Caroline Mwatha’s husband, Joshua Ochieng ,who works at Dubai called his wife’s phone at around noon last Wednesday. The call was picked, but the person on the other end did not utter a word. He found this strange but decided to keep calm, thinking that maybe his wife was in a meeting. He continued calling for the whole night but nobody picked.
He flew into the country on Sunday night after getting news of his wife’s disappearance. She has been missing for six days now. He said that he and his wife chatted on WhatsApp throughout the night last week on Tuesday and that on Wednesday morning at about 8.35am, she sent him a good morning message to which he replied at 9:56 am. He says, ”she usually drops our daughter to school in the morning, she texted me but I did not see it immediately as I was not online at that time.”
He requested his sister-in-law to go to his house and check what was going on. The sister-in-law only found the couple’s 13-year-old daughter. Ochieng also called his wife’s work place but her colleagues did not know her whereabouts. “That was when I sensed that something was wrong.”
Mwatha is a founder member and case worker at the Dandora Community Social Justice Centre that has been documenting and lobbying against extra judicial killings. The mother of two went missing from her home in Dandora. Her disappearance was first reported at Buruburu police Station on Thursday last week.
Nairobi Governor, Mike Sonko has offered Sh300,000 reward for information on her missing. He urged anybody with information to contact the nearest police station or the Directorate of Criminal Investigations offices.
Her colleagues do not know what to make of her disappearance. They said before she went missing, she was handling two complaints of police harassment. Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director George Kegoro expressed concern that Mwatha’s disappearance might be linked to her activism work; ”In the absence of any other rational explanation, we are taking this to be linked to what Caroline has been doing.”
Mwatha’s colleagues and residents of Dandora held an evening vigil, hoping against hope, that she will be found.
On going #FindCarolineMwatha vigil at @DandoraJustice. pic.twitter.com/ihL9gQSMNh
— MissingVoicesKE (@MissingVoicesKE) February 11, 2019
Her search has been extended to water bodies and forests in Nairobi and its vicinity.