve built a life and raised six children. Then, one day, he is deployed to war and never returns. Years later, as insurgency threats start to surface in your city, your son steps on a bomb that explodes.

You’re uncertain whether he will survive, and you rush him to a hospital in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, hoping to give him a fighting chance.

A decade later, you still cannot return home. The insurgency remains relentless. Now, you are being evicted from the settlement camp where you’ve stayed for years. What do you do? Where do you go?

You are a single mother of eight, raising your children in an IDP camp in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory after fleeing a brutal attack by the Boko Haram terror group.

The makeshift school offers little hope for your children’s education, and your once-thriving food business barely keeps you afloat now. Aid is dwindling, and your needs keep growing.

How do you cope with the demolition threats to your camp, your son's arrest, and the confiscation of bikes meant to provide income, when every attempt to build a better life feels futile?

What do you do when your son is abducted by Boko Haram and groomed to fight for them, while you face eviction in your home?

For #IWD2025, #VOV follows the life of Ya Hauwa, who rose to becoming the only woman working as a house agent in Borno, northeastern Nigeria.