![\"Cragos\"](\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Cragos-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a>We met Ishaya at the temporary EYN headquarters in Jos this week. He\u2019s from a small city in northeast Nigeria, which, like most towns in the area, is surrounded by mountains.\u00a0 This town was first attacked by Boko Haram insurgents in August of 2014.\u00a0 Ishaya was with two of his friends during the attack, and they fled to the mountains together.\u00a0 The Nigerian army dropped bombs from airplanes and a helicopter, but never took control of the town.![\"Ishaya\"](\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ishaya-210x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen the bombing finally stopped, Ishaya and his friends returned to their city, where they found that his mother, sisters, and younger brother had not fled.\u00a0 Together they decided that his mother and four sisters would flee south to Michika the next morning.\u00a0 His father had fled to the mountains and not returned.\u00a0 Because they were so concerned, Ishaya and his younger brother, Samaila, decided to go in different directions to search for their father.\u00a0 Ishaya searched for three days. Finally, Samaila found his father and they went together and found Ishaya.\u00a0 Naturally, they were very happy to all be re-united.\u00a0 But, — this wasn\u2019t the end of Ishaya\u2019s story!<\/p>\n
Their father only had 1200 Naira ($6.00) on him when he fled to the mountains, so he didn\u2019t have enough money to purchase transport for them to flee further from the insurgents.\u00a0 He also thought that Samaila was young enough that the Boko Haram wouldn\u2019t bother him.\u00a0 So, he began telling Samaila to return to their city to get money and a few supplies from their house.<\/p>\n
During this discussion, they were interrupted by gunshots.\u00a0 The Boko Haram were shooting in the air and they were very close.\u00a0 Their father told all of them (Ishaya, Samaila, and the two friends) to flee and hide in the bush.\u00a0 He said he would climb a tree to see what was happening.\u00a0 A lot of people had also fled to the mountains and were living in nearby caves.\u00a0 While his father was watching, the Boko Haram burned everything the refugees had stored in the caves.<\/p>\n
After Boko Haram left, Ishaya, Samaila, and Ishaya\u2019s two friends returned to the cave areas, but couldn\u2019t find their father.\u00a0 They finally decided to climb further into the mountains.\u00a0 They stopped their journey in a village in the neighboring country of Cameroon, to the east of Nigeria.\u00a0 Luckily, Ishaya and some friends had visited this village in the past to establish a youth fellowship.\u00a0 He had made a friend during that previous visit and this friend took them in.\u00a0 The friend told them that their father wasn\u2019t far away.\u00a0 They were able to make contact by cell phone and their father joined them.<\/p>\n
(Side note – In Nigeria, everyone who has a little money buys a cell phone.\u00a0 They can purchase \u201ctime\u201d from vendors all over Nigeria.\u00a0 This cell time is very cheap, and costs only a couple pennies per minute!)<\/p>\n
After some time the friend left his house to them and traveled to be with his family.\u00a0 He left his food stores for them.\u00a0 They lived on the stored food for six months.\u00a0 There were many refugees fleeing from Boko Haram staying in the same village.\u00a0 Ishaya estimated as many as 700. Among the refugees were the 21 children and 3 wives of his uncle, who is a Muslim.<\/p>\n
\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Janet Crago We met Ishaya at the temporary EYN headquarters in Jos this week. He\u2019s from a small city in northeast Nigeria, which, like most towns in the area, is surrounded by mountains.\u00a0 This town was first attacked by Boko Haram insurgents in August of 2014.\u00a0 Ishaya was with two of his friends during<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[139,370,396,419,828],"class_list":["post-4303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nigeria","tag-boko-haram","tag-ekklesiyar-yanuwa-a-nigeria","tag-escape","tag-eyn","tag-northeast-nigeria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}