For 25 years, 11-year-old schoolgirl Oma Nanan has been missing.
It’s a pain that can never escape a mother’s heart. At 73, Fulbassia Nanan still recalls the ordeal as though it happened yesterday, but said she has found ways to keep herself together for all those years.
“I don’t know if she is around or if she is not. I don’t have an idea what to think sometimes. I still feel that someday…if I could get a call or something like that but…that is my hope,” she said.
Oma loved sports and had a bright and promising future ahead. She started Form One in September 1991 at the Curepe Secondary School, but one month into the term her life would change forever.
Hers was the second prominent missing person’s case in the country. Juliet Tam, a school teacher from Arima, disappeared in December 1985.
Oma would have been 36 on January 21, said her mother. Although they were Catholics at the time, Fulbassia, who was originally a Hindu, named her first child Omatee. She attended the Brazil RC Primary School.
Interviewed on Thursday, days after the anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance, she said while it was a traumatising experience, she had to find ways to move on.
Focusing on her second child, her son Dhanraj, and then taking up a job in her later years after her husband’s death proved to be coping measures.
Fulbassia only stopped working at 70 because of her health. She’s a diabetic.
Asked if they still spoke of Oma, she said, “At times we still talk about her. You know that’s one memory that you can never get out of you. Then there were so many missing cases after her. I don’t like to look at the news because I know the pain those parents feel. I had it too. I have to say they have the same pain.”
She said it was good that some who go missing re-appear safely but it was difficult when others were found dead.
“I didn’t find anything of mine. The case just closed and we never found anything,” she said.
Speaking via telephone from her Talparo home, Fulbassia said, “It was just a month into school. I was not working at the time. I used to work in the garden because my husband was a retrenched worker and we used to do gardening. Long after, I went off to work. I always remember her on her birthday.”
She recalled what took place on October 3, 1991. She said Oma got dressed for school and went by the roadside to wait for a taxi.
“But she went before I could have been together with her and this person just passed and she got into the back seat.”
All Fulbassia heard was, “Mammy, I am getting a drop.”
She said a neighbour saw when the private car stopped but she was on her way to work and didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was late in the evening when Oma did not return from school that the quiet village began raising questions about her disappearance.
Fulbassia said, “I had plenty comforters around...plenty visitors. There were times I would lie down and cry alone but someone would always appear to comfort me and console me.”
She said almost 13 years after the disappearance she began to think less of what happened but would never forget her daughter.
“I still have her first Communion dress put away and some of her medals and trophies although they got old.”
However, while she still has some pictures of Oma, she refuses to look at them. “I don’t like to watch her pictures. I have a few hide up.”
Her son, she said, never likes to speak about the incident. He always moves away from it. He was one year younger than Oma.
Asked how she got the strength to move on, she said, “When you trust in the Lord, he gives you all the strength. He knows everything.”
The grandmother of two said it was “real hard at the beginning” but she had to live for Dhanraj as he was getting ready for Common Entrance at the time.
“That helped me...to live for him and occupy myself with him.”
Another distraction was when her home was robbed years ago. “That strayed me away from her for a while.”
She said bandits stole jewelry, appliances and tools.
Fulbassia said up to this day people still talk about her daughter but she does not like the conversation.
“There are so many things going on in this place now. You can’t think of what really could happen. There is human trafficking, there is murder, all different things.”
She said for up to eight years the police worked with her “very, very good” before giving up. Fulbassia still attends church and enjoys spending time with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
If you have any information on the whereabouts of any missing person, the Sunday Guardian asks you to contact the TTPS or Crime Stoppers at 800-TIPS.