Man who returned from the 'dead' 25 years later

Omiel Matuta Onderi (seated) takes a picture with his family, the first time after 25 years.

What you need to know:

Twenty-five years ago, Omiel Matuta Onderi disappeared from his home in Tororo District. After five years of futile searches, the family believed he was dead and even held a burial ceremony for him accepting he was gone forever. But Onderi reappeared, saying all along he was just across the border. Here is his story.

Sometime in 1989, Omiel Matuta Onderi left his home in Lwala village, west Budama South constituency in present day Tororo District. Some say he was going to seek fortune in the form of menial work in Kenya like other young men from the area had done, others said he was running away in anger after an acrimonious dissolution of his marriage.

In any case, no one thought either reason could cause him to be gone for too long. But five years later, nothing had been heard from or about him despite various efforts to trace him. His sister Jane Frances Adikini says the family tried to use the little means they had to try find him in Kampala, Busia, and parts of Busoga, places they thought he could have gone to.

The only thing that turned up were stories of his death told by people who claimed to have been told by credible sources. In 1994, the family decided to bury Onderi , or rather an effigy of him made of a banana stem wrapped in bedsheets. Adikini remembers it as a sad time for the family that still had questions on how Onderi met his end, but it was important for closure’s sake that the burial takes place.

Long finished with last funeral rites, Onderi’s kin had no reason to doubt he was resting in peace. Until January 18 when a man who looked very much like Onderi appeared in Tororo and started asking after relatives. It was an older bespectacled version, but it was Onderi alright.

The news was too much for Adikini who fainted on receiving the call. The cousins who saw him could not believe their eyes and his younger sister, now a mother of three who resides in Kampala, refused to believe until she saw and touched him.

On arrival he had gone straight to Kampala at the behest of the disbelieving sister and never made it to his home.

Onderi says he has been living in Kenya all this time, spending most of that time in Mombasa where he forged a new life. That the language he is more fluent in seems to be Swahili, and that he speaks it with a lilting accent of the coastal people seem to support this claim.

He also has a Kenyan national ID which bears his face along with the names Yasiin Onyango, the name he has been using all this time. He remarried, had children, worked and adopted a new identity as a Luo from Kisumu who was orphaned as an only child at an early age. That way, he blocked avenues to get any news from home or any of his whereabouts to get home. And kept curious people satisfied.

In Swahili, Onderi narrates how he caught his wife with another man in 1985 and how this resulted in his wife returning to her father’s home and his getting back the three cows he had paid as dowry. The period after that is when he left home. “I was so hurt and angry. I had those cows slaughtered and sold the meat. Then I decided I could not stay in the village anymore and left,” he shares.

He says he did not tell anyone where he was going partly because he also had no idea himself. He did odd jobs in Tororo before finding work to run a restaurant in Busia. He even came back home in 1989, a fact which a cousin, Kenneth Olenge, who was 14 years then, confirms.

During that visit, Onderi learnt that his estranged wife had given birth to a son, a few months after he had left. Rather than go seek out his son, he says he again packed his bags and left, this time crossing the border into Kenya.

He then worked as a security guard for a few months before getting netted in one of Kenya’s infamous msakos (operations that arrested any adult found without a Kenya national identification card) and ending up in detention for close to two years.

Getting a new identity
“In jail, I befriended a Luo man from Kisumu called Onyango who told me a lot about himself, his home and his people. He also taught me Luo,” recalls Onderi. This information later came in handy when in 1992 the Kenyan government began deporting foreign detainees.

The 52-year-old says he repeated Onyango’s story to them, and they released him in Kisumu instead of deporting him to Uganda.

A few months later, courtesy of Onyango’s story, Omiel Matuta Onderi from Tororo became Onyango, an orphan from Kisumu and he had the ID to prove it. He found work at a clothes shop and settled for a while. He also converted to Islam, and was given the name Yasiin.

In 1996, Onderi says he arrived in Mombasa to study Islam as a first step towards becoming a Sheikh, sponsored by his former employer. “But after I found a good job at the ports as a driver I forgot all about studying religion,” he says.

With a new identity, a new job, some money to spend and the idyllic coastal life at his feet, Onderi says he thought about home less and less. I was still angry. “That is why I did not want to come home,” he offers.
Instead, he settled, married a wife, had children, raised his two sons alone when that marriage failed, and married again. Though there are no children from that union, he is still with her.

Returning to graves
Meanwhile, his parents, siblings, died off one by one, their spouses also died over the years whittling the large polygamous family down into just two sisters. Another house built by his nephew stands where his once stood and time has erased any signs of his grave. A house has even been built barely two feet away. But his sister Adikini knows the very spot she bid a final goodbye to her older brother.

It is not much of a scene when Onderi finally comes upon where he was buried. He nods and follows his sister’s hands as she gestures how they laid him.

