Ladies and Gentlemen this is what was supposed to be the most colourful of all the holidays I had ever seen but I ended up being brutalized and taken hostage in Jesus’ birth place. 

In 1982, I was turning 35 years of age and my surprise birth day gift from the company I had worked with for ten years was to send me for a two weeks holiday, anywhere I chose. I picked on the holy land of Israel.

Yosi Nasri, my old classmate at Columbia school of journalism hosted me for all my stay and during one of our night adventures I came across Elizabeth (Liz) whom we had a lot in common. The chemistry was instant.  

She smoked more than a chimney and drunk more than a fish yet from a very conservative family which spanked the hell out of me.

We fell head over heels for each other and in no minute, she had introduced me to her parents as her potential husband. In their living room, I was nodding with a triumphant look in my eyes but in her parents’ mind catastrophe was brewing.

"Where do you come from young man?” the father asked with a growling voice that raised hairs on my small body. "Rwanda…that is in Africa,” I said trying to muster a smile. "And your faith?” he probed further.

"I am guided by my moral standards,” I respectfully responded. He picked up his land line phone, murmured something in Aramaic or was it? Two hefty giants appeared and brutally threw me out of the compound.

Elizabeth’s pleas could not save me but earned her a thorough beating as well.

"If you want to go back to wherever you come from in one piece, stay away from my daughter,” the father warned as I was being thrown over the fence.

Nothing could prevent us from loving each other or even get married, Elizabeth had told Yosi. One week later, we secretly married in the customary court and she eloped with me to Yosi’s friend’s place as we arranged our return to Africa.

Her parents’ spy network soon caught up with us in our hideout. Liz was taken away. I don’t know to where. I was blindfolded and taken to a room where I was tortured and starved for the period I can’t tell since I lost track of the days.

I later learned that they traced Yosi who gave them my passport and the small bag I had and in the next few minutes I was thrown on the flight to Nairobi and back to Kigali.  For all these years, I have missed my wife Elizabeth and I still cry over the young marriage cut short.

I am appealing to any human rights organization to help me out. I want my wife back. And don’t you start bringing up Loreta. This is a different case altogether.

Ends