Hi,
Happy to have you visit with us.
Been thinking of the many things that go on around us, how we learn about them, learn from them; uphold the good and still fight against the evil that surrounds us.
The evil in the news from Bulo-Katooke village, Uganda on the 27th August 2013 was the horrible 'worse-than boarding-school' stepmother and her husband (non-father) who were keeping their daughter in a pigsty! Much worse story than Cinderella. At least in the fairy story, the young girl got to sit in the warm ashes indoors but not out with the animals!
What could possess a person to make a child stay and eat in a pigsty to the point that they are emaciated and paralysed? What fortuitous luck that the neighbours took notice and reported the case to good samaritans (Justice and Peace Society) who acted and called the police in. It is a miracle that this little girl was not eaten up or killed by the pigs. The two non-parents are in jail now, facing charges of torturing a child.
The little girl is being tended by her mother in hospital, who no doubt will have to explain to the world and to the little girl when she gets better, what could have forced her to abandon her dear child to these non-parents recently? I sympathize with her very much, but what excuse will this mother give for leaving her little girl with these people? That she had no money? No food? That she had married another man and he had asked her to take her now growing daughter away? She will need to explain to the little girl and say sorry to her little daughter; again and again and again.
This mother will also have to forgive herself many times over. She will have to spend a lot of money to treat the little girl and to rehabilitate her from this excessive trauma. When i think of this poor little girl, I am quite upset that she lives in the Ugandan society where very little is known about the consequences of separation of parent and child and where it is done so casually. Both among the highly educated and the less educated. The rich, and the poor. Abandoning children to strangers seems to be the norm, but it is wrong.
I hope the court case is well handled and justice is done. I hope many parents learn from this sad event to be wiser and that this makes more people bolder to report and stand against the abuse of children everywhere. We can start by doing the very best to stay in the same home with children under your care and supporting mothers and fathers to do so.
One newspaper is quoted as saying "Police asked mothers to always make sure that they stay with their children and desist from dumping them just to anybody".
Think twice about taking your child to anyone, a stepmother or a busy teacher, administrator or matron or housemaster or housemistress. Live with your own child; eat whatever little you have together or whatever much but "Desist from dumping them just to anybody" as the police in Bulo-Katooke warned.
Read more about the story in The New Vision newspaper at;
http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/646581-couple-remanded-for-feeding-child-in-pig-sty.html
Till then,
Keep your child with you, not in boarding school.
Norah
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