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Cameroon Centers Empower Young Mothers Who Survived Boko Haram Conflict

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   MAROUA, CAMEROON - At a women's empowerment center in Cameroon's
   northern town of Kousseri, on the border with Chad and Nigeria, a group
   of women are learning how to sew.

   But this is no ordinary training center as these women have survived
   being forcibly married to
   Boko Haram terrorists.

   The Islamist militants abducted 18-year old Rumaitu Adjara, forced her
   to marry one of them, and then abandoned her after she had a baby.

   At the center, Adjara has learned to repair dresses to earn money. She
   says it will not be easy for her to open a seamstress shop without
   funding. But if she is offered a sewing machine, she will repair
   dresses at home and door-to-door until she will have enough clients so
   she can afford to rent a shop.

   Three other students at the center were forced to marry Boko Haram
   militants, who were killed fighting Cameroon's military last year.

   Cameroon's military found the women in November near the Sambissa
   Forest.

   Manager of the center Issa Abssatou says they have trained about 40
   women since November, when the government ordered priority be given to
   Boko Haram victims. She says 20 of the women fled Boko Haram fighting
   in villages on Cameroon's northern border with Nigeria a year ago.

   She says they organize literacy classes before introducing young women
   and girls to computers, where they familiarize themselves with using
   the internet. Abssatou says they also teach them to type and arrange
   documents using the computer and to become seamstresses. She says some
   of the women they are training are now capable of creating their own
   businesses.

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