Mention of marriage sends Reuben Mukitanga bolting for the third time

Ibrahim Pale the father of Reuben Makitanga and his wife Rose Nasambi hold the ID Card of their Lost son at their Matiri home. Picture: Benjamin Sakwa/Standard.

Reuben Mukitanga walked away from home in 2008 without telling anyone where he was going. He had left as usual for his manual jobs in the village and no one suspected he was up to anything.

His father, Ibrahim Pale, did not expect not to see Mukitanga, 36, for seven years.

This was not the first time the third born in a family of nine disappeared from home, but it has been the longest. Mukitanga was a reserved man who kept to himself but was a hard working farmer.

Therefore, the family suspects, a gentle ‘reminder’ to marry must have given him reason to bolt. Also, they cannot rule out the possibility of witchcraft as a reason for his consistent disappearances. At one point, they thought he was mentally ill because he was so unkempt.

“We don’t know as a family what makes him sporadically disappear. This is his third time to go missing. He first disappeared in 1991 for three years then returned for a short while before going missing again in 1994 for another two years,” says Pale during the interview at his Matiri village in Kimilili,  Bungoma County.

After his return in 1996, Mukitanga settled in and carried on with life like the rest of his siblings. When not working on the farm, he regaled his siblings about his adventures in Nandi Hills where he had gone after disappearing from home the first time.

“He told us how he used to burn charcoal and sell it. When he returned, he had a lot of money which amazed us. We had spent sleepless nights imagining just how much our brother was suffering wherever he was,” says Timothy Barasa, his younger brother and a student at Masinde Muliro University.

It thus took his family by surprise when he went missing again in 2008 after he was reminded that time was running out for him to marry. 

Pressure to marry

“My son was growing old and per our culture we reminded him to marry and have a home of his own. I don’t know whether that led to his present disappearance or if it was a medical condition he had developed that affected his mental health. We had taken him to hospital and he got a clean bill of health. Now we honestly don’t understand what is wrong.” The distraught father looks around the compound, as if to get answers from the whistling trees and swaying grass.

His mother, Rose Nasambi, looks into the air with little to say as the father talks about their lost son, she only hopes against hope that her son will one day come home because of her persistent prayers for his return.

She wonders what they did to their son to warrant the distress of his disappearances.

After his latest disappearance, a neighbour once came to the family with news that he had been spotted not too far away working as a farmhand. The family, full of hope, headed to the farm they had been directed to only to realise it was a hoax.

Diviners have assured them that Makitanga is alive and will one day return and so do many pastors who pray for the family.

His father appeals to him, if he reads this newspaper, to return home because they miss him so dearly. He promises that should he return, he is ready to build him a home and give him a business to keep him going.