Noela Rukundo sat in a car outside her home, watching as the
last few mourners filed out. They were leaving a funeral — her funeral.
Finally, she spotted the man she’d been waiting for. She
stepped out of her car, and her husband put his hands on his head in horror.
“Is it my eyes?” she recalled him saying. “Is it a ghost?”
“Surprise! I’m still alive!” she replied.
Far from being elated, the man looked terrified. Five days
ago, he had ordered a team of hit men to kill Noela, his partner of 10 years.
And they did — well, they told him they did. They even got him to pay an extra
few thousand dollars for carrying out the crime.
Now here was his wife, standing before him.
In an interview with
the BBC, Noela recalled how he touched her shoulder to find it unnervingly
solid. He jumped. Then he started screaming.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he wailed.
But it was far too late for apologies; Noela called the
police. The husband, Balenga Kalala, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine
years in prison for incitement to murder, according to the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC).
The happy ending — or, as happy as can be expected to a saga
in which a man tries to have his wife killed — was made possible by three
unusually principled hit men, a helpful pastor and one incredibly gutsy woman:
Noela herself.
Here is how she pulled it off:
Noela’s ordeal began almost exactly a year ago, when she
flew from her home in Melbourne with her husband, Kalala, to attend a funeral
in her native Burundi. Her stepmother had died and the service left her
saddened and stressed. She retreated to her hotel room in Bujumbura, the
capital, early in the evening; despondent after the events of the day, she lay
down in bed.
Then her husband called. “He told me to go outside for fresh
air,” she told the BBC.
But moments after stepping outside the hotel compound, Noela
found herself in danger.
“I opened the gate and I saw a man coming towards me. Then
he pointed the gun on me.
“He just told me, ‘Don’t scream. If you start screaming, I
will shoot you. They’re going to catch me, but you? You will already be dead.’
“So, I did exactly what he told me.”
The gunman motioned Noela towards a waiting car.
“I was sitting between two men. One had a small gun, one had
a long gun. And the men say to the driver, ‘Pass us a scarf.’ Then they cover
my face.
“After that, I didn’t say anything. They just said to the
driver, ‘Let’s go.’
“I was taken somewhere, 30 to 40 minutes, then I hear the
car stop.”
Noela was pushed inside a building and tied to a chair.
“One of the kidnappers told his friend, ‘Go call the boss.’
I can hear doors open but I didn’t know if their boss was in a room or if he
came from outside.
“They ask me, ‘What did you do to this man? Why has this man
asked us to kill you?’ And then I tell them, ‘Which man? Because I don’t have
any problem with anybody.’ They say, ‘Your husband!’ I say, ‘My husband can’t
kill me, you are lying!’ And then they slap me.
“After that the boss says, ‘You are very stupid, you are
fool. Let me call who has paid us to kill you.'”
The gang’s leader made the call.
“We already have her,” he triumphantly told his paymaster.
The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to hear the
reply.
Her husband’s voice said: “Kill her.”
Noela had met her husband 11 years earlier, right after she
arrived in Australia from Burundi, according to the BBC. He was a recent
refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and they had the same social
worker at the resettlement agency that helped them get on their feet. Since
Kalala already knew English, their social worker often recruited him to
translate for Noela, who spoke Swahili.
They fell in love, moved in together in the Melbourne suburb
of Kings Park, and had three children (Noela also had five kids from a previous
relationship). She learned more about her husband’s past — he had fled a rebel
army that had ransacked his village, killing his wife and young son. She also
learned more about his character.
“I knew he was a violent man,” Rukundo told the BBC. “But I
didn’t believe he can kill me.”
But, it appeared, he could.
Noela came to the strange building somewhere near Bujumbura.
The kidnappers were still there, she told the ABC.
They weren’t going to kill her, the men then explained —
they didn’t believe in killing women, and they knew her brother. But they would
keep her husband’s money and tell him that she was dead.
After two days, they set her free on the side of a road, but
not before giving her a mobile phone, recordings of their phone conversations
with Kalala, and receipts for the $7,000 in Australian dollars they allegedly
received in payment, according to Australia’s The Age.
“We just want you to go back, to tell other women like you
what happened,” Noela said she was told before the gang members drove away.
Shaken, but alive and doggedly determined, Noela began
plotting her next move. She sought help from the Kenyan and Belgian embassies
to return to Australia, according to The Age. Then she called the pastor of her
church in Melbourne, she told the BBC, and explained to him what had happened.
Without alerting Kalala, the pastor helped her get back home to her
neighborhood near Melbourne.
Balenga Kalala paid $7000 for his partner to be kidnapped
and murdered.
Meanwhile, her husband had told everyone she had died in a
tragic accident and the entire community mourned her at her funeral at the
family home. On the night of Feb. 22, 2015, just as the “widower” Kalala waved
goodbye to neighbors who had come to comfort him, Noela approached him, the
very man whose voice she’d heard over the phone five days earlier, ordering
that she be killed.
“I felt like somebody who had risen again,” she told the
BBC.
Though Kalala denied all involvement, Noela got him to
confess to the crime during a phone conversation that was secretly recorded by
police, according to The Age.
“Sometimes Devil can come into someone, to do something, but
after they do it they start thinking, ‘Why I did that thing?’ later,” he said,
as he begged her to forgive him.
Kalala eventually pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to nine
years in prison by a judge in Melbourne.
“Had Ms Noela’s kidnappers completed the job, eight children
would have lost their mother,” Chief Justice Marilyn Warren said, according to
the ABC. “It was premeditated and motivated by unfounded jealousy, anger and a
desire to punish Ms. Noela.”
Noela said that Kalala tried to kill her because he thought
she was going to leave him for another man — an accusation she denies.
But her trials are not yet over. Noela told the ABC she’s
gotten backlash from Melbourne’s Congolese community for reporting Kalala to
the police. Someone left threatening messages for her, and she returned home
one day to find her back door broken. She now has eight children to raise
alone, and has asked the Department of Human Services to help her find a new
place to live.
And lying in bed at night, Kalala’s voice still comes to
her: “Kill her, kill her,” she told the BBC. “Every night, I see what was
happening in those two days with the kidnappers.”
Despite all that, “I will stand up like a strong woman,” she
said. “My situation, my past life? That is gone. I’m starting a new life now.”
What is your take from this incident? Are there any lessons
you have learned? Any new perspectives you have gained? We learn everyday from
the experiences of others, because it plays a big part in helping us become
better people.
