To Save Her Children, She Pretended To Be Crazy
Ingenuity, inspiration, an elaborate ruse and a touch of madness. That's what it took for Zainabu Hamayaji to protect her family from Boko Haram.
The terror network in northeast Nigeria has killed 20,000 people, abducted thousands more and driven more than 2 million people from their homes during its eight-year insurgency. The 47-year-old mother of ten — four biological and six orphaned children ranging from age 5 to 15 — had to feign insanity to keep the insurgents away.
Her priority, during a hellish period under Boko Haram occupation, was to hide her 11-year-old daughter, Hassana Isa, because she'd heard fighters were in town looking for girls to marry.
"I was told Boko Haram was approaching and looking for young girls," she says. "Someone had tipped them off that I had a daughter of marriageable age, but I swore to myself
