It happened twice, but the first time has stayed with me ever since.
We once had a former tenant, a young girl named Senda, who lived with us for a year—between the ages of 12 and 13. One Sunday morning after church, while sweeping the compound, I stumbled across a file on the ground. Curious, I picked it up and flipped through it. Inside was a school certificate bearing a Berom (an ethnic group in Nigeria’s Plateau State) name I didn’t recognise. I wondered who could’ve dropped it.
I quickly told our neighbour, Baba, who mentioned that earlier that day, he’d seen a girl wandering around looking for a house—our house. She seemed lost, he said. My heart sank. I thought maybe my brother had gotten into trouble. Just minutes later, the girl appeared. It was Senda.
She looked dishevelled and distressed.
When I asked what had happened, she broke down and told us a painful story—her mother, she said, didn’t want her or her younger sister at home. We believed her. My mother immediately called my father, who wasn’t around at the time, and then went straight to the house of our community head, the Mai Angwa, to report the matter.
The community head came to our house and listened patiently as Senda repeated her story. He suggested she stay with us for a few days and said they’d take her back home on Saturday to sort things out with her family.
We welcomed her into our home and gave her food, shelter, and a sense of safety. We tried our best to support her. But what we didn’t know was that this was only the beginning.
On Friday night, Senda disappeared.
By Saturday morning, when the community head arrived as planned at 6:30 a.m., we had already realised she was gone. My mother explained in shock, “Senda ran away at midnight.”
He was just as stunned.
Then my mother told us to check our belongings. That’s when I noticed my makeup box, bag, and shoes were missing.
I remembered one of Senda’s uncles who used to visit them. He often drank at a local joint near our junction. I described him to the shop owner, who said he hadn’t seen him but shared his phone number. I called him and explained everything.
What he said stunned me even more:
“We’re looking for her and her younger sister too—they ran away from home.”
I was speechless.
All he could say was Ku yi hakuri—please forgive us.
And that was the last we ever heard of Senda.
