{"id":4643,"date":"2015-12-04T14:59:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brethren.org\/?p=4643"},"modified":"2015-12-04T14:59:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T19:59:47","slug":"the-endurance-of-rose-joseph-by-janet-crago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/2015\/12\/04\/the-endurance-of-rose-joseph-by-janet-crago\/","title":{"rendered":"The Endurance of Rose Joseph by Janet Crago"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Rose<\/a>Rose is a Clark (Secretary) in the Registry Office at EYN Headquarters and the mother of 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls.\u00a0 At the time of this story, Joseph was 5, Jeff was 2 and the twins, Joan and Joana, were 6 months old.\u00a0 It was Oct 29, 2014.\u00a0 Rose\u2019s husband was going to school in Yola while Rose was living on the outskirts of Hildi, about 20 miles from Mubi.\u00a0 Rose has a small motorcycle called a Hajo which she used to drive herself to work at EYN Headquarters in Kwarhi.\u00a0\u00a0 Hildi is about 3.6 mi north of EYN Headquarters.<\/p>\n

She was up early that day because her twins had been fussy through the night.\u00a0 She had breast fed the twins and was just getting out food to cook for the older boys when she heard gunshots and bombs in the area of Hildi.\u00a0 She had been anxious all night because there was so much traffic on the main road.\u00a0 Ordinarily, it was very quiet between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t know what was happening.\u00a0 She was determined to run, but she knew it would be madness to put 4 small children on a small motorcycle while she drove.\u00a0\u00a0 As she was preparing to leave, a young man came past on a motorcycle and told her that it was soldiers who were shooting because they all had on uniforms, but the \u201csoldiers\u201d shot his brother in the leg so they knew they were Boko Haram and not soldiers.<\/p>\n

Rose quickly backed one of her twins.\u00a0 This is what the Nigerians call placing a baby on their back and tying them on with a cloth.\u00a0 She then placed the other twin in her front and tied her in.\u00a0 She then picked up Jeff and carried him in her arms.\u00a0 Joseph had to walk.\u00a0 They made their way through the bush to Gashala (about 6 miles away).\u00a0 When she was leaving her home, she grabbed a package of Indomi (Ramen Noodles), and broke off small pieces to fed Joseph and Jeff with the dry noodles.\u00a0 They had not eaten before they left Hildi and they didn\u2019t have anything else to eat on the way to Gashala.\u00a0 They had nothing to drink with them.<\/p>\n

As they were trekking they came across a woman who had just given birth to twins in the bush. \u00a0Her mother and a friend were with her.\u00a0 She was so exhausted from the birth process and she said she could not go on walking and carrying two new babies so she wanted to leave them behind.\u00a0 Her mother volunteered to carry one twin and her friend volunteered to carry the other, so she didn\u2019t abandon her new babies.\u00a0 Thank God for that!<\/p>\n

When Rose and her children arrived in Gashala, they were all exhausted, hungry and thirsty.\u00a0 Rose had some money, but because everyone was running out of Gashala, few shops were open so she was only able to buy some biscuits (cookies).\u00a0 One old woman who had chosen to stay behind in Gashala had pity on Rose.\u00a0 She saw that she was carrying three children and told her to come to her house to rest.\u00a0 Rose and her children were able to rest and spend the night in her house.\u00a0 She had a sleeping mat that Rose could put the children down on and she covered them up with the cloth that she used to tie them on her back and front.\u00a0 They finally had some water to drink.<\/p>\n

The next morning Rose wanted to call her husband and discuss what to do.\u00a0 But, there was no phone service.\u00a0 Later she learned that the people maintaining the phone service had also run away so the generators weren\u2019t started to run the necessary equipment to provide the phone service.\u00a0 She started thinking about her Hajo (motorcycle) again.\u00a0 Finally, she convinced a motorcycle driver to drive back to Hildi and find her brother and to ask him to get her motorcycle and drive it to Gashala to pick her up.\u00a0 He did that, but when her brother arrived, they checked the amount of fuel in the tank and discovered they didn\u2019t have enough to go any farther.\u00a0 He also told her that she forgot to close the door to her house, so he had closed it.\u00a0 They all spent the night in Gashala again. \u00a0They didn\u2019t have food, but they did have water.<\/p>\n

The next day, Rose had to send another motorcycle driver for fuel in a nearby village.\u00a0 When he returned, all six of them packed onto her Hajo, with her brother driving.\u00a0 They were able to travel like that to Fadama Rake.\u00a0 Rose finally had phone service there, so she called her husband.\u00a0 He was able to hire a pickup truck in Yola, which he sent to pick her up in Gombi.\u00a0 As they headed from Gombi to Yola, they picked up trekkers all along the way until the pickup truck was completely full.\u00a0 A massive exodus from the Gombi area to Yola was underway.\u00a0 Rose kept telling them that the ride was free and they should come and ride.<\/p>\n

Rose spent one day in Yola with a friend of her husband\u2019s.\u00a0 They then traveled to Gombe (not to be confused with Gombi) and stayed with her husband\u2019s brother, where she stayed for about 2 months.\u00a0 Rose has 3 brothers and 3 sisters.\u00a0 She\u2019s the oldest.\u00a0 All of her brothers and sisters came to Gombe as well, but her parents refused to leave Hildi, and survived the violence there.\u00a0 Rose is now staying in Jos and working at the EYN Headquarters Annex.<\/p>\n

Rose tells me what she learned through all this:<\/p>\n