Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
by Mauro Armanino
Niamey (Agenzia Fides) - Their husbands and even some of their children have been killed by armed groups who are terrorizing and emptying the villages in the Three Borders area, which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The 14 widows in question come from villages near Burkina Faso. Without thinking twice, they decided to abandon the meager food distributions in the displaced persons camps in Makalonde and Torodi to return to their villages, abandoned by their inhabitants, in the hope of recovering the bags of millet and sorghum they had saved.
However, during their return, they were intercepted by the "bandits", as the armed groups are called, who took from them the bags of food that they themselves had grown and stored. Despite being robbed of their livelihood, the 14 widows were not harmed, nor robbed of the little money they had. Thus, although they have returned to the precarious living conditions that characterize the thousands displaced by the attacks and threats of armed groups, they have not lost hope.
In Niger, there are more than 500,000 displaced people, along with refugees.
Although the widows have been threatened and robbed of what belonged to them, they have won a symbolic battle while unarmed. Millet and sorghum are staple foods in the border region and are fundamental to the cultural identity of the community. These women have defied the violence and rules imposed by the armed groups, doing what their husbands would have done: fighting with their hands and revealing the violence of the religious ideology that underlies these attacks.
This act of resistance, which took place in a small village in the Sahel savannah, will not be counted in the statistics of those killed or wounded by armed incursions, and will go unnoticed like so many other forms of silent violence that affect the social fabric of communities. These communities, invisible due to poverty and the neglect of the authorities, survive thanks to the extraordinary strength and dignity that only peasants know. The 14 widows, who carried food on their backs for their children, were also carrying the future of their people.
(Agenzia Fides, 13/11/2024)
