Search for missing person nears a grim silver jubilee

Apio had taken on the name Sharon Asiimwe after being taken into foster care. Much like her big half-sister, Apio always looked forward to the festive period.

“Every end of year, we were allowed by our respective foster parents to go together to the village in western Uganda and celebrate Christmas with our extended family. This time round, I had been barred from going, but Sharon had no idea, and she was very excited for the season,” Kihembo says, adding, “When she came to find me at the shop so that we could go, I told her what had happened and her smile faded into sadness. I escorted her to the taxi park while consoling her, and she was not in the worst of spirits by the time we said our goodbyes.”

Kihembo had no inkling that something was amiss. It was not until she met someone who was part of Apio’s foster family. That was after a fortnight. Gerald Kyalimpa told Kihembo that her half-sister had been a no-show at their home. Kihembo, who had witnessed firsthand her then 17-year-old half-sister, supposedly take a taxi home, was left dumbfounded.

Kyalimpa said they initially didn’t read much into Apio’s no-show “because she had relatives and we believed she crossed over to live with them.”

He adds: “On further asking around, we found out that she had a boyfriend in Senior Six at Katikamu SDA where she studied … we believed she had possibly eloped with him. For those reasons, not many steps were seriously taken in the search for her. We believed she would eventually come back.”

She didn’t and hasn’t for 23 years and counting. Next Christmas Eve will mark a grim silver jubilee milestone since her disappearance.

Tragedy after tragedy

Joseph Rukanyangira, Kihembo’s foster parent, who was also a close confidant of her mother, says the family heaped one tragedy on the back of another.

“The girls’ mother—Albina Gabiikwenga Nduwumwami—was widowed in 1975 when her husband was murdered and [his body] dumped on Solent Avenue in Bugolobi [in Kampala]. She had been separated from him at a wedding reception at Silver Springs Hotel Bugolobi,” he says, adding, “She relocated to Mbarara and was given a small piece of land to live on with her then three children and that is where she met a traffic police officer with whom she produced a fourth child—Hellen. Nduwumwami was teaching in Mbarara by then.”

Mr Rukanyangira says he only met Apio when she was so young.

“I do not remember much about her. I had only seen her when she was six years old, and also at her mother’s burial in 1989. However, everyone praised her for being a good girl, and taking care of her mother when she was sick, as her elder siblings were at school,” he narrates, adding, “Friends and family vowed to share responsibility in taking care of the children, and that is how Hellen ended up under the care of her mother’s friend, Ms Kirabokyamaria, with whom they taught together at St Peter’s Primary School Nsambya [in Kampala]. She was a wife of former Ugandan ambassador to Rome and the Vatican, Vincent Kirabo kya Maria. We hope Hellen is alive and can be found.”

No closure

After her sister’s disappearance, Kihembo found herself powerless. She was so financially constrained to mount anything remotely close to a search for her half-sister. Since this was shortly before the turn of the second millennium, the mobile phones that are now so ubiquitous were a rarity back then.

The search efforts mounted by relatives did not yield much either. In fact, there is no police reference number for a file reported from the original case. Kihembo embarked on a search on her own, checking hospital emergency rooms and morgues for a person matching Apio’s description and the outfit she sported on that Christmas Eve. This, though, was all in vain.

When Kihembo relocated to the United States, her desire to find closure grew that bit more. Over the years, friends and family advised Kihembo to move on and let go of her pursuit, but the love for her sister was too strong to ignore. She could not bear not knowing what happened to Apio. One burning question, she says, particularly haunted her: “What does one do when she does not even know if a loved one is alive or not? Do you just pretend she is gone and have a funeral in your heart?”

Hitting a dead end?

Mr Patrick Onyango, the Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, says the absence of a file reference complicates things. This is despite Kihembo claiming they reopened a case under reference number 5D REF 73/23/0.

“This reference is wrong. It is not of a missing person. Our records show that the above reference is of theft of a phone, not a missing person,” Mr Onyango notes, adding, “The person who got for her that reference should be arrested and charged.”

Mr Onyango believes it is possible that someone gave Kihembo a wrong reference number since she is very far away. The officer, nevertheless, adds that the paternal side of Apio’s family can still be reached, especially since her father served in the traffic police and every serviceman of the police is known in the records.

“The only thing needed are more details about him like the district he comes from, his first name, the rank he died on, and his force number,” he says.

Unfortunately, the only details known about Apio’s father is the surname (Otim) and home district (Gulu).

Determined

Despite the odds being stacked against her, Kihembo remains steadfast in her mission. She is determined to find closure. Given the proximity in dates of her disappearance and the loss of nearly 1,000 lives after being caught in the crosshairs of Joseph Kibweteere’s apocalypticism in Kanungu District, some people have hazarded that Apio could have been a member of the cult.  Kihembo vehemently disputes such a narrative.

“My sister was a very sharp girl,” Kihembo says, adding, “She never would have landed in such circles.”