From New York to Sierra Leone: the search for a missing sister

Oluwaseun Babalola at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, New York, where she and her sister would play together as children, on 28 May. Photograph: Laila Annmarie Stevens/The Guardian

Oluwaseun Babalola remembers the exact moment she started to worry about her sister. It was 14 August 2018 and she was sitting on a sofa in a friend’s flat in Queens, New York. She had spent 10 days trying to get hold of Massah KaiKai, who had been due to travel from Sierra Leone, where she lived, to visit her in the US.

The sisters messaged or called each other every day, often multiple times. “We talked about everything and nothing. I would come home to a bunch of voice notes. She would vent or have something very funny to say – she was a very funny person,” says Babalola.