Four years after a woman disappeared from Middelburg without a trace, she was miraculously reunited with her family on Wednesday.
This comes after the elderly woman, who suffers from dementia, initially said she did not want to go home.
She later changed her mind, saying: “I thought they [family] might want to bury me. So, then I said yes.”
Johanna Geelbooi, 69, and her sister-in-law, Bettie Moos, hugged each other with tears in their eyes after being reunited at Dora Nginza Hospital.
It is still unknown how Geelbooi travelled from Middelburg to Port Elizabeth, but at the end of October 2015 the police picked her up on the streets of Booysen Park.
They took her to Dora Nginza Hospital, where doctors asked hospital social worker Pamela Rubushe to help trace her family.
“She really struggled with dementia at the time,” Rubushe said.
“She couldn’t remember anything but her name.
“She didn’t even have an identity document.”
Rubushe said they first thought Geelbooi had gone missing in the metro.
“I went to every clinic to ask the nurses, but nobody knew her. I even went to all the taverns in Booysen Park. People in the taverns know all the stories,” she said.
As Geelbooi was registered as “Galabooi” with home affairs they could not immediately help her, but eventually Rubushe managed to get a new ID document issued for her as well as an old-age grant.
Geelbooi was subsequently taken in by a Bay woman who looks after the elderly.
“I kept going back,” Rubushe said.
“I don’t like open files. Family is everything. I wanted Johanna to go home.
“She is an elderly woman and I was scared she will die without her children.”
Over four years, Rubushe would return time and time again to talk to Geelbooi, but without much luck.
Then, in August, when Rubushe went to visit her, Geelbooi suddenly remembered her address.
“She told me that she lived in Van Zyl Street in Middelburg. I shouted, ‘God is good!’ Now I had something to go on,” Rubushe said.
Warrant Officer Ronelle Meiring, from the Middelburg SAPS, said they went to the address that Geelbooi gave but nobody knew her.
“Then a woman came to us and asked who we were looking for. I said ‘we are looking for Johanna Geelbooi’s family’.
“She said: ‘I am her sister-inlaw’.”
“I phoned Rubushe and I was so excited. ‘We got them,’ I told her. ‘We found Johanna’s people’,” Meiring said.
On Wednesday, Moos, 55, accompanied the police to fetch Geelbooi.
“I am so happy to see you,” Moos said.
“Your children are all waiting for you.”
Moos said they last saw Geelbooi when she went to the Middelburg hospital for treatment for her eye.
“Her husband died in 2015. When she disappeared we kept on asking around, but after a year the family thought she must be dead too,” she said.
“I said I had a dream that she was still alive. I never gave up looking for her.”
Geelbooi said she grew up in Middelburg and lived there all her life.
“I did washing and ironing for a living,” she said.
“I liked it there. I would go to the store to buy my wine and tobacco.
“They knew me. I would tell them it is my time to shine.
“They knew this meant I wanted my tobacco and my wine,” she said.
“The one thing I don’t have time for is men. They are only trouble.”
She could not remember how she managed to land up in Port Elizabeth in 2015.
“I remember I went to the hospital to get treatment.
“I have high blood pressure and one eye has gone blind.
“When I got lost I couldn’t remember anything.
“But there were days my heart was sore and I was trying to remember my children.”
She said she was very happy to see Moos.
Meiring said the town would hold a welcoming party for Geelbooi on Friday.
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