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Uganda
41°24'12.2"N 2°10'26.5"E
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Both boys were quick, but they couldn’t outrun the witch doctor. Moses was 15. Kato was 10. Moses loved soccer and was a prefect at his school. Kato was the fastest runner of his friends, racing along with a stick in his hand, pushing an old tire. Moses’ mother sent him to pick up some Irish potatoes at the market. It was the last time she saw him alive. Kato’s grandmother sent him to buy some soap. His body was discovered the next morning.

Moses and Kato lived outside Kampala in Uganda’s Buikwe district. Buikwe is the heart of witchcraft in Uganda. “Witchcraft has been there,” says Obed Byamugisha, 34, the child protection technical program manager for the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, “but child sacrifice is new.”

As one walks down Kampala’s dirt roads, witchcraft is in plain sight. Inside the doorways of thatched-roofed huts (called “shrines”) hang the tools of this hideous trade: animal carcasses, shells from nearby Lake Victoria, and cages of doves cooing softly, unaware of their sadistic end.  Most troubling is what cannot be seen: the witch doctor’s intentions. Will they sacrifice children?

Obed has made it his mission to interrupt these sacrifices as often as he can.

Child sacrifice is not unique to Uganda. It’s been reported in Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Eswatini, Liberia, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. But in Uganda, child sacrifice has become disturbingly commonplace. Statistics on how frequent are hard to find, but in 2013, research by Humane Africa suggested that one child is being sacrificed every month in Uganda.

The question is why?

As part of a paid global justice internship with Regent University School of law in Virginia, Heather Houseal, a Florida attorney, works with Kyampisis Childcare Ministries, a Christian community development organization in the capital of Kapapla, to track down cases that had been dismissed or thrown out.  She says poverty precipitates child sacrifice, turning children into a commodity.

“Uganda is a wonderful place, filled with Beautiful and kind people,” says Houseal, “It is filled with an amazing display of God’s creation in the landscape and the wildlife but like any other place in the world, Satan uses evil to influence people and circumstances.”

“Witch doctors charge hundreds of dollars for a child sacrifice,” says Heather. “They convince uneducated, poor people that the only way to ensure they get the results they’re looking for is to sacrifice the most pure and potent subject, a child.”

Heather investigated reports of men who kidnapped children to sell to witch doctors. They found the egregious act addictive. “They felt like evil had overtaken them and they wished they could get out, but they just could not stop,” says Heather.

Law enforcement fails to stop child sacrifice, with too few police officers trained in distinguishing child sacrifice from murder. Police say they don’t have enough fuel to get to locations to investigate reports of child sacrifice.

 

 

“Reporting mechanisms and record-keeping are not superb,” says Heather. Everything is done on paper. Cases get lost. Families give up on a system that is failing them. Or, they become too frightened to testify in the face of such evil.”

Such evil bares its face to the community through the presence of the witch doctor. Among the people of Uganda, the terms “witch doctor” and “traditional healer” are often used interchangeably. But there is a difference: Witch doctors kill children.

Mukasa David Sayansi and Edwin Kibogo identify themselves as traditional healers, explaining that sacrificing birds, goats, and sheep is normal in Buikwe district.

But the sights and smells inside their shrine are anything but normal to Western eyes. In the middle of a hut, a tall wooden pole wrapped in goatskins and bark cloth steadies a grass-thatched roof. Bird nests and a dried pangolin—an endangered scaly anteater—hang from the pole. The hut, big enough to hold a dozen people, smells of tobacco and cowhide. Outside the large hut are cages filled with doves. “We suck the blood out of the doves and sprinkle it over the sick,” says traditional healer Mukasa.

Mukasa and Edwin say witch doctors who kill give all traditional healers a bad name. “The bad ones sacrifice children, rape women, and tell lies,” says Mukasa. He says there are two kinds of sacrifice—the first is for the money. There is a belief in Uganda and the surrounding countries that child sacrifice makes traditional medicine stronger.

 “The witch doctors who put children under buildings get paid a lot—$25,000,” says Mukasa. Those witch doctors take the heads, hearts, and other extremities of children and encase them in the foundations of new businesses to ensure they are successful. They sprinkle the blood of children into fishing boats along the shores of Lake Victoria to guarantee larger catches.

The second kind of child sacrifice is used to break a relationship when the traditional healer has exhausted every way of trying to heal an illness. Instead of admitting failure, a witch doctor will ask for something they hope will be impossible: the sacrifice of a child. “After eating a patient’s money,” says Mukasa, “they give excuses.” Edwin says they ask the sick person to do something impossible, such as to bring them a head of a child. “They use it to cut the relationship,” says Edwin.

Kato was a twin. He lived with his grandfather, great-grandmother, and several cousins. One afternoon he went with his cousin to buy soap from the trading center. The last time anyone saw him, he was with his uncle on New Year’s Eve 2013.

