Almost four years ago 53-year-old Marion Low-Williams left her Plaisance East Coast home promising her children that she was travelling to Suriname or Cayenne to work so as to improve their lives.
She later called and informed them that she was in Suriname and that she had found a job and would soon start sending money. They received a few more calls and then there was a blackout in communication, and for years her children heard nothing from her. Then a chance meeting between her daughter’s neighbour and a friend revealed that she may have perished after the occupants of a boat she was in were attacked by three men.
One of her nine children, Simone Low, in a recent interview with the Sunday Stabroek said they have not heard anything since and the matter was not reported to the police since they have no concrete information about what happened to their mother.
Low does not believe that her mother is dead, but is baffled about the fact that she has stopped communicating with them and she hopes that one day they would learn more about her whereabouts.
The “death message” they received last year from a friend of a friend was that she was on a boat going into the interior to sell when she disappeared.
“We get the death message that she was on a boat going into the bush to sell knitting, she and two friends that they use to party together, and three men entered the boat and try to rape them and these two ladies say that they coulda swim and they jump off the boat and leave she and duh was the last time they see she,” the woman said.
This information was relayed to the relatives by a woman who lives in the same village with them who in turn was informed by her friend who claimed that she had met a friend from Suriname during the Mashramani float parade last year and she had relayed this information.
“She see me in the market… and tell me; I burst into tears because we hoping and praying that she [Low-Williams] come home some day. Until now I still have a feeling that she is alive, but where can we locate her?” the grieving woman asked.
After receiving the devastating news Low said she requested to meet with the woman but on the day the meeting was planned rain poured and the young woman did not turn up and they have not heard from her since.
She said because they were unable to speak to the woman directly they were unsure as to what their next move should be, and they knew they could not report such sketchy information to the police and as such their hands were tied.
According to Low she cannot remember the actual date her mother left, but she recalled that she had said she would visit the two countries in search of a job and she walked with her certificates and knitting thread and needles.
“She walked with knitting because she liked knitting and she was very good at it,” Low recalled.
She called the following night and told them that she had arrived.
“We use to hear her… during the same year we heard from her twice or thrice and she said everything was going alright and when she settle down she woulda send money… she said she was working but did not say as what,” Low said.
At the time the woman was living next to a friend in Suriname and when the girl visited Guyana she requested some items be sent up with the friend and this was done. She received the items and shortly after the friend visited Guyana again and the woman asked her children to send some more things, which was also done.
“But when the girl went up back now she move and gone and the girl say she don’t know where she gone, so since then we lose track of her – no phone calls nothing at all,” a sad Low said.
When she left, Low-Williams left her three youngest children – the youngest now being 18 – in the same home she shared with Low. The other siblings were living elsewhere and today they live in the same house.
She said speaking to the media is an attempt to get some information on her mother’s whereabouts or to receive something definitive on what may have happened to her. Low, who said her wedding day was a very sad one since her mother was not present, is appealing to anyone with information to contact the nearest police station.
“If my mother is alive all I want to say to her is that everyone is studying about her,” Low said.
She said while she believes her mother is alive something has happened to her as she would not just refuse to contact any of her nine children.
She also revealed that her grandmother in the US is very sick and wishes to see her daughter or to know what happened to her.
“She take on the situation and now she is very sick and she would want her to come home so we can see her.”
