KISUMU: When I arrived, Maria Oor Muyoyo, mother to George Onyango Muyoyo who disappeared without a trace 16 years ago was going about her business at her home in Ugoma village, Siaya County.
When I introduced myself and the business that had brought me to her home that morning, emotions overcame her and tears begun to roll down her cheeks..
“Let these (the tears) not worry you, my grandson. It is better when someone is dead than having to deal with a lost one you have no idea where they are,” she says wiping the tears away with her leso.
“I am yet to come to terms with the loss. Of the eight children God gave us, he was the last. You know mothers with their last born children,” she says, trying to force a chuckle.
As we settle down for the interview, the 70-year-old widow tells how her son disappeared on August 1999. He was, at the time, teaching at Sifuyo Primary School while waiting to join college. Born in 1974, he would be 41 years old today.
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“He was supposed to join Kaimosi Teachers Training College that same month he disappeared. On that fateful day, George just walked out of the compound as though going for a walk and did not return,” she says.
He left behind a wife, who has since passed on, and a six-month old daughter who is now in secondary school.
Maria says her son was scheduled to join college on a Monday. Unfortunately, he would disappear on Saturday, just two days away.
“We could not believe it when it later dawned on us that he had actually gone missing. Everyone was shocked and we looked everywhere.
The provincial administration, particularly the area chief gave me all the support I needed at the time. In the village meetings he announced what had happened, asking those who could have seen George to report to him. But we have never find him alive nor his body,” she says.
The frantic search for George, who was also known as Josiah among his friends and peers, would bear no fruit.
“Of the children I had, six have now passed on. This leaves one alive and one lost. With George missing, I do not know whether I am left with one or two children,” Maria says.
She adds: “I am still praying that one day I will get to see my son before I die. Should somebody out there see a face like my son’s, let him or her get back to me and if he is out here, let him know that we are still waiting for him to return.”
