 | |
|
CHILD SACRIFICE
Cases of children being sacrificed by people looking for riches are increasingly becoming common. Sunday Vision interviewed a man who saw a child being sacrificed at a building he was working on. Below, he narrates the harrowing experience that has haunted him since then and put his life in danger
It was a Friday night, at around 1:00am in September 2006. That is when I witnessed something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I had heard about rich men in the city who sacrifice children, but dismissed it as old wives tales meant to scare people. That is until I witnessed it. I was working as a mason on the site of one of the high-rise buildings in the city.
During the day, the foreman had ordered some of my colleagues to dig a deep pit on the ground floor next to one of the support columns, claiming they were going to reinforce it. However, by evening, nothing had been put in there. We used to work in shifts, with some working during the day, and others at night.
On the fateful day, about 25 of us were working the night shift. At about 11:00pm, the foreman ordered everyone working on the site to go home and return the following day.
However, I and two other colleagues who were working on the third floor missed the instructions, so we continued working. Apparently, the people on the ground floor didn’t realise we were up there working. So we continued working, eager to get as much work done as possible, as our boss was a rich man, who paid well his workers.
At about 1:00am I decided to go down and get a cup of hot tea, as it was getting very cold on the top of the building. On reaching the second floor, I was surprised to find the place quiet and deserted. I expected the place to be bustling with activity, since construction work was supposed to go on 24 hours.
As I approached the steps to the ground floor, I spotted the construction site owner, standing outside the building next to a saloon car — a Corona. I stopped in my tracks. The big man kept looking around like he was searching for something and instinctively I ducked out of sight. Although he regularly visited the site, it was the first time I saw him in such a cheap car. He owned at least three expensive cars, and these are the ones he used to move around in.
Two burly men dressed in black T-shirts emerged from the car and stood around for about 10 minutes, before entering the building.
They walked up the first floor, looking around to see if there was anyone inside.
As they approached the room where I was hidding, I crouched behind a heap of sand. As they passed by me, I overheard one of them comment that baffala bonna bagenze tuddeyo tutere tukole ogutuleese (the fools have all left, let us go and proceed with our mission).
As they walked away, I got out of my hiding place and started peeping at them. The rich man opened the car and got out a child. It was a girl, about seven years old, dressed in a white dress, with her hair plaited and clutching a huge doll.
At first, I thought the rich man had just come to check on the site, and brought along his daughter. The rich man, holding the child by the hand, walked to the ground floor, followed by the two men.
One of the men got a spade and started mixing concrete. Afterwards, he beckoned to his colleague, who had remained near the entrance with the rich man and the child. At this point, the rich man handed over the child to the second man, who carried and dropped her into the pit in standing position. The man with the spade started shovelling concrete into the pit. The child screamed about three times and then stopped. The man continued pouring concrete into the pit, until it filled up. They then flattened the place, to look like the rest of the floor.
The child was buried alive and in standing position. I’m sure if anyone went back to excavate that pit, they would find her bones there. After carefully tidying up the place, the rich man pulled out a gourd (endeku) that contained some stuff I could not figure out. One of the men went out to the car and came back with what looked like a horn of a cow.
He passed it around for each to sniff in. Without looking back, the trio walked out of the building and drove off. Terribly scared, I ran back to the top of the building to narrate what I had seen to my two colleagues. We decided to go back to the spot where they had just buried the child. I led them to the still fresh spot and on close inspection, made out what looked like blood stains. Probably these were part of the gourd’s contents. The three of us fled the building; never to come back, not even to claim the money we had worked for. Currently, the building serves as a very busy shopping arcade, mainly dealing, ironically, in children’s clothes. I continued working at different construction sites, until recently when I started getting calls from people threatening to harm me if I continue talking about what I saw that night. Apparently, one of the people I shared my harrowing experience with took it back to the rich man, who is now determined to silence me once and for all.
After getting several suspicious calls from people offering me work, I have decided to flee to my village and wait for the situation to improve.Since the rich man is constructing several other buildings in the city, I can easily end up like that poor little girl, buried alive, in standing position, in the foundation of one of them.
Published on: Saturday, 22nd November, 2008
|
