On Saturday April 4, 2004, at around 5am, Ayienda allegedly left his house never to return. He was due to return to hospital for check up the following Tuesday.

"He was very eager to go for the check up," says his father. He only carried his national identity card and a mobile phone and left his drugs behind. "I woke up at 5am and enquired how he was doing from his brother with whom they shared a bedroom but I was told he had gone out," says Onderi.

Abel Ayienda: He left home at 5am carrying his identity card

It was still very early, his father followed him outside but a watchman at the gate told him Ayienda had only exchanged greetings with him before he left carrying a newspaper. 

"We feared he could have been attacked by thugs or arrested by the police. Our search at police cells was, however, unsuccessful," he explains.

Relatives checked with all bus companies going up country to confirm whether he had travelled. "We even called home to check if he had arrived but we got a negative answer," Ayienda remembers.  The third born in a family of eight, Ayienda attended Mokomoni Primary School before sitting his KCSE at Mokomoni SDA Secondary School in 1993.

"He was tall, slender and talkative and liked drama while in school," says his father.  After High School, he joined a college in Nairobi in 1995 to study accounting after which he worked for six years at his cousin’s company along Jogoo Road. In 2003, he was diagnosed with TB but he recuperated after taking medication.

In the same year, he had won a green card to the US through the American lottery and was finalising travel arrangements. "He travelled to our Gucha home in early 2003 to procure a birth certificate which he needed to apply for a passport," recalls his mother, Rael Nyanchama, 60.

The travel documents are still with his elder sister who lives in Nairobi. His younger brother moved to the US two years ago after securing a green card. The family announced his disappearance in a local daily prompting people to call them claiming they knew where he was.

"A woman called from Kisumu saying she was with Ayienda and asked us to meet her at a police station. She, however, took us in circles before we met and asked us to top up her credit. She later switched off her phone," adds Nyanchama.  By the time they realised she was a con woman; they had lost a lot of money to her. The mother says the family is still hopeful that he will reappear one day.  "We talk about him very often as a family. I keep hope alive that he is not dead. In my heart, I believe he is still alive somewhere and I know he will come home some day," says his father confidently.

The mother says she sees images of her son walking home every time she sits near the gate to their Bomoseri home in Gucha. "Each time I sit at a spot near the gate, it is like I see Abel walking home," she says. The family’s wish is that their son is safe wherever he is and that he will return home one day.

"Our prayer is that if anyone has seen him, let them tell us. We keep praying for his return as we believe he is still alive wherever he is," says Nyanchama, amid suppressed tears as she clutches at her son’s portrait.