INCIDENTS of missing persons in many parts of Zambia, especially in Lusaka, are a source of worry to many people.
Although many people who have been reported missing, they have eventually gone back to their homes after being away from their families, relatives and friends for some time, others have been found murdered and some of their body parts removed by suspected ritual killers.
But there have been some instances when some people have been known to be careless and are in the habit of spending days away from their homes with girlfriends and boyfriends and since they are known to be habitual spenders of days away from homes and got back when they felt like it, their relatives and family members are used to this and make very little fuss.
But while there are such characters, many others are not in that habit and once they miss from home for long hours or days, concern is raised.
Recently, I escorted a friend to Mushili Township in Ndola where he had been called to discuss some family issue concerning a female relative who had gone to Lusaka to visit her aunt but a few days later was reported missing together with her uncle (the husband to her aunt).
We had been in the house of my friend’s relatives with some men and women when the phone of one of the men started ringing. The man got the phone from his pocket and answered it.
I don’t know what his caller was saying, but when the man talked, I heard him say: “They are stupid. Why did they do that? It is good they have come back alive. When you hear that someone has gone missing in Lusaka, just know that he or she had been killed”.
The man paused and it was apparent that whoever had called him was speaking.
Then I heard the man say that he would inform others about it as the conversation between him and his caller seemed to have ended.
The man then shook his head disapprovingly and announced that her niece and her uncle (his brother-in-law) who had been reported to have gone missing had returned home after three days of being away on a drinking spree without informing anyone at home about their whereabouts.
As an eavesdropper, my ears were tickled. The uncle and his niece went missing for three days on a drinking spree! I yearned to hear more.
“They have just got home. They had just gone drinking. How do you go out on a drinking spree for three days with your niece without informing anyone, not even your wife?” the man said sounding disappointed with his brother-in-law who had gone with his niece.
“They are surely stupid. How can the uncle with his niece go out drinking for three days,” one woman in the group wondered.
Another man who had been quiet as the discussions were going on and who apparently did not know what was being discussed asked what was going on.
It was then that the man who had received the phone call started explaining to him what had happened.
According to the man, it was on a Friday when her niece, let us call her Mary (not real name) who had gone to visit her sister in Lusaka, decided to visit her aunt who was staying in a different township to tell her that she would be going back to Ndola on Monday.
She found that her uncle was not at home. It was late in the afternoon when she was bidding bye-bye to her aunt.
The man explained that her niece told her uncle that he had come when she was just about to leave.
“It was at this time that her uncle told her to wait a bit so that he could escort her to her sister. After some time, her uncle asked her to get into the car and instead of taking her to her sister, he drove to some drinking place,” explained the man.
He said since her niece was also a drunkard, they started drinking.
When the bar closed, her uncle decided to drive to a night club in the outskirts of the city,” the man said.
He said it was late at night when her niece’s sister called her aunt to find out why her sister had not gone back home, but all her aunt knew was that her husband had taken her niece to her sister’s home.
When her husband could not get home, she called his number, but there was no response to the dialed number. When she called her niece’s number, the response was: The number called is outside the coverage area or has their phone switched off.
The following morning, the aunt’s husband could still not get back home and when she called her niece’s elder sister to find out whether her niece had now got home, she was told her she had not and on hearing this, the aunt told her that even her husband had been away from home since the previous day.
It was then that both her aunt and her niece’s elder sister panicked. They went to police stations to check for the missing uncle and his niece, but to all the stations they had gone, no such people had been found.
“On Sunday, the missing uncle and his niece were still at large and it was for this reason that the aunt and her niece’s elder sister started informing their relatives within and outside Lusaka about the missing persons,” the man explained.
While the man was explaining this misadventure, some of the women were mourning as if someone had died.
“Lusaka has become very bad. When someone has gone missing, it means she or he has been killed,”one of the women said in her lament.
It was on Monday around 15.00 hours during this “temporal funeral” when the man received the phone call from one of his brothers who had gone to his sister’s home on a fact find finding mission when he was told that the two reported missing persons had just got home in a drunken stupor.
“My brother has just called that Mary and her uncle have just got home and they are very drunk. They just went on a drinking spree. How foolish?,” the man said his brother had told him on the phone.
He said when he received a phone call from her sister informing him about her missing husband and niece, she was sure they had been killed.
“It was on Sunday when she called and told me about the missing from home of her husband and her niece and she was sure they had been killed. You know how it is in Lusaka. When one is reported missing, the next time they are found they are dead.
“After three days without finding them, we were all sure they had been killed. It was for this reason that we started informing some relatives about the missing of the two,” he explained.
The man said he, together with other relatives, were supposed to leave for Lusaka the following day but thanks his brother had just called to inform him that his niece and his brother-in-law had now come home.
“What kind of foolishness is this where a man goes out for three days with his wife’s niece just for drinking?” another woman said.
Indeed, how crazy can some people be!
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