Children found Kato’s body on New Year’s Day, a five-minute walk from the home where he lived. The area smelled of death. A dog had recently died and was rotting nearby amongst the bushes. The ground was covered with scrubby grass, rotting yellow fruit, and red spots—Kato’s dried blood. “They chopped him here,” says his grandfather, Walya. “They put down a log and used a panga (a machete) to chop off his head,” he says. Kato’s heart and two fingers were taken. His uncle was burned to death by an angry mob after Kato’s body was found. In this area, sometimes people take justice into their own hands.

The second kind of child sacrifice is used to break a relationship when the traditional healer has exhausted every way of trying to heal an illness. Instead of admitting failure, a witch doctor will ask for something they hope will be impossible: the sacrifice of a child. “After eating a patient’s money,” says Mukasa, “they give excuses.” Edwin says they ask the sick person to do something impossible, such as to bring them a head of a child. “They use it to cut the relationship,” says Edwin.

Kato was a twin. He lived with his grandfather, great-grandmother, and several cousins. One afternoon he went with his cousin to buy soap from the trading center. The last time anyone saw him, he was with his uncle on New Year’s Eve 2013.

Children found Kato’s body on New Year’s Day, a five-minute walk from the home where he lived. The area smelled of death. A dog had recently died and was rotting nearby amongst the bushes. The ground was covered with scrubby grass, rotting yellow fruit, and red spots—Kato’s dried blood. “They chopped him here,” says his grandfather, Walya. “They put down a log and used a panga (a machete) to chop off his head,” he says. Kato’s heart and two fingers were taken. His uncle was burned to death by an angry mob after Kato’s body was found. In this area, sometimes people take justice into their own hands.

Kato’s grandfather says the world lost a bright light. “I knew Kato’s talents,” says Walya. “He was a great sportsman. He liked racing with his wheel. He loved football. He loved singing.”

Around the same time, Moses’ mother, Rehema, 30, exhausted from having a baby, sent Moses to buy potatoes. When Moses didn’t come back from the market with potatoes, his father, Matthais, went to look for him. The family searched throughout the weekend.

“On Monday, he was nowhere to be seen,” says Rehema. On Tuesday, someone found Moses’ shoes. Then Rehema overheard a terrible conversation about a child being found. “I started shaking. I was bedridden. I was shivering. I didn’t believe it was true,” she says.

When Moses was found in a sugarcane field, he was unrecognizable. The family buried what was left of Moses’ body in the family plot.

“After the burial, people said my husband killed Moses. They arrested him,” says Rehema. They also arrested another relative staying in the home with the family. With no evidence against them, the two were released.

To stop the carnage in Buikwe district, Obed and the World Vision child protection team devised an “Amber Alert” system, combining technology and tradition. “We use drums when a child is stolen,” he says. “It causes a chain reaction in the community. When you hear the drum, you know that there is danger and you immediately rise to search for the child.”

Motorbike drivers quickly block the main roads once alerted by spirited drumbeats that carry over loudspeakers. The system links up faith leaders, the media, response agencies, and the justice system to battle child sacrifice together. The radio station in town uses loudspeakers to broadcast as far as voices will carry.

 

The plan involves traditional healers as well. In 2012, the districts began to register traditional healers as part of an association to weed out the bad ones. Traditional healers want transparency, and so far, 547 have been registered. Otherwise, “we all carry the same blame,” says Mukasa. They’ve started radio broadcasts as well.

Obed’s Amber Alert system has been a success in the district. To date, it has saved 37 children—and even more where it has been implemented in other communities.

One of those children is Sharon. Her brother, David, saved her. At the time, they were 3 and 7. David’s father, Paul, was a fisherman. His mother worked in other people’s gardens, often leaving her children home alone. David and Sharon were brushing their teeth under a coffee plant in the front yard.

That’s when the strangers approached. “Two men came here and started calling us,” says David. “I told Sharon to run. I ran.” Sharon, a toddler, could not keep up. The men captured her, pressing chloroform to her face to silence her cries.

David ran until he found a neighbor with a cell phone, who called others, and they got the message on the megaphone. Motorcycles blocked the highways. The abductors heard the alert and dropped her.

As Obed worked tirelessly in Buikwe, World Vision teamed up with other nongovernmental organizations—Plan International, Save the Children, Children on the Edge, Kyampisi Children’s Ministries, and Uganda Child Rights NGO Network—pushing lawmakers to enact legislation to protect children.

In May 2021, The Ugandan parliament passed a law criminalizing child sacrifice. The penalty: life in prison. Watching the proceedings unfold live on TV, Obed screamed with joy. 

Then Obed added, “A few minutes after (the announcement), tears started rolling because I immediately remembered all the men and women whom I promised that this law would be enacted.” he says. Men like Kato’s grandfather, permanently hunched with grief. Women like Moses’ mother, her brown eyes forever flooded in pain. “These men and women lost their children to child sacrifice,” he says, “and most of them died of natural causes while waiting for the law to be enacted so that they receive justice.”

For Obed, this victory is bittersweet. “I carry with me painful scars for the lives of children lost,” he says, “I hope that the law will be preventive to save every last one in Uganda.” To deliver them from evil. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

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