Some of the street children who are forced to beg at the Jinja Road traffic lights during peak hours. PHOTO/ABUBAKER LUBOWA
In the sunbaked villages of Napak District, where the earth cracks from drought and hope withers like the stunted crops, parents face impossible choices; a decision made not out of desire, but sheer desperation. When a neighbour’s daughter, a young woman named Lowal, offered to take Salome to Kampala to help care for her newborn, Salome’s mother hesitated. She knew the dangers.
Six years earlier, her two sons; then just 10 and 16, had vanished after a neighbour promised them work sorting maize in the city. They left without saying goodbye, slipping away while she toiled in their meagre garden. Despite years of searching, they have not been found. Yet with 10 children to feed and no money for school fees, what choice did she have? "I told myself that at least this time, I knew who was taking my child," she says, her voice frayed with guilt.
The descent into hell
What began as a supposed opportunity to earn money as a nanny quickly revealed itself as something far more sinister. After just one week of caring for Lowal’s baby, Salome was thrust onto Kampala’s merciless streets. Her instructions were simple: Approach cars at traffic lights, stretch out her hands, and beg. "Mpako sente," she was taught to plead—"Give me money." But the cruelty of her new existence went far deeper. To maximise her earnings, her traffickers weaponised her suffering. They dressed her in filthy, torn clothes, forbade her from bathing, and starved her so that her hollow eyes and protruding ribs would tug at the consciences of passing motorists. At night, she returned to a makeshift shack in Katwe, where any failure to meet her begging quota was met with violence. "If I came back with no money, they beat me and gave me no food," Salome recalls, her small fingers tracing the scars on her arms.
A system built on exploitation
Salome’s ordeal is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a vast, predatory network that preys on the society’s most vulnerable. Traffickers, often trusted members of the community, methodically identify struggling families, offering false promises of education or employment in the city. Once the children are in their grasp, the deception collapses into coercion. Some, like Salome, are forced into begging rings. Others vanish into domestic servitude, street vending, or worse. The lucky ones are eventually found, their bodies bearing the marks of malnutrition and abuse. Many are never seen again. Eighty-three-year-old Teresa Kodet knows this pain intimately. Three of her daughters were swallowed by Kampala’s streets. The eldest left at 13 and returned four years later, her new clothes and city manners inadvertently glamourising a life of hidden suffering. Inspired by their sister’s apparent success, the two younger girls;then just 10 and eight followed her back to the city. Only one ever resurfaced, years later, married to a man in Mukono. The youngest remains missing, her fate a gaping wound in her mother’s heart.
Roots of the crisis
The crisis in Napak, where children are being sent away in alarming numbers, stems from a devastating mix of poverty, broken families, false hope, and systemic neglect. Each factor feeds into the others, creating a cycle that traps children in vulnerability and exploitation. Poverty here is more than just a lack of money; it is a daily struggle for survival. Droughts and failed harvests push families to the brink, forcing them to make impossible choices. Sending a child away becomes a desperate gamble, a hope that one less mouth to feed might keep the rest alive.
But this short-term fix only deepens the long-term crisis, as children who leave often end up in dangerous situations street begging, or worse, while the money or goods they occasionally bring back lure more children into the same fate. Family structures, already strained by hardship, are crumbling under the weight of alcoholism, violence, and abandonment. Children growing up in unstable homes are left unprotected, easy targets for traffickers who promise a better life.
Even those who stay face neglect, pushing them to run away in search of something better, only to find greater dangers waiting. The illusion of opportunity makes the crisis even harder to stop. When a child returns from the city with new clothes or a little cash, it creates a deceptive narrative that leaving brings success. Families, unaware of the abuse these children endure, encourage others to follow, not realising they are sending them into exploitation.
And behind it all is the silence of institutions that should be protecting these children. Schools are underfunded, social services non-existent, and law enforcement weak. Without education, support, or safety nets, children slip through the cracks, invisible to a system that has failed them. Breaking this cycle requires more than temporary fixes, it demands real investment in livelihoods, stronger families, and functioning institutions. Until then, Napak’s children will remain caught in a crisis that steals their futures.
Flickers of resistance
Simon Peter Lemukol, Napak’s LC5 Councillor, describes the crisis with frustration. "We arrest traffickers, but for every one we jail, three more take their place. Until we address why families are willing to send their children away, this will never end." In recent years, local leaders have mounted a haphazard defence against the traffickers. Anti-trafficking committees now operate in some sub-counties, and a handful of prosecutions have sent a faint warning to would-be exploiters. Repatriation programmes attempt to return rescued children to their families, though many end up back on the streets within months. Yet these efforts are crippled by a lack of resources and systemic corruption. Mark Lokol, the district speaker, argues that real solutions must go beyond punishment. "We need schools that children can actually attend. We need jobs for their parents. Right now, we are trying to stop a flood with our bare hands."
Homecoming
Salome’s story, at least, has a temporary reprieve. After three months of begging, a relative recognised her on Kampala’s streets and brought her home. The physical evidence of her ordeal is unmistakable; the ringworms that have scabbed over her scalp, the way her ribs press against her skin. The psychological wounds are harder to see but no less severe. As Salome struggles to recover from her ordeal, her story serves as both a warning and a call to action. The forces that conspired to put her on Kampala's streets - climate change, poverty, systemic neglect - continue to operate unchecked. Without comprehensive intervention, more children will follow the same dangerous path.
The true measure of Uganda's commitment to its children will be seen not in speeches or symbolic gestures, but in the allocation of resources to address the root causes of trafficking. Until then, in the slums of Kampala and the villages of Napak, childhoods will continue to be stolen and sold, one desperate decision at a time. For now, Salome's mother holds her daughter tight, whispering promises of protection she may not be able to keep. The traffickers, meanwhile, continue their work, always searching for the next vulnerable child, the next desperate parent, the next opportunity to profit from human suffering. The cycle continues - unless and until someone has the courage to break it.
PLEA
‘‘We need schools that children can actually attend. We need jobs for their parents. Right now, we are trying to stop a flood with our bare hands,’’ Mark Lokol, Napak District speaker, argues that real solutions must go beyond punishment.
