Oktober 28th, again.
In 2015 it was a Wednesday. I remember that phone call so very well: ‘Sophia has been missing for more than two and half hours now’. It was around nine o’clock in the evening. My heart stopped and the ground under my feet disappeared. It was the beginning of the worst possible thing that could happen to a parent. Your child disappears, just like that, and you have no clue where they are.
That day is now nine years ago. A dark cloud hangs over our lives since then. Grief, desperation, pain and hope have been stable ingredients of daily life. All of it surrounded by so many questions.
Psychologists speak of ‘ambiguous loss’ and call it the most distressful of all losses.
It’s an ongoing trauma which can only stop when the missing person is found. And if that will happen is of course another huge question mark. The not-knowing is devastating.
The story is so strange, so full of gaps that still have not been properly investigated. Painful and frustrating. In order to find the truth one has to keep digging persistently and not give up. We shall not give up on Sophia and will do what we can to make sure she is not forgotten.
When nothing is sure, everything is possible. And miracles do happen.
Yesterday the Ugandan newspaper The Daily Monitor carried a page-long article about Sophia and her mysterious disappearance.
The online version:
Today the New Vision had an article as well.
The Independent republished the Daily Monitor article today.
https://www.independent.co.ug/nine-years-without-sophia/
We are very grateful to those who understand that this pain, this insecurity, this grief and confusion will not end, no matter how much time passes. It will continue to haunt our minds. Until the day that Sophia is found. And that hope will never disappear. We miss her so very, very much. No child is as present as a missing child.
Marije Slijkerman
Gerard, Max en Jan Koetsier