by Olatunji Saliu
ABUJA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- "We trekked a very long distance... we were kept in a thick forest, we cooked our own food."
Those were the words of some of the 104 Nigerian schoolgirls who have just been released by Boko Haram fighters after spending 30 days in the terror group's den.
The girls, whose ages range between 11 and 19, were ostensibly looking weak upon their release by Boko Haram early Wednesday.
They had been in Boko Haram's captivity since Feb. 19 when the terror group stormed their all-girl college in the northeastern town of Dapchi, forcefully taking away 110 of them.
Raking over the ashes of their captivity, one of the girls simply identified as Fasima said five of them, apparently, the very young ones, died of exhaustion on the day of the attack by Boko Haram.
On the day of the abduction, outside Dapchi, some of the girls who were already tired and hungry were only given some water, groundnut cake, and soft drinks as they continued the long journey to an unknown destination in the dead of night.
"We continued our journey until we got to a place with a big tree, they (the Boko Haram fighters) stopped and we were asked to cook food. It was very dark, so they put on lamps," Fasima recalled.
"Then we continued the journey for a long time after eating until we got to a place where there is a river, we came down from the trucks and they asked us to enter some canoes that took us across the river," she said.
Later that night, the girls were taken to a house in a small village which they can only see in their minds' eye now but cannot remember the name. They spent the rest of the night there.
"The next day, they came to ask us to come out and we were taken to the river and continued the journey until we got to a thick forest area. That was where they kept us and did not change our location since then," Fasima said.
According to the girls' narration, none of them was either molested or beaten. The abductors communicated with the girls in Arabic and the local Kanuri language that is spoken in the northern part of Nigeria.
Khadija Grema, another released girl, said all the abductors were dark-complexioned and none of them looked like a foreigner, adding that the militants even fed them well.
Grema said the captors had told them right from the day they were forcefully taken away that one day they would be free.
And freedom came on Wednesday when the Boko Haram fighters brought back the girls to Dapchi town in trucks, the same way they were abducted from their dormitories at the Government Girls Science and Technical College on Feb. 19.
The girls were released through back-channel efforts, the Nigerian government said.
For the release to work, the government had a clear understanding that violence and confrontation would not be the way out, authorities said, adding during negotiation, the Boko Haram group had insisted on returning the girls to where they were abducted from.
Another girl and a boy were also freed along with the 104 schoolgirls.
Local media on Thursday reported that another girl was withheld by Boko Haram "for not renouncing her Christian faith."
The father of the girl has also confirmed that his daughter was not released by the terror group because "she vehemently insisted on being a Christian."
The Nigerian government said it cannot ascertain the death of any girl for now.
The 104 schoolgirls and the two others who regained freedom early Wednesday were airlifted to the Nigerian capital city of Abuja through a military transport plane.
Dapchi, where the kidnapping took place a month ago, is located 100 kilometers from Damaturu, the capital of the northern state of Yobe.
Boko Haram is a Jihadist militant organization based in northeastern Nigeria. The United Nations believes Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 innocent people since 2009 through terror attacks.
