Last Friday I started researching Lagos, Nigeria, for my next book project and was scrolling through Pinterest when I read about Boko Haram's attack on the Christian village of Attagara. One of the Pinterest images showed a six-year-old boy beheaded by Boko Haram in that attack. The story is that a villager snatched the boy up in order to save him, but a terrorist tore them apart, killed the villager, and decapitated the child. The image left me stunned. I couldn't move, became barely aware of my own breathing, then ran to the bathroom and was physically ill.
For years my friends sometimes posed a question I've shrugged off.
"Why do you write these dark subjects?"
If you know your history, you know that man's inhumanity to man has been a staple of human nature.
What fascinates me are the extraordinary stories within the evil — an office worker who spends months giving practical help to a Jewish family hiding from the Nazis (Miep Gies) ... the quiet, undogged Kansas detective who works for years trying to nab the BTK killer (Det. Ken Landwehr) ... a couple Chinese camera shop guys in Japanese-occupied Nanjing, who duplicate film footage of atrocities and try to smuggle it out in milk canisters ... the Nigerian villager who randomly snatches up a confused child to save him from murderous thugs.
Kids who feel safe invent their own monsters to fear — the boogeyman in the closet or under the bed — thus the boom times of the decorative night-light industry. As a culture, we Americans are no different: we invent our bad monsters and then convince ourselves everything's AOK, all within 40 minutes of limited commercial interruptions.
The problem with complacency
But the world is filled with real-life monsters. Why do we not want to see them?
San Pedro Sula (Honduras) is the murder capital of the world, averaging three murders daily. Boko Haram is gaining more and more territorial control in Nigeria, thanks to a corrupt government lacking any vision beyond self-service. Out of 187 nations, Honduras and Nigeria ranked low for human development (129 and 153 respectively). Among other things, this means education is thwarted, access to clean water is a daily struggle — and life is cheap. You throw groups like the MXIII or Boko Haram on top of this mix, and suddenly your garden-variety American serial killer looks like a jerk with a serious attitude problem.
We who live in the affluent, comfortable west have afforded ourselves a high degree of complacency. And complacency kills off empathy and curiosity. It's utter hypocrisy for us to pooh-pooh them when western banks cheerfully take the deposits of those profiteering from the "civil psychosis" occurring in these countries.
Just what is so interesting about peering into the mind of a ruthless terrorist?
I'd rather imagine the inner workings of that villager who forsakes his own safety to help a lost and panicked child. The former has nothing new to tell us about what it means to be human.
The latter — everything.
Pictured above: Traffic jams like this occur all the time in Lagos, Nigeria. By 2015, Lagos is predicted to become the world's fifth most populous urban center, topping 23 million inhabitants. Despite the civic weaknesses I've described, Nigerians are a diverse and resilient people composed of 300 ethnic groups, and numerous Nigerians have gifted the world with their talents: writers Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chinua Achebe; playwright Biyi Thomas; musicians Sade, Seal, Fela Kuti, and King Sunny Ade; and athletes Hakeem Olajuwon and Nwankwo Kanu. This does not include educated professionals and scholars who now serve on American school faculties, and in public & private sector firms.
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