'Please come back. The children and I miss you', Malindi man asks of missing wife

Portrait of Lydia Akinyi 25, who went missing from her Malindi home in March 2015. PHOTO: ROBERT AMALEMBA/STANDARD.

MALINDI: On the morning of March 25, this year Lydia Akinyi - dressed in a red skirt and flowery blouse, was busy with her household chores at their home in Malindi when her husband Charles Odhiambo left for work with a rider: “Good day, let’s meet in the evening.”

Akinyi responded with an affirmative nod and smiled at her husband.

However, when he came back home, Odhiambo found that his wife of ten years was missing but he assumed she would be back in a short while.

“I thought she had gone out to buy something at the shop or was perhaps speaking to her friends because she is talkative. I noticed she had left her phone in the house which thwarted my urge to call her as minutes turned to hours without her return,” Odhiambo said.

He walked out of his house to ask neighbours of his wife’s whereabouts and they all told him the same thing: “She left in the morning and I have not seen her since”.

Getting tense and feeling terrified, Odhiambo opted to file a report with the police after calling his wife’s friends bore no fruits. Days quickly morphed into months without word until July 27, when he found a missed call from a strange number.

“I returned the call and the receiver, who identified himself as Mohamed, said a lady called Lydia Akinyi who claimed to be related to me borrowed his phone and made the botched call,” he said.

Mohamed said he was based in Mariakani, but had no further information to give Odhiambo who then contacted Mariakani CID who promised to help find Akinyi.

That was not the only call Odhiambo was to receive from unknown people. He has so far received other four calls with the callers informing him that his wife was spotted at a hotel in Mariakani.

Armed with this information, Odhiambo took two weeks leave in order to comb through every hotel in Mariakani in search of his missing wife but with no luck.

He has also walked into hospitals thinking perhaps she fell ill or was knocked by a car and he has also been to police cells even though Akinyi had no criminal record.

“My work has been affected and my personal life mixed up. Our two children keep asking where their mum is and I have nothing to say and this is now even affecting their studies. I also have to leave work early in order to cater for them,” he said.

On their part, Akinyi’s family has now resorted to prayers with her brother David Otieno and father Simon Okumu anxious to know whether she is dead or alive.

“Although she did not say it openly, her talk made me sense something could be wrong with her marriage and before I knew it, her husband called months ago saying my daughter had disappeared,” he said.

Akinyi’s husband, however, insists all was well between them and is appealing to his wife to “please come back. The children and I miss you”.