Harrowing tale of little angels that
survived child sacrifice
“Let us pray…humble yourselves and
close your eyes… Dear God…” 10-year-old Canaan Nankunda breaks into the cheerful
play of his peers, drawing them into a circle.
This fabric of family and friendship
is knit with the golden thread of prayer, because it is this that has mended
their broken hearts, lives and families.
Some of the children at KCM in prayer |
Welcome to Kyampisi Child Care
ministries, located in Kisaasi and Mukono, a safe haven for children that have been
grabbed from the jaws of death through child sacrifice.
After prayer, the children break into
harmonious praise to God – after all, it is by God’s mercy that they are still
alive.
These children have experienced
trauma beyond my ability to comprehend; like the story of five-year-old Hope.
She was found lying in a sack in a
cattle yard where it was discovered that the tip of her tongue and her big toe had
been cut off, and some teeth snapped out. This has impaired her speech greatly.
Peter Ssewakiryanga, a director at
Kyampisi Child care ministries (an organisation working to end child sacrifice
in Uganda) recounts Hope’s journey to freedom:
A daughter of impoverished parents, she vanished without a trace
in June 2009. One and half years later, a lady named Agnes was walking to
church with a young boy.
The boy came across a sack lying in a cattle yard – he ran up to
Agnes and told her there was a strange noise coming from the bag. Agnes
described it as a pig snorting, kind of.
They opened the bag to find a little girl bound by ropes and
barely alive. Agnes carried her to the nearest medical clinic and they told her
the child was dead but she did not believe them. In disbelief, she hurried off
to the next health centre but was told the same thing. But her belief insisted otherwise; the child
she was holding was not dead.
It was only at the third clinic that they realised Hope was alive,
but barely. She was transferred to Mulago Hospital where she received a number
of blood transfusions and treatment for over two months. Agnes stayed by her
side and gave her the name ‘Hope’. Hope was what everyone was
holding on to for this precious little life.
Agnes went to the local council to tell the story of how Hope was
found. They referred her to the police and announcements were made over the
radio about the little girl. Hope’s parents came forward and identified the
little girl as their daughter who was kidnapped more than a year earlier.
Hope’s parents left and soon after, a man arrived.
He had heard the announcements over the radio for Hope, who had
been found.
He introduced himself to Agnes as someone who was looking out for
Hope’s best interests. He said he wanted to help Agnes care for Hope, but asked
Agnes for the child’s hair and nails.
When Hope was first discovered she had long, unkempt hair and long
curled nails which Agnes had trimmed. Knowing this was an unusual question,
Agnes said, “I gave those to the doctor and he disposed of them.”
A vibrant looking Hope at KCM |
Without another word, he left. A child's hair and nails are used
in witchcraft. Even after Hope’s narrow escape, the radio adverts had
interested witchdoctors too, who wanted more from her.
Agnes reported this incident to the police and described the man
who had visited the hospital. Police identified him as a neighbour to Hope’s
parents.
Police identified him as a witchdoctor and the one responsible for
Hope’s kidnap and torture for the past one-and-a-half years.
Currently, Hope is receiving psychological, spiritual and physical
healing at Kyampisi Childcare ministries.
When I looked at her seated in her wheelchair, I saw a light
inside her. Her laugh could encourage anyone to laugh along with her.
Children in
death’s pot
Children like these left on their own are easy pray to kidnappers |
The harrowing practice of child sacrifice begins when an
individual consults a witchdoctor or ‘traditional healer’, who will then
require a child.
Depending on the gravity of the issue that brought the ‘client’ to
the witchdoctor, the witchdoctor may demand for a certain body part of the
child to sacrifice to the witch’s gods.
Any part of a child becomes a currency; a barter tool for the gods
to allegedly grant business success, prosperity, wealth or health.
“Hundreds of children are kidnapped usually by a neighbour and
brutally mutilated in this completely selfish and heartless act. A maimed child
may be left to bleed and die, while others are kept alive for continued acts of
witchcraft,” Ssewakiryanga says.
He adds that the most sought-after body parts are the ears,
genitals, heart, liver, tongue, nails, blood and oesophagus.
Canaan Nankunda, a former P1 pupil at Kamera Community primary
school in Luweero is lucky to have escaped this hellish sacrifice in October
2010.
As he narrates the tales of his past, emotions well up so much so
that he cannot bear the pain of it. The sound of silence echoes…until finally the
tears roll down his dark skin.
Nankunda and his eight-year-old sister Sylvia Suubi had been
herding cattle when they fell into the mutilators’ claws. When Nankunda left to
fetch water for the cattle, Suubi’s activity was interrupted by a man who
wanted her to follow him. She, however, insisted that she had to wait for Nankunda
who returned 25 minutes later.
“Without warning, he grabbed us both, tied our shirts together and
led us to a shrine. He told us to lie down and he begun strangling me but I fought
him until I lost consciousness,” he now says is a low monotone.
On regaining consciousness, he noticed he was bleeding from the
back. He suffered a deep stab wound on his neck and Suubi was by then dead.
He made an alarm and dashed out of the shrine causing the witchdoctor
to scamper for safety. Nevertheless, he was arrested three days later.
Hope at KCM
Nankunda says he is slowly recovering from the trauma of being held
hostage in a shrine and seeing his sister killed.
George Mukisa had his genitals
completely removed and was rescued close to death after he had been mutilated
and then discarded. Ssewakiryanga says that by the time Mukisa was rescued, he
had lost so much blood and required extensive treatment to reconstruct his
genital area.
“After failed attempts to
reconstruct his genitals in Uganda, he remained unable to control his bladder
and a sufferer of continued urinary tract infections,” he recalls.
However, through the outreach of KCM,
he was able to receive reconstructive surgery in Brisbane, Australia. He can
now control his bladder and is attending school at Kyampisi Childcare Centre in
Mukono.
KCM -Uganda chapter was registered in
2009 with a focus on reaching out to the community in order to impact positive
change for victims of child sacrifice and their families in terms of social
awareness, economic and spiritual development.
Some of the KCM staff |
The centre has worked with more than
100 affected families and is working towards increasing awareness on child
sacrifice
“We started a school, Kyampisi
childcare centre that has enrolled at least 200 children and its mission is to
give vulnerable children spiritual, physical, emotional springboards to better
their lives,” Ssewakiryanga says.
He says many of the children they
rescue are raised in families that believe in witchcraft. In fact, Kyampisi is
a renowned hill for witchdoctors.
However, boys such as Mukisa now face
a future of infertility because of the castration. Moreover, police does not
promptly follow up cases of child sacrifice and sometimes, court claims to have
lost the files and guilty witchdoctors walk free, only to snare another
unsuspecting child and wipe out its innocence.
As I bade them farewell, the little
ones threw their palms wide into the air and waved goodbye, some saying ‘God
bless you’ and others saying, ‘aunt weeraba
(see you).’
They may be too young to lose sleep over their
future for now, but with the sun beaming down from the clear skies on their
small bodies, they seem quite content with their ‘now’.
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