Insurgents Took Over Their Lake. But They Stayed to Feed a Hungry Region

Insurgents Took Over Their Lake. But They Stayed to Feed a Hungry Region

Since his early teenage years in the 1990s, Yusuf Usman has drawn his livelihood from the waters of Lake Chad in his hometown of Baga, northeastern Nigeria. He recalls a time before the Boko Haram insurgency hit hard, when he would cast a net and return home with a heavy catch to feed his family and sell at the market. Today, the 41-year-old said that those bountiful days are long gone. But he refuses to abandon his net and continues to wade int…