No sign of husband – but she won’t give up on him

THE WIDOW of SA farmer John Bullen, pictured, who disappeared in a Botswana game reserve a year ago, continues to hold on to hope that he is alive.

Although a death certificate for her husband, who was 80, was issued to her two months ago, Lorraine Bullen refuses to believe he is dead.

“Every day I look out from my window and expect him to come home. I expect him to come home any minute now,” she told the Daily News.

“Until they find something, any- thing, from my husband, there will never be closure. We had to get the death certificate to wind up the estate, but it is hard to accept,” she said. In September last year the couple left their Mpumalanga farm and set out for the Chobe National Park in Botswana for a 10-day holiday.

Two days into their holiday, the couple took a wrong turn and their Land Rover got stuck in thick sand in an area renowned for its abundance of predators.

Fearing that no one would find them, Bullen, armed only with an axe and carrying two cans of tinned fruit, five litres of water and a pack of Provita biscuits, went to seek help. He never returned. His wife spent seven days camped in their Land Rover before a group of Dutch tourists lost on the same road discovered her.

Botswana authorities subsequently launched an intensive land and air search, but there was no sign of Bullen.

Lorraine said the past year had been difficult.

“I have found it very hard to move on. It is even harder now that I have a death certificate. But I had to get his affairs sorted out. It is very hard to close this chapter of my life.”

On the anniversary of her husband’s disappearance last week, Bullen said she had spent a quiet day alone at home.

“Everybody has been so amazing,” she said. “I have had so much support and kindness, which has made me realise that there are some very good people out there.”

Bullen said she would also be forever grateful to the Dutch tourists who rescued her.

“I had given up when all of a sudden these people came from nowhere. …They happened to take the same wrong turn we took and found me.”

Bullen, however, remains optimistic that her husband will return.

“I still feel that maybe he was taken by poachers and he is being held somewhere and maybe he will come back one day. Nothing of his was found – not a button, not even his water bottle.

“That is strange. I am still hopeful. I will never give up hope.”