Many of us were sleeping when they arrived at our hostel. Some of us were still chatting. When they entered, we were afraid and they told us not to be scared. We wanted to run but they said nothing would happen to us. They asked us to gather at a place. They, however, warned us against running, threatening to kill us if we did. They
told us to show them the school’s food store and when we kept quiet, one of them said that the school belongs to the government and the food is the property of government. “Is it your own?” he asked. After this, they selected two girls from among us and ordered them to show them the food store. The two girls showed them the stores and it was then they started burning the other buildings. One of them asked where the block moulding machine was. They now instructed all of us to move out of the hostel to the main gate. Some led us to the gate, some were busy burning the other buildings while the others were loading the food items. They loaded the foodstuff onto a truck and asked us to move into a smaller vehicle. Some were moving on foot. They moved us to a place called Bua. I told another pupil beside me that it seemed these people wanted to kill us. So we decided to jump down from the truck and started running. We kept moving until we saw the road and someone driving towards us.
— Mary John
That was brave
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