Azory’s wife still lives with hopes of seeing husband

Kibiti. Azory Gwanda’s wife, Ms Anna Pinoni, has never lost hope, four years since her husband mysteriously went missing.

“What I have learned is that a problem may occur and you can pray for its solution to be found, but that could take time. So, I still believe that one day my husband will return home,” she says as reporters visited her home yesterday.

Mr Gwanda whose duty station was in Kibiti District, where a series of senseless killings occurred in 2017, was abducted by unknown people and today marks four years of his disappearance.

No clues of his whereabouts so far have been shared even as the government claimed to have launched investigations.

“In my life, I will never forget the day of November 21 on which my husband’s incident came to light. I will always remember this day because it was the last time for me to see my husband,” says Ms Pinoni her face lost in thoughts.

She says on the day of his disappearance her husband followed her to their farm in a white Toyota Land Cruiser with other four occupants and asked her where the keys to their house were and she says she has not seen again him since then.

Mr Gwanda was reporting a spate of killing incidents in the district before he went missing. The Citizen visited his home yesterday and found it was missing the father of the family.

Ms Pinoni told The Citizen that four years without seeing her husband have been hard for her and that as a woman she has to struggle for her own life and hat of her two children.

She says when her husband went missing she had a six-moth pregnancy and she admits that it was the most difficult period for her, saying that had it not been for prayers she would have had a miscarriage.

“In the beginning it pained me a lot as whenever I was thoughtful, I found myself being drained, I couldn’t walk and suddenly felt hot and drained.

“This made me turn to prayers by involving many people who prayed for me and had it not been for this, Gladness, my daughter, would not have been born,” she says.

She says Gladness, who is now aged three and seven months, has started to be knowledgeable because she sometimes asks for her daddy, although she has never seen him.

She says her son, 10, has been the most inquisitive about where his father is. However, she says she has been encouraging him to pray to God so that his father could return home when the time comes.

She says after her efforts in finding her husband were not successful she decided to keep silent and leave it to God.

She says she stopped making a follow-up on the whereabouts of her husband since 2019, although the media kept reporting on his missing.

“On a statement given by minister and went viral on social media that my husband disappeared and died, I did not carry it in my mind as I left everything to God,” explains Ms Pinoni.

The statement was given by the then minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Prof Palamagamba Kabudi, when he was interviewed by the BBC’s TV program Focus on Africa on July 10, 2019.

Prof Kabudi, on July 11, 2019, told the press, “Until now it has not been confirmed that Azory is alive or dead. Defence and security organs continue with investigations into the matter and other incidents that occurred in the chaos of Kibiti, Coast Region, where several people died or went missing.”

Ms Pinoni wanted fellow women, who were experiencing the challenge as the same as hers to get encouraged, be tolerant and pray to God and one day they would become the winners.