A Joburg mother is desperate to bring the body of her daughter home from Nigeria, but needs at least R35 000.
|||Johannesburg - The tears streamed down her face as heart-wrenching sobs escaped her. To recall what happened to her daughter has become harder to retell each time.
On Wednesday Filda MacDonald, 58, said her daughter “ died in Nigeria eight months ago. On July 5, she got sick suddenly. I spoke to her the day before and she said her body was numb. She went to the hospital and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her. She died in hospital on July 8. A pastor called to tell me”.
MacDonald, who lives in Westbury, Joburg, said it will cost R35 000 to bring the body of her daughter Annelisse Ukeje home from Nigeria. “We’ve gone to the embassies and government, from pillar to post, but they haven’t been able to help us,” she said.
She still has to pay a Lagos morgue thousands of rand every month to keep her daughter’s body there, but time is running out. “The morgue has given us until the end of this month (Thursday), otherwise they will either bury her in a mass funeral or cremate the body.
“I hope they will give us an extension so we can raise the money. I just want to bring her home, I don’t want my child’s body to be left there alone.”
MacDonald said her daughter had married a Nigerian man who fell ill and died in 2009 while she was pregnant with her third child. “She went there to bury him, stayed for a month and came home. Then in 2010 her in-laws invited her to come back, she took the children with her and stayed there,” she said.
Problems developed between Annelisse and her in-laws. “She called to tell me they were treating her badly. From 2013, I tried to get her home but we didn’t have the money.”
“She tried to leave them (the in-laws) many times but they always made it hard for her and even stopped her from taking her two older children with her when she left their home for the last time in December 2014.
“After trying to find a place to live for a month, a pastor took her in in January last year and she stayed there until she went to hospital in July, where she died,” MacDonald said.
MacDonald can’t work as she has glaucoma, and her husband is a pensioner.
“Everything we get goes straight into paying the morgue fees to keep her there.”
In November, a local radio station, together with the community, helped to raise R23 000 for her other daughter Isabel to go to Lagos and officially identify Annelisse’s body and bring it and her children home.
But the family found out that the money would only be enough to pay the outstanding morgue fees, a coffin and the embalming.
Anyone who can assist can call MacDonald on 073 469 1348.
ilanit.chernick@inl.co.za
@Lanc_02
The Star
