Missing explorer’s children in plea for their father
Frantic wife of missing explorer reveals the heartbreaking toll on their three children
‘We are very cross he didn’t take GPS, it’s typical of him’
THE wife of a British explorer who has vanished searching for a remote tribe says their three children keep asking: ‘When’s Daddy coming home?’
Benedict Allen has failed to return from the Papua New Guinea jungle following a solo expedition to find the ‘last people on the planet’ who have no contact with the outside world.
His family say they are all extremely stressed because he did not start his journey home on Sunday as planned. And they are also ‘very cross’ with the 57-year-old for refusing to take a phone or GPS tracking device.
Friends plan to scramble a helicopter to search for Mr Allen amid fears he may have got lost, been bitten by a snake, otherwise been injured or contracted malaria, which he has suffered from in the past.
Mr Allen’s agent said the tribe he was searching for were a ‘scary’ remote and reclusive group, and possibly headhunters.
His wife, Czech- born f ormer nurse Lenka Allen, 35, said she had told their children, Natalya, ten, Freddie, seven, and Beatrice, two, that ‘Daddy’s lost’.
She added: ‘The little one, Beatrice, is always saying “Daddy” and she’s trying to telephone him on my mobile, looking at his photo on the screen. They all sense the tension in the flat and they are worried, deep down.
‘The two other ones, they are saying, “When is Daddy coming so we can go shopping, just me and you, and Daddy can babysit”, that sort of thing. But of course now they know he’s in danger they are seriously worried.’
The couple recently moved from their home in Richmond, south- west London, to spend a year living in Prague, where Mrs Allen is up all night anxiously awaiting news of her husband from the other side of the world.
‘It could be he is still trekking and he’s fine,’ she said. ‘But of course everything possible is going through my head, that something has happened to him or he’s got malaria.’
Mrs Allen said her husband has got lost several times in previous expeditions, but not since settling down and having children.
‘He has been so careful since I married him. He hasn’t done anything this scary and slightly reckless – it’s the first time that he has gone on his own,’ she said.
‘He hasn’t really shared his plans with me either, or with anyone else, so we don’t really know the route he was taking on the way back. It’s really scary, that he’s done this.
‘I suppose I should have asked for more details but he just made it sound like it’s all safe before he went off. He doesn’t take modern technology because he thinks it spoils the experience and he can’t rely on his knowledge of nature and his abilities because he could always just telephone for a helicopter which is too easy.
‘To an extent it makes sense, but it is a dangerous way of exploring.’
Mrs Allen said there had been a possible sighting at a mission station: ‘It was some local person. We are not getting up our hopes.
‘It could be someone else. It is positive having this sort of news. We don’t want to get excited but hopefully someone has seen him. He’s out there alive, hopefully.
‘I am trying to stay positive and hope it’s all going to end up well and he will come out of the jungle soon. Maybe he miscalculated the distance he’s going to have cross on the way back, or there could be obstacles.
‘He does know Papua New Guinea and got contacts there. He got lost there a few years ago.’
She added: ‘The local police have limited resources. Things happen slowly there. They don’t have the resources to go into the jungle and look properly. It’s more a question of contacting everyone and getting the word round.
‘So I’ve got all the hopes, thinking that he is safe and he will manage as he has always done. He does know a lot about the jungle.
‘That’s what I’m assuming, but he talks more to his explorer colleagues about the jungle than me. We talk about boring stuff at home – “What’s for dinner?”’
Mr Allen’s older sister, Katie Pestille, said: ‘Lenka is being very brave but we are both very cross with him. It is typical of him to go off without GPS – if he had that, people would know where to find him. Unfortunately that is not Benedict’s style, he likes to do things the hard way.
‘But he’s done loads of expeditions in the past and he knows how to survive. He knows what plants can be eaten and which ones can be used as medicines and he carries a survival belt with him.’
Mrs Pestille, 62, an English teacher at comprehensive in Bath, said she believed her brother would be safe with the Yaifo, a tribe he discovered in Papua New Guinea
‘He likes to do things the hard way’
30 years ago and was hoping to reach again this time.
But she was worried about others he might have encountered on his trip: ‘You think these jungles are empty but all sorts of people live there. In the past he has come across drug barons and loggers.
‘It’s an awful worry. If they came across him they could have robbed him and just left him there.’
Mrs Pestille, of Frome in Somerset, is in hourly contact with her brother’s wife but said the wait for news had been ‘ghastly’. ‘We can’t
do anything. For everyone else it’s very exciting – all the expeditions and all the things he does – but for a sister and a wife it’s very worrying wondering if he is going to be alright,’ she said.
the helicopter pilot who dropped Mr Allen off several weeks ago at the start of the expedition is trying to find him by tracking a route from his starting point at the remote former trading station of Bisoria.
BBc security correspondent Frank Gardner, a friend of the explorer who travelled to Papua new Guinea with him twice last year, told the BBc that Mr Allen should be fine.
But he added: ‘i hope those aren’t famous last words.
‘Benedict always suspected something like this. i had supper with him just before he left, and he said “Look, i’m quite certain i’ll be out, of contact for quite some time, people shouldn’t worry about it”.
‘the Yaifo tribe who Benedict visited in the 1980s initially greeted him with suspicion and hostility but then accepted him.
‘He told me last month, just before he set off, that he had no idea how they would receive him, or even if he would be able to find them in such a remote part of the country.’