A family in Kazo, Kawempe division in Kampala is still looking for their father, four years after he disappeared from home.
The 70-year-old Aprinali Kamushwa went missing on April 24th 2007 from her son, Wilfred Byabagambi’s home in Kazo. What bothers the family most, according to Byabagambi, is that they don’t know whether he is still alive or not. Worse still, their father may never get a final resting place.
Byabagambi says the disappearance of his father will remain in his memory with so many questions to ask but few answers.
Byabagambi, who runs a hardware shop along Allen road in Kampala, says it’s hard for him to explain Kamushwa’s disappearance to people in the village from where he got him.
With tears collecting in his eyes, Byabagambi says his father was his best friend, no-wonder the last time he was seen at the Nakulabye roundabout he was asking for the home of his son, Willy Byabagambi. That was a week after he had disappeared from home.
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Being diabetic, at Nakulabye, Mzee Kamushwa was thirsty and asked for water to drink and that was the last the family ever heard of him.
However the six-month hunt that took Byabagambi to the city mortuary, Mulago hospital mortuary and to other hospitals, finally came to an end when he found a young girl in Mulago hospital holding her cold father’s arm and crying “Daddy, Daddy” where have you left me. The girl had just lost her own father.
At over 50 years, Byabagambi who occasionally wiped tears down his cheeks only consoles himself with lots of hope that he will one day find his missing father.
Byabagambi says Kampala looks very small but with a missing person it’s as large as New York, with paths everywhere that no single person’s effort can help finding a missing person.
Byabagambi says he placed radio announcements, hired boda boda riders to trace for his father, printed posters, ran newspaper adverts with a five million shilling reward in a bid to find his father but he still remains missing.
Speaking of his experience with a missing person, Byabagambi says there are more people trying to cash in on the money than find the missing person.
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Today, Byabagambi thinks his father might have strayed into someone’s compound and was killed or he might have been knocked down by a car, carried off and abandoned somewhere. He further thinks that being a person with Amnesia; he could still be roaming somewhere.
Byabagambi says if his father was to be found it needed the effort of everybody in Kampala because of the many slums.
Kamushwa could only speak Runyankore-Rukiga, which his son believes must have made it difficult for him to find his way home.
According to Byabagambi they reported a case of disappearance at Kawempe police station only to be told at the end of four years he can consider him dead.
Like Mzee Kamushwa, many people in Uganda remain missing including Andrew Ndawula, a switch plant engineer at MTN, who went missing while going home.
As Uganda joined the rest of the world to commemorate the International Day of missing persons on August 30th, the families of these people are still looking for answers.
