FALLEN: SPLA fighters mourn Garang at New Site. A satellite image from the Meteorological Department at Entebbe showing the cloudy weather conditions in eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean at the time of the crash. The red dot indicates the area where the helicopter carrying Garang came down; LEFT: Rebecca Nyandeng
NAIROBI, Wednesday - John Garang’s widow, Rebecca Nyandeng, said yesterday she had spoken to her husband and expressed reservations about his decision to fly back home in the evening, shortly before the ill-fated chopper took off from Entebbe International airport at 5:00pm local time.
In a telephone interview with KTN from southern Sudan, the widow said Garang and his aides, however, told her that the pilot had assured them that the chopper was capable of making the journey. She ruled out foul-play, saying her husband, like the biblical Moses, had fulfiled his mission and his time to move on had come.
Nyandeng said her husband always kept her informed about his whereabouts every time he was travelling. That was the case on Saturday evening when she made a routine call to her husband’s party, which was on tour in Uganda.
“One of his aides called me at a quarter to five when they were taking off from Entebbe and I even told them, ‘At five you will not be able to reach here on time.’ But they told me that the pilot said they would make it,” Nyandeng said.
Despite her reservations, she went to the New Site airstrip near the Kenya-Sudan border, hoping to welcome her husband home. But the chopper did not arrive, way past seven O’clock, and the airstrip was already too dark and unsafe for landing.
“So I came back and I made a telephone call. His telephone rang until it went back to the voice-mail and I was really surprised because it had never happened that his telephone goes to the voice mail because he is a man of communication,” Nyandeng said.
Her initial reaction was to call President Yoweri Museveni, who had just hosted Dr. Garang, to confirm whether the chopper had actually left Uganda.
“President Museveni responded and he continued talking to me. He told me that he was informed that the people took off but he would find out what was going on. And that night we continued communicating with President Museveni, on Saturday night until Sunday,” Nyandeng added.
Then the anxiety began as the dark of the night kept her in the dark about her husband’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile SPLM soldiers took to the mountains and bushes of southern Sudan in search of their boss.
“And already I knew - I knew that I was not gonna receive the good news because it was already 24 hours and the man is a fighter: if he was alive he would have walked to some place where he could communicate,” Nyandeng said.
Unbeknown to her, the SPLM soldiers had actually stumbled on the wreckage and the remains of her husband as early as 2:00pm on Sunday, but they kept the information from her. The dreadful news was finally broken to her on Monday at 5:00am. She said as mourns Garang, she would also be celebrating the life of a man who fulfiled his mission on earth.
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/448535“You know God creates people for the purpose. And you have - if you finish with your mission, you have your time to go. There is a time for birth, there is a time for death. So, I can take that as a time for my husband has come. As our people used to say that he is Moses. So I can take that like that,” she added.
She appealed to the Sudanese people and the international community to remain faithful to Garang’s dream of peace in the Sudan.
Published on: Thursday, 4th August, 2005