Daisy's World: He switched off his phone and disappeared to unplug—only to be declared dead and buried

By  Daisy Okoti

Research & Impact Editor

Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

• A man’s attempt to escape life’s pressures took a bizarre turn after his family believed he had died. 
• Switching off your phone may offer peace and quiet, but disappearing without telling loved ones can have consequences.

On Saturday, a friend hit me with the biggest shock of my life when she told me the story of a colleague’s ‘slowing down’ episode that had gone completely wrong! According to my friend, the colleague had taken a break and retreated to an ‘undisclosed’ location to unplug from life’s pressures.

This man, according to my friend, had been going through what seemed like significant pressure, both at work and at family level. He decided that as part of ‘slowing down’, he would find a place away from home to calm his mind. To successfully do this, he switched off his phone and decided not to tell anyone where he was going; not even his wife. So basically, he woke up one morning and disappeared from home; no one knew where he had gone.

Three days later when he did not return, the wife was understandably worried because she could not reach her husband. None of his friends known to the wife knew where he was and they were equally worried. The family expected the wife to tell them where her husband was and they pressured her to tell them “the truth”. Soon, her own worry gave rise to a frantic search. The whole community was involved. A few days into the search, a body that looked a lot like the man was retrieved from a river.

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Those who knew the man quickly concluded that the body belonged to him. It was difficult for anyone with doubts to fully confirm because anyway, the body would have been damaged after being in the river for a long time. It was soon concluded that the man was dead. Funeral arrangements were made, the man was buried and the funeral rites were conducted and the process of healing for the loss in the family was in full motion.

When the man eventually turned on his phone two weeks after leaving home, the first post he saw on social media was that of his wife mourning him—how good a man he had been and the big gap his death had left in their hearts. He went through tonnes of messages eulogising him before he finally got the courage to call his wife to say that he was alive!

Of course, the wife was not immediately sure if she could trust the phone call. To cut a long story short, the process of reintroducing him to society was quite a lengthy one. It included writing to his employer to reinstate and put him back on the payroll. His entire family also had to go through psychological support to process the intensity and the shocking details of those two weeks.

If this story sounds like a movie script to you, you are in good company because I was the same! What do you mean his phone was off for two weeks? That was the most shocking aspect for me. I do not think I have ever willingly switched off my phone! I do not know if that makes me a phone addict, but the reason it is impossible for me to stay away from my phone for that long is that many things I need to get through my day are on my phone.

The phone is no longer just a device for calls. It is our calendar, bank, work, contacts, maps, news, social life, camera, entertainment and often our connection to people we care about. So how does one successfully stay away from it for two solid weeks!

Perhaps beyond everything we use our phones for, this story was also a reminder of what happens when we are completely unreachable. It made me think about the anxiety we can put our loved ones through when they cannot get hold of us.

I will leave it to the experts to tell us how to ensure that you do not reemerge from an episode of slowing down and unplugging, and discover that you were buried. My sense is that perhaps it is important that at least a few trusted people know where you are.