Can anyone in NZ or Australia kindly keep me up to date on this story (see below)? I met the Oveds in Israel before they emigrated to NZ and found them to be extremely nice people. I liked Rami a lot. I can be e-mailed at [email protected]
Thanks,
Expatbrit
FEATURES# Where is Elon?
The Christchurch Press - New Zealand; Jan 19, 2002
BY ROBSON SETHThe need to know fuels the Oved family's quest to find out what happened to 14-year-old Elon. The bush was once a place of beauty and peace for the Oved family -- now it is a dark prison where they search in vain for their lost son and brother.
Christchurch teenager Elon Oved was a member of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses trampers visiting Lake Daniells, near Lewis Pass, on December 1.
The 14-year-old went behind the Manson-Nicholls Memorial Hut to change out of wet clothing and has not been seen or heard from since.
The lake is silent now, but for the past six weeks it has been a hub of activity as hundreds of searchers, many of them Jehovah's Witnesses, combed surrounding bush and nearby riverbeds for Elon.
Despite the massive effort, the only signs of Elon have been a T-shirt, found hours after he disappeared a few hundred metres from the hut, and a name scratched into a rotting tree that police dismiss as marks made by insects.
The tramp up to the lake takes two hours from a carpark just inside the Lewis Pass Nature Reserve near Springs Junction.
A well-marked track on a slight uphill gradient crosses the Maruia River, then follows the Alfred River up a long steep-walled valley that leads directly to Lake Daniells.
There are a few places, where the track rises above the river, where a person might lose their footing and fall over a bluff but it seems unlikely.
Mossy beech forest on either side of the track is eerily still. The only sounds are the rush of the river below and the occasional gurgling of a waterfall.
The Manson-Nicholls Memorial Hut stands at one end of the lake. There is a figure sprawled on the veranda -- Christchurch man Alan Granderson, a friend of the Oved family, who has been searching the area for several weeks.
"He was abducted," Granderson tells me when I ask what he thinks happened to the young tramper.
"This place has been scoured by hundreds of searchers and they have found nothing," he says, staring across a grassy meadow that separates the hut from a small wooden pier jutting out into the lake.
A trout leaps out of the water, then disappears leaving the surface as still as it had been a moment before. The view could grace a postcard, the only drawback being a horde of annoying sandflies.
The well-maintained hut features two 12-bed bunk rooms on either side of a kitchen with a pot-belly stove and a few stainless-steel sink benches for cooking.
The bush behind it is reasonably dense but even several hundred metres from the lake it is impossible to lose your bearings.
The nearest town is Springs Junction where dozens of tourists and campers are lined up at the local service station and tearooms for a break on their way to and from the West Coast.
Elon's family, who have set up house near Springs Junction, have been searching for six weeks and say they will stay until they find out what happened.
Next week they will leave the farmhouse they have been staying in free of charge and move into a nearby rented property. Rami's father and brother will join them from Israel to help with the search.
Their house is filled with the paraphernalia of the search -- muddy tramping boots, maps, compasses, and muesli bars along with dozens of hand-held radios donated by Christchurch company Tait Electronics.
Elon's father, Rami, a former Israeli special forces soldier, has abandoned his Christchurch cleaning business to concentrate on the search.
The family are living on donations from fellow members of the Jehovah's Witness Church from all over the world. They, especially Rami, are obsessed with finding their lost son and brother.
"There is no way I have any plans whatsoever to stop the search. We try to search every day unless I am exhausted or there is something we have to do," Rami says.
Before Elon disappeared the family enjoyed regular bush walks. Now they find going into the bush depressing.
"You are searching and you find nothing -- just silence and no sign, but when I go out (of the bush) I feel like I am letting him down. It is a Catch-22," Rami says.
Each day the family battles exhaustion and feelings of despair and hopelessness.
"Some people feel we should stop the search but what I say is that anyone who feels that way doesn't know what true love is," says Rami.
"If Elon could talk to us he would say, `find me Dad, if I'm alive'. Can you imagine a kid saying to his father, `go back to your life and leave me in the bush'?"
Rami spent most of his time with his sons, whom he home schooled and who helped him with his cleaning business.
"It wasn't just father and son. It was far closer than that," Rami says of his relationship with Elon.
"There is no life without Elon. For me when he disappeared my life stopped with him. Life doesn't continue until we find out what happened.
"The pain is unbearable -- not having him with us. Every time it is raining or cold you suffer because you think he is out there even though you know he couldn't be in the bush alive."
Elon's mother, Kunlaya, is as distressed as any mother would be at the loss of her child and as determined as Rami to continue the search.
"I am doing my best for my son. Other mothers and fathers would do the same as me, what I am doing for Elon," she says.
A trip to dig for Elon's body in sandy parts of the river was particularly distressing.
"It is a horrible feeling when you go near the river and start digging. I thought: I am digging for the dead body of my son now," Kunlaya says.
She remembers her son as a cheeky, playful lad who would have enjoyed all the chocolate bars and other treats laid on for search parties at the house.
"I know Elon loved goodies. All the things we never had before that we have now. Every goodie I enjoy now I know Elon would be happy if I shared some with him.
"I miss everything about him. Being a mother I feel not able to take care of him and to feed him," she says.
Her remaining son, Ray, 17, had been playing with his brother in an inflatable boat on the lake just before he disappeared. When Elon did not return, Ray and another boy were the first to go looking for him.
He has many happy memories of sporting contests with his brother.
"He always wanted to be with me. We would always do stuff," he says.
The family's suffering is compounded by the fact that they don't know what happened.
There has been no sign of a body or the clothes Elon had with him -- two pairs of cargo pants (grey and olive) and a black "surfing the net" T-shirt.
After six weeks of searching Rami is convinced his son is not in the Lake Daniells area. He says only two explanations are possible: a fall into the river or abduction.
Police have found no evidence of abduction, but family fears have been fuelled by a letter from a woman who claims she may have been followed and had a stick thrown at her during a walk back from Lake Daniells a few hours before Elon disappeared.
One theory is that somebody could have taken Elon out of the bush via the four-wheel-drive track, stopping for the night in the Pell Hut half-way between Lake Daniells and the car- park.
"It would have been much easier if he died in a car crash," Rami says.
"You don't know if he is alive or dead, what he experienced before he died, how we will react when we find him."
Rami says he is not looking for vengeance. He just wants answers and has appealed for anyone with information to call his cellphone (025 603-6663).
World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright