Our host lay down a raffia mat for my producer, Lillian Leposo, and me to share. It was settled: We were spending the night in Chibok. After a cross-country journey of four days, twisting and turning between Boko Haram hotspots, begging and cajoling armed police officers to accompany us, we were finally at our destination.
It had been almost three weeks since the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from here, but apart from the soldiers manning the checkpoint into the town — who flagged us down to tell us how they fought on even as the hope of receiving reinforcements slowly died — the families left behind were on their own.
When we had left the Nigerian capital Abuja, our sense of what might await us in Chibok was fuzzy. Nigerian officials had been reiterating the commitment to the search for the missing girls, counting down the assets being deployed. Special forces, fighter jets, helicopters; all apparently had been mobilized. We had even hoped that we could perhaps ride along in one of the helicopters. It never occurred to us that we wouldn't find any at our destination.