Where are they? Families of missing persons hold onto hope

One day, one week, one month, one year…every day the sun rises and sets, the thread of hope gets thinner and the anguish surges.
One can safely say that a family can never experience more agony than that caused when a loved one disappears, without trace or explanation. And the search bears no fruit as the clock ticks away.

“I know that she is alive. That girl is not dead. Someday I will meet her, I may not identify her by the face but I can tell her by the legs because my children have similar legs,” Abdullatiff Kigonya emotionally told this reporter recently.

The swimming coach at Greenhill Academy Kampala, has not seen his daughter, Aisha Kyazike, for 14 years now. She went missing on March 8, 2001. The family had only celebrated her third birthday. Today, Mr Kigonya has three children, baby Aisha was their first born.

Sudden disappearance
Outside extraordinary circumstances such as war and other disasters like landslides and floods, hundreds of families in the country continue to grapple with the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of relatives.

James Mafabi from Jinja, for instance, reported the loss of their daughter and a maid in 2009. Several advertisements in the print and broadcast media have yielded no fruit and police seems to have given up on the matter.
At the Ministry of Internal Affairs offices in Kampala, the Anti-Human Trafficking desk force is a bee hive of activity with staff, journalists and distressed relatives seeking answers to mysteries.

Each time the desk parades returnees from the Middle East and other parts of the world that had been trafficked; the relatives come in sizeable numbers, hoping their relatives could be among. Often times, the hope is nothing but just that - hope!

Police not doing enough?
Relatives of missing persons this newspaper interviewed shared sharp misgivings about the pace of investigations and interest in following up cases by the police.

Our reporter, for instance, could not readily access information on profiles of missing persons or status of their cases in different police stations. Even the police headquarters at Naguru in Nakawa Division, has no estimates of missing persons.

The police force, it emerged, has no central database on missing persons let alone mechanisms in its Family Protection Unit to help families.

The unit’s head, Ms Christine Alalo, says it mainly deals with lost and found children. “We don’t have cases of missing persons,” Ms Alalo said.

Police spokesman Fred Enanga said sometimes cases are recorded and the families don’t return to close the files once they find their missing relatives.

“We are in advanced stages of setting up a missing persons’ desk,” Mr Enanga said.

The police, however, placed blame for most cases on maids or caretakers, who accidentally abandon and or neglect children placed under their charge.
He said some maids disappear from homes they are employed in and some children are kidnapped as a result of family disputes.

“I wish I was barren”
Ms Daphne Nagawa is a mother in her late 20s but she wishes she had been barren. Ms Nagawa is yet to come to terms with the harsh reality that Calvin Mwanje, her one and only child is still, missing, eight months later.
“Sometimes I wish I was barren. Surely why did I produce and lose my child just like that?” she tearfully wondered in an interview.

Early this year, she operated a stall from where she sold groceries in Busega, a Kampala suburb. At around 11am, she took her shoes to the cobbler for repair, leaving her one-year-and-three-months-old baby playing with two other children.

On her return, she saw two children. Hers was missing. Her heart was arrested by the first fear and thought.
She asked the children about her baby’s whereabouts and all they innocently mumbled was, “Calvin genze” meaning Calvin has gone. And gone he was!

“I reported the matter to Busega Police and some neighbours whom I had problems with were arrested but released later when there was no evidence pinning them,” she narrates, tightly holding onto the only photograph of her smiling son.

“We even asked the Fire Brigade to break the latrine but we found nothing there. I don’t know if he was sacrificed but I pray and hope Calvin is alive,” she said.
Nagawa has since separated with the father of her son and is nursing the grief of her son’s disappearance at her mother’s home at Salama Road in Kampala. She is available on 0700764501 for leads.

I am sure I will see my daughter one day
As the world celebrates Women’s Day every March 8, Mr Abdullatif Kigonya and family hold prayers with religious leaders at his house, remembering his daughter Aisha Kyazike’s disappearance.

On January 20, the family is in a party mood, cutting cake, wining and dining in celebration of the birthday of their absentee daughter and circulating fresh announcements in the media.

