Hoping to reunite 30 years on

Mama Brigit Nafula dispalys her husband picture at Namakoye village in Bungoma County, her husband Ernest Wawire who went missing saying hes secured a job in Meru back in 1986. By Benjamin Sak

After 12-years of marriage that was generally blissful, Ernest Kalainga Wawire left his wife Brigit Nafula in their rural home in Namakoye village, Navakholo, Kakamega County to look for opportunities to improve their lot.

That was in 1986, the last time Nafula, now 61, saw her husband.

Wawire last communicated with her in a letter in July 1986 saying he was at a new station of work in Meru after finishing studies he was pursuing in hotel management.

Her husband, a hotelier had been working as a hotel manager in Bungoma town and was accustomed to leaving his family in his rural home where the children went to school.

“We were happy as a family when he wrote saying he had found greener pastures at a bigger hotel In Meru. I knew our young family would be more comfortable. He promised to relocate us to Meru but that was not to be. I have never seen him again,” Nafula says as she stares blankly into the horizon. Memories of life with her beloved flood her mind as moments later she looks at us with moist eyes.

She became worried and nervous when months passed without her husband sending money for their family’s upkeep, writing another letter or visiting to check on his family as was the norm.

At first, she thought that the new work environment and the distance from Meru to Navakholo was the reason, and hoped that he would plan better and visit, but his absence and silence continued for months.

With anxiety nearly choking her, she approached her brother-in-law, a police officer to find out what was happening to her husband.

“His brother went to look for him in Meru at the hotel he was working at. He was told that Wawire had left many months earlier without saying where he was going to. We kept searching for him. With the search going on and on without much hope, family members felt it was time we moved on; that my husband was like a blade of grass among his 35 siblings,” Nafula told Wednesday Life.

Witchdoctors and diviners

As days passed on, signs of her husband ever returning home also continued to diminish and she found herself isolated in her solitude.

“I wiped away any thoughts of getting married again because I loved my husband very much. More so I had six children to look after. I had to soldier on and never to break down for the sake of my children who looked up to me for support.”

Without her husband’s financial support, Nafula became a labourer. She tilled farms and did other manual labour for a fee. But the wage was not enough to take care of her family. Gradually, she found herself in the chang’aa brewing business for sustenance.

“I used to sell chang’aa to feed my children. I also invested in paying diviners and witchdoctors who promised to bring my husband back home. Because of that I led a poor life as the witchdoctors grew rich. I gave up on the search when in the early 1990s one of the diviners bought a cow and goat with the Sh2,500 I gave him from selling chang’aa,” she said.

David Wanjala, Wawire’s firstborn son, says although he would not recognise his father if they met now, as he left when he was quite young, he has made a few attempts to look for him. He once travelled to Meru to meet a man whom he had been told was his father only to meet a stranger.

The Wawire family still hopes against all odds that he will be back.