Thanks to an Australian international advisor named Dr. Stephen Davis, sixty girls were going to be freed. He contacted Boko Haram commanders and arranged for the girls to be freed as part of a goodwill gesture that would help broker a peace deal with the government.  At the time, the girls were held in Cameroon. The commanders agreed, but said they would not tell anyone where the meet would occur until fifteen minutes before it was to happen. The girls would arrive in twenty different trucks.  

Fifteen minutes before the drop, Davis got the location and it was a go. Only a few minutes before Davis and his team arrived, the girls were kidnapped again – by another group who wanted ransom for them. Chaos ensued and the the girls were not freed.  

Then something amazing happened. One of the truck drivers was a young man who also kidnapped by the Boko Haram. He took advantage of the chaos and helped a few girls escape by telling them to run and hide in the bushes.  They did. After everyone left, the girls were free, only they had no idea where they were.

One of the girls had kept her cell phone hidden in her bra. She called her family, and they told her to walk west by following the sunset.  Four days later, the girls were reunited with their families. During that time, the original kidnappers somehow got all the other girls back.

The text in this artwork reads “follow the sunset.”  The 5740 numbers relate to the phone number the artist would have called when their age and lost.  The N relates to North and Nazarene (which ISIL painted on the doors of all the Christians in Syria and Iraq).  Detail below.

60” x 44” – mixed media on paper.