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Ahmed Muhammed, a resident of Maiduguri, walks through the rubble left behind as he remembers the outbreak of fighting in his city a decade ago that sparked the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria.
"We have heard gunshots – badadadadadada – here, there, everywhere around us," the 44-year-old railway worker told AFP.
"We thought the end of the universe had arrived."
At the end of July 2009, tensions between the extremist Islamist sect and the authorities in northeastern Nigeria dissipated when the group launched a wave of attacks and the security forces retaliated ruthlessly.
The epicenter of the violence was composed of the group's founder, Muhammad Yusuf.
After several days of fighting, Yusuf and hundreds of Boko Haram members were dead and a conflict was unleashed that would devastate the region.
The mosque and the houses that once stood there are no more than a pile of debris – a monument without marks to the sufferings of the last 10 years.
In the ten years since the beginning of the uprising, about two million people have been uprooted from their homes and 27,000 people have been killed while bloodshed has spread to neighboring countries .
Boko Haram has transformed vast expanses of territory into no-man's land and has made its way into international headlines by taking away hundreds of schoolgirls.
While the Nigerian army repulsed fighters from the big cities, the jihadists split into factions and created a branch aligned with the Islamic State group, which sparked its own campaign of violence.
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The waves of conflict crashed on the village of Hadiza Bukar, near Baga, near the shores of Lake Chad in 2015, when Boko Haram fighters stormed the area.
Bukar escaped with her newborn twin sons, leaving behind her husband and two other children.
She has not heard from them since.
What remains of the family is now part of a quarter of a million displaced people struggling for their survival in Maiduguri, capital of and around Borno State.
Government approved camps and informal corrugated iron camps, sticks and tarpaulins are spread throughout the city.
The only place where Bukar lived is the zero point of the insurgency that ripped his life. His makeshift home sits at the edge of the ruins of the ancient Yusuf complex.
When the showers arrive during the rainy season, the place turns into a quagmire.
"Many people told us stories about what happened here, they warned us that there was a story," she said about the 2009 bloodbath. "But we had no other choice – we have nowhere to go – we decided to stay."
In another neighborhood of Idrissa Isah, 45, crosses the city at its best.
Isah had a habit of sending cows to the economic center of Nigeria, Lagos, but he now only has a small piece of land near his cabin that a landowner let him do it.
The little he cultivates helps supplement the sporadic donations of international aid groups and feed his family. He says he has not received any support from the government.
Isah is desperate to return to his village of Makulbe about 30 kilometers from Maiduguri, but the risk is too high.
"If I could go back, I would have a big, big farm," he said.
"There is no way I can."
Attempt to return
Finding a way to return home for displaced people is considered essential to solving the humanitarian crisis in northeastern Nigeria.
After forcing jihadists to return to hiding places, the government insists that the security situation stabilizes.
But attacks persist outside heavily fortified cities.
In July, five soldiers were killed and six aid workers abducted.
On Thursday, a raid in Boko Haram killed at least two people in an IDP camp near Maiduguri.
So far this year, 130,000 people have been displaced in northeastern Nigeria, the International Organization for Migration said.
Ibrahim Bukar, 48, is relatively lucky.
The local government accountant still receives his official salary of about $ 80 a month, although he did not work in his hometown, Bama, 65 km from Maiduguri.
But the salary does not cover the rent and he squats with his wife and four children in the housing of the servants of a room of knowledge.
Last October, after more than four years of absence, he decided to go home.
"There was nothing there," he says.
"No food, no drinking water, no health services, no teachers – do not even talk about electricity."
Beyond the city, he said, you can not travel safely for more than one kilometer. After three months, Bukar gave up and returned to Maiduguri.
Camps always filled
IDP camps are still filling up.
A large site around the city's main stadium opened in March and has already reached its hosting capacity with more than 12,000 people.
Fatima Mohammed, 38, is living in a tarpaulin shelter with her husband and two children.
She arrived from an overcrowded camp not far away, having been displaced several times since she was forced to leave her village five years ago.
She has no idea if, or when, she will see at home again.
"Everything depends on God, if there is peace, I will return immediately," she said.
"But if there is no peace, there is no way I can come back."
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