All this Kigonya does because, “I am sure my daughter is alive. One day she will come back home. She must be in someone’s home as we talk but Aisha will return.”
This is his signature hope; 14 years after his first born went missing in Luzira, a Kampala suburb. She was three years old then. If she is alive as her father highly hopes, she is 17 years now.

“I was at work when my wife called to announce the sad news. The whole family and friends’ network started the search; we went to different radio stations and newspapers. Jinja road police station tried its best but there was no result,” he shares.

The disappearance of Kyazike put their marriage on the rocks, with the coach divorcing his wife and now helping his two children cope.

“I gave her one year to look for my daughter or leave because she was at home with her. There are rumours that may be the child was not mine and the rightful father came for her but even then, I want to know the exact truth,” Kigonya passionately says. He can be contacted on 0772420697 for any leads.

James Mafabi still hoping
Mr James Mafabi, who works with SAB Miller, still speaks with a heavy and hazy voice about the disappearance of his daughter Gracious Lugosi and Peninah Awori Joyce, a maid.
That was on September 19, 2009. Five years later, the family stares at the skies, begging for a sign from above, one that will show and bring home their daughter and house help.

The last thing they can imagine is the possibility that they are dead. They still believe they are alive and their return home is only a matter of time. Mr Mafabi can be reached on 0752665775.

“This issue has affected us so much as a family and the worst thing is that Nakibizi police station never helped us because nobody came to investigate what had happened when we reported,” Mafabi wrote to this newspaper last week.
The case was reported as S.D file no. 20/09/2009.

My uncle is still missing
Issa Katwesigye says he last saw his uncle Godfrey Kugonza in 1995. He says Kugonza used to be a soldier with the UPDF, first in Kitgum then Kasese District.

Katwesigye says Kugonza wrote a letter to his mum saying he had retired but was joining the reserve force around 1995 but “that’s the last we heard about him”.

“No one knows whether he’s dead or alive but most of the family believes he passed on. He is/was called Godfrey Kugonza from Hoima,” Katwesigye adds.

“Kugonza, if you are alive or if someone who knows his status, please contact me on 0782/0702 432048”.
Katwesigye says all the family wants to know is the status of the retired soldier.

Over 10,000 still missing in north

The situation of missing persons in northern Uganda is exceptional. Unlike other parts of the country, districts like Lamwo, Gulu and Kitgum, Pader, Agago and Nwoya suffered the brunt of the more than two-decade long Lord’s Resistance Army war.

That came with several disfigurements in the family structure. There were massacres, abductions, torching of houses and displacement of people.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that at least 50,000-75,000 people were abducted between 1986 and 2006. Of these, at least 10,000 are still missing, majority of whom were aged between five and 20 years old at the time of their abduction.

More than a decade later, relatives of the missing persons still suffer psychological effects like depression. They do not know the fate of their loved ones.

As families continue to hang on the thin thread of hope, the ICRC has set up psychosocial support groups for more than 500 families.

“Fathers and mothers of persons who disappeared can then share their grief and better overcome their trauma,” says Vincent Pouget, the humanitarian organisation’s communication delegate.
According to Missing Persons Uganda, a web portal that helps in finding missing persons through the online web portal www.missingpersons.ngo.ug and social media, laxity by some parents, guardians and those entrusted with taking care of the children is still a problem.

“High levels of unemployment are leading to human trafficking and others being forced into sex trade in outside countries,” the group says.

Mr Raymond Aine, the team leader at the organisation cites financial constraints and lack of basic needs as a plausible cause of disappearances.

“This affects the parents /guardians and children. The parents/guardians may decide to disappear because they feel they have totally failed to cater for the basic needs of the families while the children may also go away from home because they are unable to get the basic needs from home,” Mr Aine says.

Domestic violence, fear of reprisal for criminal acts as well as child labour and abuse have also been cited.
In worst case scenarios, families have recorded cases of child sacrifice, kidnap and trafficking when their loved ones have gone missing. It is this grim reality that gives families sleepless nights.

Who is a missing person?

Definition: A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and fate is unknown, according to Missing Persons Uganda.
Explanation: A person may be missing due to their own decision, accident, crime or death in a location where they cannot be found, according to Missing Persons Uganda.