The Road to Bama

In a refugee camp in northeastern Nigeria, 21-year-old Abubakar Sadiq finds out the camp will close in two weeks. He has lived there alone for two years, with no family and nowhere to return. His only close companion is Aisha, an older woman with two children. Abubakar was born intersex and raised as a girl named Ummi. Despite ridicule, his father taught him never to be ashamed of who he was. At eleven, he was abducted by Boko Haram and taken to the Sambisa Forest. At fourteen, Abubakar was assigned to marry a commander. Expecting to be killed after revealing he was intersex, he was instead protected by the commander, who kept his secret. Rescued after five years in captivity, he was sent to a girls’ boarding school, where he found out his father had died. There, a medical examiner decides he is “more a boy than a girl." Renamed Abubakar, his head was shaved, and he was transferred to the boys’ dormitory. Rejected and isolated, he ran away and reunited with Aisha in the refugee camp.