14 years after he went missing in Africa, I think my brother is still alive

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It was when the letters stopped arriving that Christian Velten’s family knew something had gone terribly wrong. 

Armed with a video camera, the 27-year-old had embarked on a six-month expedition through West Africa, along the banks of the River Niger, retracing the steps of his hero, the 18th century Scottish explorer Mungo Park.

He made his way alone on foot, by donkey, or in a canoe from Gambia, through Senegal, and Mali, stopping along the way to stay with villagers. Each time he moved on, Christian would give the children his address back in England, telling them to write. “Cards kept coming to the house from kids he’d met,” says his sister Hannah, who has spent the past 14 years tirelessly searching for her brother. “At some point the letters stopped.”

Even though he was travelling through remote African countryside, Christian had still managed to keep in contact with his family. “When he phoned Mum and Dad for the last time, it was just before their birthdays,” Hannah tells me, as we talk in the living room of the East Sussex home she shares with her husband Grant and children Freya, 6, and Cameron, 9. “When he didn’t get on his plane home, we realised pretty quickly something had gone wrong.”

That final phone call came on March 23, 2003 and Christian has been missing ever since. In that time, the search to find him has taken innumerable twists and turns. The early years were fraught with fear and frustration, as Hannah’s parents, Pauline and Tim, frantically led the charge to find their son. Confronted with Foreign Office red tape, they took matters into their own hands, putting out appeals in the African and British press and sending a team, led by one of his friends, to search for Christian on the ground. At one point, they even enlisted the help of a Malian village chieftain. 

“Everything went against us,” says Hannah, cradling a mug of tea, as she takes me through the events which have shaped her adult life. “Nothing you try works and fear kicks in.” 

For years, the race to trace Christian led them to dead ends, each more painful than the last. It always went the same way: a renewed appeal would spark a sighting - a lone white male seen walking near the river, or a bedraggled figure who rode the bus every day. Moments of hope, cruelly shattered when the trail went quiet.

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“That desperate feeling is exhausting,” adds Hannah. “I realise, now I’m a mum myself, just how awful that first search was for my parents.”

In 2015, on Christian’s 40th birthday, the family decided to throw a party. It was a way to celebrate the man who had been absent from their lives for more than a decade. “The thing is, you don’t have a funeral,” says Hannah. “You go through a grief process, but you’re in limbo.” 

As the years and milestones passed, the hope of finding him seemed more and more remote. Yet, on Boxing Day in 2015, as she trudged around the fields near her parents’ Sussex home, trying to walk off the sadness of another Christmas without her brother, Hannah suddenly felt strangely upbeat about finding him. Her dad was less so. “He told me: ‘I think if Christian isn’t found by next New Year then I’m going to give up hope. It’s just too painful.’”

Then, three months later, there was a fresh sighting. One so clear that it would set into motion a new search, culminating in the realistion that Christian is almost certainly alive. 

In early 2016, Hannah had set up ‘Searching for Chris’ pages on social media, renewing interest in their story. A friend got in touch to say that a contact in Kenya had recognised Christian’s picture on Facebook. Raabia Hawa, a prominent conservationist, told how two years before, a man with that very same profile picture had sent her a friend request on Facebook, from a now defunct account. 

Hannah realised that the picture (an old one from her website), could have been downloaded by Christian, who may have found it when looking himself up online. Before he went missing, Christian had been a keen conservationist. Was it possible he had reached out to Raabia to ask for advice?

With renewed energy, Hannah wrote about the connection on Facebook and sightings came in thick and fast from Nairobi. People had seen Christian as a homeless man in the city’s slums, as a white preacher on a bus, in a hotel. 

It would have been easy to take them as nothing more than fantasies or false hope from strangers. But instead, Hannah chose to treat each one as a possible lead, and a new picture began to form. 

“Your intuition kicks in. It was like I was an arrow locked on a target,” she says.

One woman said she had seen Christian begging in Accra, Ghana, in 2005, telling Hannah: “He spoke with a British accent. He said he was begging to raise money for a ticket back home. What makes me 80 per cent sure it’s your brother was what he said as he appealed for money: ‘Are you a Christian, missy? Can you help me please? My name is Christian.’”

Hannah now believes that, while travelling, Christian was attacked - but that someone found and looked after him. Somehow, after all these years, she thinks, he has ended up in Kenya. “For some time, he may not have known who he was. He must have been ill for many years. But I think he is now aware that we are looking for him.

“It wouldn’t have been his choice to go missing,” she adds. “Something terrible happened.”

It raises the hardest question of all: is it possible that Christian doesn’t want to be found? It is a prospect Hannah has been forced to grapple with, and she has come to terms with the idea that her brother may have chosen not to get in touch. After all, she explains, 14 years is a long time - especially when you have been alone and confused. It is possible that the thought of simply walking back into his old life feels too overwhelming. 

“But I have faith that he will [be found]. That’s the bit that drives you insane, the idea that he could just ring any second now. He could turn up on the doorstep.”

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As well as being a devoted sister, Hannah, 42, runs a publishing company with her husband. Through it all, she has kept the surname Velten, to make it easier for Christian to trace her. It is clear that this latest push to find her brother has been a terrible strain. “It’s almost the worst thing that you could think of in terms of a family,” she tells me, stroking the labrador curled beside her on the sofa, as she fights back tears. “It is a nightmare. If you just think how you feel when you lose your child in the supermarket, that sheer panic - we have felt that for nearly 15 years.

“All that time, we thought he was dead…” she trails off, trying to compose herself. “You’d toast him at Christmas, we always talked about him, but the hope was flickering.”

She desperately wants Christian to meet her children, who have heard so much about their uncle. “It’s my biggest sadness now, what my kids are missing, because he would be a fabulous uncle. I’m sad for mum and dad and I’m sad for Christian and the life he would have had.”

For now, all she can do is wait. 

“When the phone rings now, I don’t expect it to be him. So when he does call, it will be out of the blue.”

Is she fearful of all the complications that his sudden appearance could bring with it? 

“After 14 years he is going to have changed so much. But he’s my brother, I love him. It’s what I want.”

If you would like to know more about Christian's story, or if you think you can help in any way, please visit the 'Searching for Chris Velten' Facebook page. 

Missing People is a beneficiary of this year’s Telegraph’s Christmas Charity Appeal. To make a donation to this or one of the other charities supported in our appeal, please call 0151 284 1927 or visit telegraph.co.uk/charity