Her husband Samson Teklemichael has been missing since November 19, 2021. Men in civilian clothes stopped the Bentley he was driving along Oloitoktok road in Nairobi and forced him out.
The car remained parked in the middle of the road as his abductors took him away.
Teklemichael is an Ethiopian from Tigray region. His abduction was at the height of the bloody Ethiopian civil war and there was speculation his disappearance could have been linked to the conflict.
The man had lived in Nairobi for 16 years and all his children were born in Kenya.
He would have turned 39 by end of 2021. His wife had planned a big party for his birthday.
Together with his wife, Teklemichael was an investor and they supplied LPG gas to Ethiopia.
There were allegations that he could have used the fortunes from the business to stand in ethnic solidarity with Tigray fighters against the country’s federal government. His wife has repeatedly rejected the claims.
“We have never been under any investigation while here. We lived a quiet life and Kenya is our home and all her children were born in Nairobi,” Mezgebo, who is of Eritrean descent, said.
She told the Star on Monday that the wound of her husband's disappearance is still fresh.
Counselling has not helped, and neither has multiple media campaigns or close contact with the police.
“Nothing seem to work for me [in this search],” Mezgebo said.
Asked how the children are coping and whether she has found a survival strategy amid the draining search, she said “the pain of the children is unspeakable”.
“You cannot even say how they are doing,” she said.
Mezgebo said although the new police leadership are frequently updating her on the status of the probe, nothing has changed “because the updates don’t help anything if my husband can’t come back”.
She said her frantic search efforts have not yielded anything.
From social media messaging to keeping close tabs with police and reaching out to the Ethiopian embassy in Nairobi, she said she’s done it all but nothing has been forthcoming.
Teklemichael’s relatives have been her support system, she said.
But she won’t let up yet, believing that Teklemichael was still alive.
“It is draining experience you don’t wish on anyone. Whatever the case is, I just want my husband home.”
And if he can’t back, then she wants to get his body and get closure, together with the children.
“I don’t know if I’m a widow or a just a woman awaiting her husband. It is a state no one should be in. Is he a live or not?” she told the Star.
In October last year, Mezgebo told reporters after meeting the new DCI chief Mohammed Amin in the company of human rights activists that she believed her husband was still alive somewhere.
She believed that with the stance of the new administration against extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances by police, she hoped for better news.
“I have spoken to the DCI and I am hopeful my husband is alive,” Mezgebo said.
She indicated that she had even contemplated leaving Kenya but after the new government took over, she changed her mind.
“I want justice for my husband because those who took him were not thugs but government officials. Traffic police were present when it happened,” she said.
Ethiopian diplomats in Nairobi also piled pressure in vain for the security services to produce the man.
Early last year, Ethiopian Ambassador Meles Alem told the BBC he had appealed to Kenyan authorities to expedite investigations into the whereabouts of Telkemichael.
“We appealed to Kenyan authorities to help trace his whereabouts. The information we have as an Embassy is that we will continue waiting until investigations are concluded by the police and we are waiting to receive more information.”
