By Viola Chepkemoi
There’s something haunting about a child’s shoe lying alone on a dusty roadside. It shouldn’t be there. Not in a place like Langas, where life beats to the rhythm of playful screams, slaps of washing on basins, and chapati dough being kneaded behind tin walls.
Children here are everywhere. They dart through alleys, chase tyres, and argue over who gets the red balloon.
But lately, the silence is louder.
In Langas, a child can just disappear. No warning. No goodbye. Just a sudden emptiness. One minute, a mother is sending her child to the shop, and the next, she’s combing ditches, printing photos, knocking on strangers’ doors, asking questions no parent should ever have to ask.
There’s no pattern, just pain. Some vanish while walking with siblings. Others from school gates. Some simply while playing within sight of home.
Their names blur in whispers and rumors, always followed by that dreaded sentence: “Hajapatikana mpaka saa hii.” He hasn't been found.
The worst part? The world doesn't stop. Water still needs fetching. Rent still needs paying. And life, cruelly, moves on even as parents remain suspended in that one moment: when their child walked out and didn’t come back.
Ask any Langas mother today, and she’ll tell you that she no longer lets her children go out alone. That freedom is gone. The gates stay locked.
Conversations with little ones now include rehearsed instructions: don’t talk to strangers, stay close to your friends, scream if anything feels wrong. Childhood itself has been put on alert.
But behind the locked gates and fearful eyes, something else is happening. A quiet defiance. Neighbors have begun to check on one another more. Watchful eyes now follow children down the paths.
Teenagers form impromptu escort teams. Prayer meetings carry a new urgency. There’s pain, yes, but also a deep knowing—if we don’t look out for each other, no one else will.
Still, every now and then, the wind carries a mother’s voice calling a name that hasn’t been answered in days. And it cuts deeper than anything else—the idea that a child could vanish from a place so full of life, and the world would just keep spinning.
If you’ve seen anything, say something. If you know something, speak. Because every child is our child. And until they are all home, we are all still searching.
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