Hold on to your baby
This is really a bad time to be a parent in Uganda. Kids have been disappearing increasingly of late and the problem seems to be one of those unsolvable ones where the police is “still investigating” for ever.
At first the stories went along the lines mbu ‘the road,’ meaning the northern by-pass which is being constructed now, wanted 1000 kids. This sorry belief still persists even when we have moved this far. People still want to believe that some unseen powers within a road, a building, a car hold the key to their success and unless they appease them with the life of some innocent kid, they are bound for failure.
This dad was captured on radio crying his guts out because his son had been found dead in some bush. The murderers had not even cut off the obligatory parts that we have come to expect when these kidnappings happen. They probably changed their minds about sacrificing this little man but they did not think it was important to return him home to his heartbroken parents.
Then again, it has been said that the kids are actually being smuggled to Arabia to be slaves.
Whatever the truth is, I don’t envy parents at this moment.
At first the stories went along the lines mbu ‘the road,’ meaning the northern by-pass which is being constructed now, wanted 1000 kids. This sorry belief still persists even when we have moved this far. People still want to believe that some unseen powers within a road, a building, a car hold the key to their success and unless they appease them with the life of some innocent kid, they are bound for failure.
This dad was captured on radio crying his guts out because his son had been found dead in some bush. The murderers had not even cut off the obligatory parts that we have come to expect when these kidnappings happen. They probably changed their minds about sacrificing this little man but they did not think it was important to return him home to his heartbroken parents.
Then again, it has been said that the kids are actually being smuggled to Arabia to be slaves.
Whatever the truth is, I don’t envy parents at this moment.
posted by Uganda Tourism Press Journalists at 7:35 AM
2 Comments:
That is sooo sad. It seems children will never be children in this unforgiving world of greed; from Beirut, Checheny, Goma, Haifa, Sao paulo, Chennai, Gulu and now to KAMPALA!
The adoption business, cheap labour, military replenishments, sex slavery et al continue to hold the future of the world at ransom! How can you, me, anybody (at the grass roots) stop this?
I remember when I was growing up how my mother used to insist that someone pick me up from school even when our home was not more than 100 metres from the school because of this grisly habit of sacrifising kids for good luck in projects. good luck, indeed! it seems child sacrifices happen in waves in uganda.
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