Later, maybe to satisfy Onderi or for the benefit of our cameras, the soil is dug up and heaped up to resemble a fresh grave.

In 2012, he says things started going awry. It began with abruptly losing his job without benefits and being unable to find another one since then, among other things he is not specific about. His wife took the capital and savings from her vegetable stall to enable him return home. But she has no idea home is Tororo, believing he is somewhere in Kisumu as he has always said.

“I will explain to her after I return,” he says with an easy smile. He seems to be taking everything in stride. From the questions on his whereabouts all those years, to emotional moments such as when his relatives don’t know whether to scream in joy or cry, most times doing both in the first minutes of meeting him. He seems more amazed by the fact that he is the only surviving male of his generation in that branch of the family than anything else.

If he feels any remorse or guilt it does not show on his smooth dark face. He does say he is overwhelmed by joy that his son is alive and well and sadness because everywhere he went he was being told the people he knew died.

The son he left behind
Twenty-eight-year-old Patrick Okoth admits he was not overwhelmed at seeing Onderi. And who can blame him for not knowing the etiquette for meeting your father for the first time? But later as Onderi told his story, Okoth’s face crumbled and he cried like a baby. “I just began reflecting on my life and how I had endured insults that I was an orphan. Yet my father was alive,” he shares.

He had heard of his father’s disappearance and death when he was still in primary school and even took a trip to Lwala and had seen his grave back in 2009, so there was an element of disbelief when he was called to go receive his father.

But a first glance dispelled all doubts. “I know what I look like, and I could see my features in his face. We have the same forehead and smile,” says Okoth.

He was raised by his maternal relatives after his mother remarried and his father never appeared to claim him. Okoth had to take jobs as a cleaner to finish his secondary education and later his university education.The economics and entrepreneurship teacher at St Luke SS Mengo is not dwelling on what could have been. “I believe there is a reason for everything. Even my father’s disappearance. I thank God for him,” he says.

As for expectations, he says he is not looking forward to anything more than fatherly blessings from Onderi. And probably to find out what his father’s plans are regarding the people who stepped up to raise his firstborn.

After contemplating a little, Okoth adds that he would also like to know whether his father was thinking about him as he made the trip. “Did he come back knowing I would even be there?” he wonders.Onderi says seeking forgiveness to those he wronged is top on the agenda. “Then I want to thank those who helped raise my son. I have even told my son this. But I cannot go empty handed. So I will wait for things to improve first,” he said.
Nothing makes him prouder than knowing his son has a degree. He is the first one to make it to university, in their immediate clan and it was beyond this fathers wildest dream that the child he left behind would be so accomplished.

Settling in
In the few days he has been back, he is already up to speed with family feuds, gossip, news and he has a few ideas about that. On January24, those who had yet to see him turned out to confirm if indeed he had returned. They, eyed his suit and tie getup curiously and strained to understand his polished Swahili as he addressed them. They seem to marvel at his still youthful looks, and how he seems to have forgotten his native Japadhola.The man who left in 1989 was a Primary Six dropout who made his living off the land. The biggest town he had been to was Busia and he did not have much in the way of worldly possessions.

The man who arrived in Tororo n January 18 was a little more worldly, with a penchant for sharp dressing it seems. He admits he lost whatever fortunes he made, but he found God, twice, once in Islam and now as a born again Christian.

Onderi says he is ready to stay, just as soon as he goes on one last trip to Mombasa. He hopes to return with his family, after disclosing his real identity of course.

TIMELINE
1963 Onderi is born in Lwala village South Budama to Omiel Matuta and Marie Sera Awori.He was their second born.
1984 drops out of Amori Primary School due to financial constraints.By then both his parents are deceased and he was in P6.
1985 married his first wife .It was a customary marriage and he paid 4 cows and three goats.
Later that year, his marriage hits the rocks and Onderi leaves Lwala for the first time.
1989 Onderi briefly shows up in Lwala, but does not go to check on his son.He then leaves again, this time to hunt for a job in Kenya.
He is later arrested in Kenya and detained till 1992.
1992-1996 he works in Kisumu at a clothes shop after converting to Islam and getting a new identity.
1994, his family hold a burial ceremony for Onderi.
1995- The family in Lwala perform last funeral rights for him
1996- He moves to Mombasa
1998- He marries again and they have four children but two pass away.
2007-The marriage dissolves.
2009- Okoth, Onderi’s son raised by his maternal relatives goes to see his fathers final resting place.
2011- Onderi marries again
2012- He is retrenched from his job as a driver at Kenya Ports Authority
2015 January
18th- 52 year old Onderi travels to Tororo to look for his relatives.
20th- He travels to Kampala for the first time in his life to meet a sister he has not seen for 25 years and meet his first born son for the first time.
24th –Onderi returns home to Lwala for the first time in 25 years.