Yola, Nigeria - Fanta Adamu thinks she's more than 80 years old but isn't sure. What she does know is she couldn't have escaped without help when Boko Haram threatened to overrun her village in northeast Nigeria.
As the fighting intensified in Sabon Gari, in the far north of Adamawa state, she called one of her sons, who came the 1,200 kilometres from Lagos to get her out.
She was brought to a three-room rented house on the fringes of the state capital, Yola, which she now shares with 19 other family members.
"I'm expecting to go back soon but the problem is the roads. Boko Haram has vandalised everything," she told AFP on Thursday.
"I'm expecting everything to be bombed. We are afraid to go back."
Fanta and her family's situation is far from unusual in Yola, which as a relative safe haven saw its population more than double with those fleeing Boko Haram violence in northern Adamawa and the neighbouring states of Borno and Yobe.
The media focus in recent days may have been on the internally displaced people's (IDP) camps around Yola, to which 275 women and children hostages were taken after being freed by the military from the militants' Sambisa Forest stronghold.
But many more refugees are staying in temporary accommodation in and around the city, with thousands bunking down for months with host families or relatives in often heavily overcrowded homes.
AFP
