One year ago a group of gunmen in Burundi
was hired to kill a woman visiting from
Australia. But the hit did not go as planned,
leaving her with a chance to turn the tables
on the man who wanted her dead.

"I felt like somebody who had risen again," says
Noela Rukundo.
She was supposed to be dead. The hired killers
had been paid. They had even explained how
they would dispose of the body.

But now, waiting outside her house for the last
of the mourners to leave, she was ready to face
down the man who had put out a contract for
her murder.

"When I get out of the car, he saw me straight
away. He put his hands on his head and said,
'Is it my eyes? Is it a ghost?'"

"Surprise! I'm still alive!" she replied.
Noela's ordeal began five days earlier, and

7,500 miles away in her native Burundi. She
had returned to Africa from her home in
Melbourne, Australia, to attend her
stepmother's funeral.

"I had lost the last person who I call 'mother',"
she says. "It was very painful. I was so
stressed."

By early evening Noela had retreated to her
hotel room. As she lay dozing in the stifling city
heat of Bujumbura, her phone rang. It was a
call from Australia - from Balenga Kalala, her
husband and father to her three youngest
children.

"He says he'd been trying to get me for the
whole day," Noela says. "I said I was going to
bed. He told me, 'To bed? Why are you
sleeping so early?'

"I say, 'I'm not feeling happy'. And he asks me,
'How's the weather? Is it very, very hot?' He
told me to go outside for fresh air."
Noela took his advice.

"I didn't think anything. I just thought that he
cared about me, that he was worried about
me."

But moments after stepping outside the hotel
compound, Noela found herself in danger.

"I opened the gate and I saw a man coming
towards me. Then he pointed the gun on me.

"He just told me, 'Don't scream. If you start
screaming, I will shoot you. They're going to
catch me, but you? You will already be dead.'

"So, I did exactly what he told me."

The gunman motioned Noela towards a waiting
car.

"I was sitting between two men. One had a
small gun, one had a long gun. And the men
say to the driver, 'Pass us a scarf.' Then they
cover my face.

"After that, I didn't say anything. They just said
to the driver, 'Let's go.'

"I was taken somewhere, 30 to 40 minutes,
then I hear the car stop."
Noela was pushed inside a building and tied to
a chair.

"One of the kidnappers told his friend, 'Go call
the boss.' I can hear doors open but I didn't
know if their boss was in a room or if he came
from outside.

"They ask me, 'What did you do to this man?
Why has this man asked us to kill you?' And
then I tell them, 'Which man? Because I don't
have any problem with anybody.' They say,

'Your husband!' I say, 'My husband can't kill
me, you are lying!' And then they slap me.

"After that the boss says, 'You are very stupid,
you are fool. Let me call who has paid us to kill
you.'"

The gang's leader made the call.
"We already have her," he triumphantly told his
paymaster.

The phone was put on loudspeaker for Noela to
hear the reply.

Her husband's voice said: "Kill her."

Just hours earlier, the same voice had consoled
her over the death of her stepmother and
urged her to take fresh air outside the hotel.

Now her husband Balenga Kalala had
condemned her to death.

"I heard his voice. I heard him. I felt like my
head was going to blow up.

"Then they described for him where they were
going to chuck the body."

At that, Noela says she passed out.
Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo,

Balenga Kalala had arrived in Australia in 2004
as a refugee, after fleeing a rebel army that
had rampaged through his village, killing his
wife and young son.

Settling in Melbourne, he soon found steady
employment, first in a seafood processing
factory and then in a warehouse as a forklift
operator.

"He could already speak English," recalls Noela,
who also arrived in Australia in 2004. "My
social worker was his social worker, and they
used him to translate Swahili."

The two fell in love. They set up home in the
Kings Park suburb of the city. Noela had five
children from a previous relationship and went
on to have three more with Kalala.

"I knew he was a violent man," admits Noela.
"But I didn't believe he can kill me. I loved this
man with all my heart!

"I give him, beautiful and handsome, two boys
and one girl. So I don't know why he choose to
kill me."

As the gang's leader ended the call to Kalala,
Noela was coming round.

"I said to myself, I was already dead. Nothing I
can do can save me.

"But he looks at me and then he says, 'We're
not going to kill you. We don't kill women and
children.'

