By ALLAN OLINGO
When John Mungai walked into the Standard Group Centre on Wednesday, he was clutching on his last hope – to request The Standard to highlight the story of his daughter’s disappearance.
The Standard carried the story on Friday and at 6am the next day, a man called the newsroom with news on the girl’s whereabouts. When this was relayed to Mungai, he was elated.
“Let me lock myself in a quiet room so that we can talk. Are you sure they are not playing games,” Mungai asked, sounding relieved.
Pollet Waithira Mungai, 17, a KCSE candidate had left home on May 3, and hadn’t been seen or heard from. Her father Mungai had reported her disappearance to Karuri Police Station on the May 6, and it was booked on the occurrence book number 23/6/5/2012.
In the early morning phone call, Alliwah, a gospel musician and actor, disclosed to The Standard that he had Pollet Wangui within his traveling theatre group in Kisii and that after reading The Standard that morning, he was shocked to learn she was the missing person.
Two-hour wait
Alliwah offered to drive her from Kisii to the Standard Group Centre and The Standard then arranged for the parents to come and pick their daughter.
When the parents walked in, in the company of Pollet’s aunties, one could see the anxiety in their faces as they waited for about two hours for Alliwah to arrive.
“Are you sure they are coming? What if she is not the one?” posed Mungai. Six hours later, Pollet was ushered into the boardroom and when her parents walked in, you could see the shock in her face. To the parents, it was a sigh of relief, as they fought back tears.
Apparently, through the drive from Kisii, Pollet did not have an idea she was in the papers, leave alone that she was coming to meet her parents.
“I did not want to tell the girl what was happening, so I lied to her that we were travelling to Nairobi to buy some performance costumes and to pick some scripts at the Standard Group,” Alliwah explained to the schoolgirl’s parents.
All this while, Pollet was dumbfounded; as she sat pensively with her eyes glued to the story highlighting her disappearance.
