Two Years Of Pain For The Chibok Girls Mothers.

CNN spoke to a classmate of the girls seen in the newly released Video footage, who confirmed the identity of several of her friends.

The soft-spoken teen, whose identity we will not reveal for her safety, was supposed to be at the school that Sunday night to sit exams along with the other girls, but made a last minute decision to go home, from where she could hear the school being attacked.

"We ran into the bush and stayed there for a month," she says.

Watching the video, she becomes emotional, exclaiming 'Oh my God!' as she recognizes a close friend, points out another who was in the same hostel as her, and identifies one of the school's prefects, a leader in her class.

While she considers herself one of the "lucky ones," the teenager says she still has nightmares about the experience.

"If I hear something on the news about them, it makes me have bad dreams and I cry," she confides.

Crowded around, their eyes glued to the computer screen showing the video of their adopted girls, three of the girls' mothers weep and hug each other.

Rifkatu Ayuba, Yana Galang and Mary Ishaya made the 77 mile (125km) journey from Chibok to Maiduguri reluctantly, not knowing what was in store; accustomed to endless media requests and intrusions into their grief, they arrived world weary and impatient.

But this time it was different: there was a rare of glimmer of hope.

We, CNN Reporters told them we had important information to share with them about their daughters. Then we explained that we had a video of girls we believed to be their daughters and we wanted their help to verify it.

Clad in boldly-printed headscarves and wrappers, the trio sat in the courtyard of a Maiduguri hotel, and watched intently as we hit "play."

Within seconds, their worry-lined faces crumpled, the bottled-up pain of the past two years flowed freely. Hardly able to speak through the tears, Ayuba and Ishaya were able to point out their daughters, Saratu and Hauwa in the crowd of young women on the screen.

Plea for negotiations

But for Galang, there was no such reward for her journey: She looked and looked, but her daughter Rifqata was not among the captives shown in the video.

Her heartrending sobs as she came to realize this were difficult to hear.

"We have seen enough," she says eventually. "We know that the girls are alive and they are hidden. We are not worried. Our daughters look well.

"We have heard a lot of stories before but this video confirms that they are alive. The government should negotiate with Boko Haram."

And there is comfort in this at least -- to know that, even after two years, there is still a chance the girls will be brought home to their families.

"I didn't see my daughter but I now have more hope that she is alive," she tells us and her friends. "You can see what is yours on the screen but you can't get it.


"All we want is our daughters."


News Source: CNN