Imagine an African child with typical African facial features, but, instead of her/his natural skin colour, imagine him “white”; because of the lack of melanin, a pigment in the skin, he has blond, almost white hair and pale eyes. People with albinism, in the majority of African countries, especially Tanzania, are, in a very real sense, prey: their body parts are considered talismans, and this has given rise to the tragedy they are living.
Banned from a society that does not see them as Africans, from the job market and even from their families who, in many cases, abandon them at birth, they are the victims of rituals. Their persecution is rooted in superstition. “African albinos”, therefore, fight for survival from the moment of birth.
Tens of thousands of albinos live in Africa, where the percentage of people with albinism is among the highest in the world. Civilized nations fail to take the poor living conditions in which these human beings, especially children, are forced to live to heart.
According to popular belief, their body parts have strong magical powers and can bring wealth, luck and fertility to the people who possess them: men with Aids, for example, believe that by having intercourse with a woman with albinism, they will be cured instantly; and fishermen are convinced that by sewing the bones into their nets, they will catch more fish. Albinos are hunted, slaughtered, cut into pieces; their tombs are desecrated and their remains stolen in order to support this traffic. Legs, bones and arms are buried in mines to bring out the gold; genital organs are used to prepare concoctions to cure infertility.
Apart from this savagery, people with albinism have serious health problems linked to the lack of melanin and their constant exposure to the equatorial sun, which causes burns, infection, loss of sight, and, in a vast majority of cases, tumours of the skin. 80% of Tanzanian albinos do not reach the age of 30. Skin cancer is a silent killer, and their average life expectancy is 32.
A girl afflicted with albinism asked me: “What have I done to deserve all this?”
And by “all this” she means: “loneliness and alienation, the pain caused by an unforgiving sun, family abandonment, capture and torture.”
I said to myself: “The pain inflicted on the weak is our pain”.
So here we are, trying to help change their future together.
