He answered a call and vanished 3 years ago

On August 18, 2012, Henry Andabwa failed to return to his Nakuru home from Salgaa where he ran a business.

His wife, Margaret Wainaina, waited for him the whole night expecting a knock any time as her husband had no history of staying out long without notice.

As the clock ticked, Margaret tried to reach him on phone again and again but Andabwa did not pick the calls.

Then the heart-breaking automated response: “Mteja hapatikani”.

She kept waiting.

The following morning she called her husband’s workers at the Oasis Bar in Salgaa. She was puzzled when they told her that he had received a call and walked away as he talked.

“They told me that he promised to return in a short while and went away while talking on phone. That was at 3.30p.m. on August 18,” she narrates.

Margaret says Andabwa is a stout, dark and easy-going man who loved hanging out with people and laughing. He kept his hair short, wore tight T-shirts and matching sports shoes.

“We reported his disappearance to police in Nakuru on August 19, 2012. They promised to help trace him but I feel their efforts are below my expectations. I looked for him in various police cells, hospitals in Nakuru, Thika, Nyahururu, Mathare and other places he frequented but did not find him. I don’t want to think that he is dead.”

Andabwa’s brother Osman Khayota believes the person who made that last call to his younger brother knows about the disappearance.

“I don’t know who it was that called him but with the panic that we are told he left the bar, it is hard not to think that the caller didn’t mean well for my brother. I personally called Henry’s number in the course of day just as he had left but his phone was off. That was uncharacteristic as he hardly switched off his phone,” says Osman.

Andabwa’s three children — the first born is at Eldoret Polytechnic, the second sat his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exams last year while the last born is in Standard Five — are greatly affected by their father’s disappearance.

Henry Mboya Adriano who got lost while in Salgaa three years ago. (PHOTO: COURTESY)

“I was a housewife but the moment mzee disappeared I was forced to start managing the bar, hotel and logding business in Salgaa.

The proceeds are too meagre to afford my children good education,” says Margaret.

She says it is hard for those left behind when the family’s breadwinner disappears. She repaid her husband’s bank loan of Sh100,000 but the bank has refused to give her the logbook of the car he had given as security.

“I can’t access the cash in his account either to pay my children’s fees or give them a better education.”

Andabwa’s father Ariano Andabwa who broke the news of his missing son to Wednesday Life at his village at Malimili village, Kakamega, said that he believes that his loving son is still alive and will soon return.

“He was a peaceful person who had no quarrels with anyone. We hope he reads this story in the paper and comes back home,” he says optimistically.