"He told me I'd been stupid because my
husband paid them the deposit in November.
And when I went to Africa it was January. He
asked me, 'How stupid can you be, from
November, you can't see that something is
wrong?'"

He might have been a hit-man with principles,
but the gang's leader still took the opportunity
to extort more money from Kalala. He called
him back and informed him that the fee for the
murder had increased. He wanted a further
3,400 Australian dollars (£1,700) to finish the
job.

Back at the hotel, Noela's brother was getting
worried about her disappearance. He called
Kalala in Australia to ask for $545 to pay the
police to open an investigation - Kalala feigned
concern and duly wired the money.

After two days in captivity, Noela was freed.

"'We give you 80 hours to leave this country,'"
Noela says the gang told her. "'Your husband is
serious. Maybe we can spare your life, but
other people, they're not going to do the same
thing. If God helps you, you'll get to Australia.'"

Before leaving Noela by the side of a road, the
gang handed her the evidence they hoped
would incriminate Kalala - a memory card
containing recorded phone conversations of
him discussing the murder and receipts for the
Western Union money transfers.

"We just want you to go back, to tell other
stupid women like you what happened," the
gang told Noela as they parted. "You must
learn something: you people get a chance to
go overseas for a better life. But the money you
are earning, the money the government gives
to you, you use it for killing each other!"

Noela immediately began planning her return
to Australia. She called the pastor of her church
in Melbourne, Dassano Harruno Nantogmah,
and requested his help.

"'It was in the middle of the night. I says, 'It's
me, I'm still alive, don't tell anybody.' He says,
'Noela, I don't believe it. Balenga can't kill
someone!' And I said, 'Pastor, believe me!'"

Three days later, on the evening of 22 February
2015, Noela was back in Melbourne.
By now, Kalala had informed the community
that his wife had died in a tragic accident. He
had spent the day hosting a steady stream of
well-wishers, many of whom donated money.

"It was around 7.30pm," Noela says. "He was
in front of the house. People had been inside
mourning with him and he was escorting a
group of them into a car."

It was as they drove away that Noela sprang
her surprise.

"I was stood just looking at him. He was
scared, he didn't believe it. Then he starts
walking towards me, slowly, like he was walking
on broken glass.

"He kept talking to himself and when he
reached me, he touched me on the shoulder.
He jumped.

"He did it again. He jumped. Then he said,
'Noela, is it you?'… Then he start screaming,

'I'm sorry for everything.'"

Noela called the police who ordered Kalala off
the premises and later obtained a court order
against him. Days later, the police instructed

Noela to call Kalala. Kalala made a full
confession to his wife, captured on tape,
begging for her forgiveness and revealing why
he had ordered the murder.

"He say he wanted to kill me because he was
jealous," says Noela. "He think that I wanted to
leave him for another man."

She rejects the accusation.

In a police interview, Kalala denied any
involvement in the plot. "The pretence," wrote
the judge at his trial in December, "lasted for
hours." But when confronted with the recording
of his telephone conversation with Noela and
the evidence she brought back from Burundi he
started to cry.

Kalala was still unable to offer any explanation
for his actions, suggesting only that "sometimes
[the] devil can come into someone to do
something but after they do it, they start
thinking, 'Why I did that thing?'"

On 11 December last year, in court in
Melbourne, after pleading guilty to incitement
to murder, Kalala was sentenced to nine years
in prison.

"His voice always comes in the night - 'Kill her,
kill her,'" says Noela of the nightmares that
now plague her. "Every night, I see what was
happening in those two days with the
kidnappers."

Ostracised by many in Melbourne's African
community, some of whom blame her for
Kalala's conviction, Noela sees a difficult future
for her and her eight children.
"But I will stand up like a strong woman," she
says.

Soure: www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35496480

What a callous husband she had. thank God for the assassin's principle of not killing women and children. Let the husband face the full consequences of his action.

Wow never knew there was dignity amongst criminals, madame thank God for ur life.

Very amazing story. Now what could be his drive? Could it be money that'll make you commit such? Madam, you need to give GOD a Living thing for thanksgiving. He really saved your life for real

She needs to go for a thanks giving service in the motherless babies home.

Thanks to God.