On January 12 my stepmother woke me up at 6 a.m. and told me that she wanted me to do chores that day. First she said I should fetch 10 jerry cans of water. That’s 200 liters of water, and it would have taken me all morning to travel to the bore hole five times. She also wanted me to work in the garden digging for beans.
I knew that it would be impossible for me to complete all of these chores. When I told my stepmother that I could not do what she asked of me, she replied “If you do not do these chores I am going to sacrifice you.”
Child sacrifice is a big problem in villages in Uganda so I was very scared. Some people believe that if they sacrifice a child they will become rich. There have been many stories on the news about child sacrifice. I heard on the news that in Nanoko village in Kibuku District in Uganda two children were sacrificed this year. According to an article in The Guardian by the nonprofit Children on the Edge, child sacrifice is on the rise.
As soon as I could, I ran out of my house to my neighbor’s house. When my father returned home that evening he asked my stepmother where I had gone. My stepmother repeated to my father that if he found me she would sacrifice me. My father became very scared and went to report my stepmother’s behaviour to the chairperson of our village.
When they came back to our house my stepmother wasn’t there. Our neighbors told the police that they had seen my stepmother hurrying away, carrying her luggage on her head. Forty minutes later, the police found her in a nearby town called Namutumba where she was waiting in a taxi park. The police arrested my stepmother and she will remain in prison for two years for threatening to sacrifice me. It was a relief to know that I wouldn’t end up a statistic.
