Uma told her parents that she had started helping at a school in Nepal where she had taught years ago. Her father Kurt Vandemaele is a journalist at De Krant Van West-Vlaanderen and brought his daughter to Zaventem. “We were almost there when it occurred to her that she had left her cell phone at home,” he writes. “I suggested to buy a new one at the airport. ‘No Dad, that will cost a lot of people and in Nepal I am so remote and high in the mountains that there is no good connection there.’”
Although her father asked no further questions about her long absence, there have been some rumors in recent weeks that she would participate in the program. Some mole hunters in her area thought it strange that Uma had disappeared from the radar in the autumn and that there was no evidence of her journey. However, her parents only knew for sure that their daughter had taken part in the game program on Sunday evening, when she appeared in ‘Café De Mol’. They also don’t know if she’s the mole, or if she’ll make it to the final – even if she was absent for several weeks. “Whoever participated was not allowed to go home all those weeks or was certainly not allowed to show themselves. That’s what it says in the contract,” said Uma. “If you think you know something, know that you know nothing.”
‘De Mol’, Sunday 20 March at 19.55 on Play4.