During a stay in a hotel, Noela Rukundo was enjoying the relaxation time. It was 2015, and she was with her husband, Balenga. While together with him, he suddenly suggested that she step outside to get some fresh air. She thought it was a great idea. However, as soon as she stepped outside into the sun, a man with a gun forced her into a car and drove to a remote building.
Noela had no idea what was happening. She had been kidnapped a gunpoint. Her life was in danger. She soon found herself tied up and held captive by a group of kidnappers.
Then they asked her a question that left her even more baffled.
“What did you do to this man? Why has this man asked us to kill you?”
She wanted to answer them. She wanted them to let her go. But she had no idea what they were talking about. What man? Have her killed?! She had never thought about any of this before.
The kidnappers did not want to kill the beautiful Noela for no reason. So they picked up the phone and called the man who had commissioned her murder. The kidnappers made the mistake of putting the man on speakerphone. She immediately recognized the man’s voice as her husband’s.
He said just two words. “Kill her!”
For two days, the men went back and forth trying to decide what they should do. They didn’t want to kill Noela. She was beautiful, and they knew she had done nothing to deserve a violent death. They were torn and felt killing her was dishonorable. So they eventually decided to let her go without telling her bloodthirsty husband.
“We don’t kill women and children,” they said at the end.
Instead of killing the man’s wife, the kidnappers decided to punish Balenga for his plan. They turned the tables on him and asked for more money to “do the deed.” When the husband paid, they lied and told him that they had killed Noela.
Before they set Noela free, the kidnappers told her to share this message with other women. Leave their violent husbands and boyfriends.
“I felt like somebody who had risen again,” she told the BBC. She had been given a renewed purpose in life. And she knew that her husband was a violent man capable of killing her.
After five days time, Noela learned that her husband planned a funeral for her. She decided to crash it, and it was a shock for her violent husband.
“Is it my eyes?” she recalled him saying. “Is it a ghost?”
“Surprise! I’m still alive!” she said.
It had only been five days from the day he was told she was killed. He couldn’t believe it.
“I’m sorry for everything,” her husband cried.
But she would not accept such an apology. It was too late for him to go back on it now. He had tried to have her killed.
What do you think about this woman’s surprise at her funeral?
