A leap of faith
How two Christian and two Muslim young women went from Nigeria to Notre Dame, overcoming tragedy and trauma to show the world-changing power of knowledge
Maijidda Haruna didn't have the words to explain how cold it was.
On the day she stepped outside of O'Hare International Airport — her first time on American soil, her first time outside Nigeria, her first time being more than a few dozen miles away from her village — it was zero degrees Fahrenheit.
As each breath of Midwestern winter air froze her lungs, the 18-year-old didn't feel like she was half a world away from home. She felt like she was on a different planet.
“I called my mom, and I was just trying to describe to her how cold it was, and I didn't know how to,” she said. “I was so scared — I didn't know how I would be able to manage, and I couldn't even describe the environment to them.”
Five years later, every step of the journey that began that day for Maijidda and three other Nigerian women is nearly indescribable. They came to Notre Dame that arctic morning in early 2018 after being carefully selected by their government, shepherded by senior leaders from the United Nations and the Catholic Church, and anxiously but quietly awaited by a tight circle of supporters at Notre Dame.
For a country torn apart by religious violence — with Boko Haram waging a brutal insurgency in the northeast and a communal conflict in the country's middle region that cost even more lives — and where the value of educating girls was constantly questioned, sending four young women to a Catholic university on an unfamiliar continent was a gamble, but a risk many felt was worth taking.
Latest ND NewsWire
- Component of keto diet plus immunotherapy may reduce prostate cancerAdding a pre-ketone supplement — a component of a high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet — to a type of cancer therapy in a laboratory setting was highly effective for treating prostate cancer, researchers from the University of Notre Dame found.
- School of Architecture’s Krusche wins prestigious Rome PrizeThe American Academy in Rome has awarded Krupali Krusche, an associate professor in the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, the 2024 Adele Chatfield-Taylor Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation.
- Alumni Association set to hold second annual Notre Dame Global Day of ServiceThis Saturday (April 27) the Notre Dame Alumni Association will host the second annual Notre Dame Global Day of Service — a day to mobilize the Notre Dame spirit of service and serve those most in need in communities around the world.
- Alumni Association presents annual spring awardsThe University of Notre Dame Alumni Association recognized a number of distinguished alumni and staff during its annual spring board meeting. The association presents awards throughout the year that fall into six broad categories, each representing an area in which the University encourages excellence: the arts, athletics, service to the Alumni Association, service to country, service to humanity and service to the University.
- Sea-going expedition unearths clues to ancient climateMelissa Berke, a geochemist and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences, was selected to sail as a part of an expedition aboard the JOIDES research vessel. Her goal is to use ocean core samples to detect changes in global climate.
- Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz addresses inequality with a people-centered economyInequality is a policy choice — not an inevitable outcome — and can be addressed through economic approaches that prioritize human dignity, economist and Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz said during a recent visit to the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.