Tomorrow Never Came

Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

By Chiamaka Mbah

Tomorrow, we will go home.

That is what Mama told me the day we arrived at the camp. I was six then, and my feet ached from walking for hours all the way from our village, Chibok. My brother had been carried on Mama’s back, his tiny arms wrapped around her neck as if letting go meant losing everything.

The camp was loud and crowded. Women cried quietly under their breaths, men stared blankly at the horizon, and children played with empty cans tied to strings. Mama said it was only for a while.

“They are just fighting,” she whispered, pulling me close as we sat on the bare floor of our tent. “The leaders will talk. They will agree. We will go home soon.”

But the leaders did not talk. Or when they did, they shouted over each other, blaming this group or that group for starting the violence. The radio crackled with news of attacks and revenge attacks. Villages were burned down overnight, markets were looted, and roads were blocked. Each side claimed they were fighting for justice, for their people, for their beliefs, but all I saw was fear, hunger, and loss.

Mama stopped talking about tomorrow after Papa died.

He had stayed back to guard the goats when the men with guns came. Mama said he was hiding, but weeks later, a neighbour arrived at the camp. She did not say anything. She just looked at Mama, then at my brother and me with tears running down her cheeks. That evening, Mama sat by the tent door and stared at nothing for hours.

Every day felt the same. Aid workers brought food that tasted of stale grain. Water was fetched from a rusty tank guarded by soldiers. School was a tent with benches, and the teacher was another woman who had lost her home and taught us from the songs in her memory.

Sometimes, I heard Mama and the other women talking at night. They spoke of how everything changed when the fighting started. 

How the chiefs who once settled disputes in the village now hid in the city, fearing for their lives. 

How the local government office was burned down, and its files were scattered and lost. 

How the health clinic was bombed because one group thought the other was hiding there. 

How the markets that connected our village to the next state were closed, and traders stopped coming. 

They spoke of how the fighting destroyed not just homes but the very trust that held communities together. They said when peace ends, food ends, school ends, trade ends, and the people scatter like broken grains of rice. They were right.

One night, I asked Mama why the men were fighting.

She sighed and pulled me onto her lap. “Some say it is religion,” she said softly. “Some say it is tribe. Some say it is land. Some say it is power. I think it is all of them mixed together. When leaders care more about power than people, peace becomes a stranger.”

Sometimes I dream of home. I see Papa sitting under the mango tree with my brother on his lap. I hear the laughter of my friends as we chase chickens across the yard. I smell Mama’s tuwo shinkafa cooking over the firewood stove. I hear the mosque calling for prayer, the church bell ringing down across the street. We were many tribes, many tongues, but we lived as neighbours.

Now, years have passed. I am thirteen. We are still here. The camp is bigger because more people have come. Babies have been born who have never seen anything else. Some of the men in the camp have joined the fighters because they say it is the only way to survive. They return with new guns and old anger. The leaders keep changing. Some are arrested, some are killed, some run away. The radio still crackles with news of negotiations that lead to nothing. Peace remains an empty promise, and tomorrow never comes.

But I still dream. I dream of a day when leaders will choose peace over power. 

When children will grow up without the memory of gunshots. 

When tribes will sit under the same tree and share stories instead of fear. 

When the roads will open again, traders will carry baskets of tomatoes, yams, and onions to the market square. 

When schools will open, and teachers will teach us more than songs of survival.

Because peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of justice. It is different shades of us coming together to build a future that everyone can share.

Tomorrow never came for us. But maybe it can come for others. If only we choose it.