If he is not dead or in prison, where is my son?

How does a sane 28-year-man old vanish from the city into thin air?

It is a question Charles Ng’ang’a Mukaru is grappling with after his son, Morrison Mukaru, went missing on December 14, last year.

Mukaru, who is enjoying his retirement on his farm in Maragua, laments over a festive season spent without a beloved son.

“He had no mental problems; he has never been diagnosed with any mental condition,” says the anxious father of seven.

The day Morrison left his uncle’s home in Bahati estate, in Nairobi’s Eastlands, he was wearing a brown shirt and blue denim jeans. According to his father, Morrison informed his uncle (Mukaru’s brother) with whom he lived, that he had been called by one of his clients to repair a stalled car in Eastleigh.

Prior to his disappearance, Morrison worked as a mechanic, having learnt the trade as an apprentice in his teenage years.

“That is all the information we had at the time he went missing,” says the distraught father.

What remains puzzling to Mukaru and members of his family is the fact that they have traversed the city, visited mortuaries and prisons to look for him in vain. Clues of their son’s whereabouts still remain scanty.

So far, Mukaru says they have been to Industrial Area, Ruiru, Jamhuri and Athi River prisons. He has also visited Kenyatta National Hospital and the City Mortuary but these trips have been fruitless.

Where is his body?

“I have gone to all the possible public places he could be. If he died, where is his body? If he fell ill and was picked by a Good Samaritan, why hasn’t anyone come up with information? If he committed an offence and was taken into custody by police, why haven’t the authorities reached us?”

So far, Mukaru’s questions remain unanswered.

While he maintains his son was level headed, it is possible that he landed himself in trouble, a possibility Mukaru says, goes back to Morrison’s troubled past. The son, it emerges, never sat his KCPE examinations; he took off deliberately to avoid taking the tests.

“He had very little interest in education. As his father, I took him to an established mechanic in Nairobi. For a year or so, he learnt the trade under and eventually qualified to work on his own,” says Mukaru.

Also, during his teenage years, Morrison was a heavy drinker. And even though he was never caught with any illicit material, his father suspects that he also abused drugs. It was during his teenage years that Morrison’s ‘unruly’ nature came out.

In recent times, Mukaru says his son – apart from the occasional drink – was trouble free. He however, does not rule out the possibility that he may have gotten into trouble while on a drinking spree.

The third born in the family, Morrison had neither married nor was he in a relationship – at least one known to his family.

Whatever the case, Mukaru says he needs to be reunited with his son and asks for help from anyone who may have leads.