(Pic: Aislinn Laing) Separated from their families and forced to largely stay indoors because of the effects on their skin of the harsh east African sun, they sleep three or four to a bed. They survive on basic food strictly rationed by their head teacher because of erratic government funding that sometimes dries up for months at a time. “These children are living like refugees in their own country and it’s shameful for Tanzania,” said Peter Ajali, the head teacher. “I try to take the part of the parents and love them and keep them safe but it’s not humanitarian for them to live like this.” Albinism, caused by a lack of pigmentation in their skin, hair and eyes, affects about one in 20,000 people worldwide, but is for unknown reasons more common in Sub-Saharan Africa and Tanzania particularly, where it claims one in 1,400. At least 75 children and adults with albinism have been killed here since 2000 and more than 62 others have escaped with severe injuries following the witch-doctors’ attacks. 
Village witch doctors dancing a ritual in Tanzania With witch-doctors paying as much as $75,000 for a full set of body parts, which they bury or grind up to keep in charms, some of those implicated in the killings are members of the victims’ own families. The UN warned recently of a marked increase in attacks on albinos, which it said were now at greater risk with the approach of national and local elections in October. The fear is that unscrupulous politicians will fall back on old traditions of the witch-doctors, known as mganga, and their ambitious promises. The government has arrested 200 witch-doctors and this month a home affairs minister told MPs in parliament that murdering albinos would never win them their seats. Orders have gone out to the provinces to safeguard people with albinism in their communities. With scant resources, their answer has been to herd them into camps.
(Pic: Aislinn Laing) At Buhangija in the northern town of Shinyanga, the numbers of albino children arriving at what was originally a primary school for children with special needs has risen from 170 last year to 295 at present. Many more are expected in the coming months. They join 64 deaf pupils already at the cash-strapped centre, and a further 40 who are blind. Buhangija was built with boarding space for 40 children. Its head teacher has been forced to turn the library, outhouses and a half-built classroom into more dormitories. Inside, metal bunks stacked three-high are topped with foam mattresses and tatty sheets. Aged as young as two and as old as 25, they spend their time outside classes playing football with rolled plastic bags and sitting talking on the dusty ground. Visitors are quickly encircled and clutched at by the little hands of those eager for a moment of the affection they are now forced to go without. Scola Joseph comes to see her children each month and stays for several days but the majority of parents leave their children at the centre and never come back. Mr Ajali said albino children were still seen as a curse. “They are a burden and many women’s families make them leave after they are born,” he said. “During the day, we ask members of the local community to come and greet our children because they lack love and it makes them feel better.” 
(Pic: Aislinn Laing) Mary Mabula, 15, was sent to the centre after she finished primary school in 2010 and hasn’t seen her mother, father or siblings since. Asked if she misses them, she ducks her head and whispers “yes”. She said her parents knew the centre was the only place she would be safe. “People used to say to me in the street: ‘You’re the one who can make us rich’,” she explained. The threats are not empty. A month ago, a 30-year-old woman had her right arm severed below the elbow by two men who broke into the hut where she was sleeping with her four children. After the attack, police held a secret ballot of villagers to identify the suspects and now have several in custody. In March, a woman trying to shield her one and three-year-old children suffered machete injuries to her face and body inflicted by five armed men who broke into the family’s hut. The baby boy’s limbless torso was found days later in a nearby forest. His father was arrested. The potential value of Buhangija’s 295 pale-skinned occupants means armed police join the centre’s private security guards from dusk until dawn. If fed-up children manage to slip out in a bid to explore the outside world, the protective local community calls the head to come and fetch them. 
A family with albinos children in Tanzania Unable to leave the dusty compound and largely confined to her breeze block dormitory because she has no sun screen to protect her skin, Mary concentrates on reading and dreams of becoming a doctor. “If feel I’m in a safe place here. I like to help with the younger children but I hope I can go home one day,” she told The Telegraph. The centre’s small and loyal band of donors have tried to brighten the children's’ lives – the older girls were given pink paint and a full length mirror for their dormitory, the nursery now has a television so they can watch cartoons. Among its supporters is Under The Same Sun, a charity set up by a Canadian man with albinism which aims to support others affected by the condition and educate communities about them. UTSS pays for eight care workers to help the four staff funded by the government, and has to date also paid for 320 promising albino students to attend private school where their special needs, including low vision, are catered for. The organisation employs 10 albinos among its local staff, including Martin Haule, a trained accountant and teacher who heads its educational projects. Mr Haule said that even for him, a well-paid and educated professional who is married and with children, and living in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam, the risks are very real. “I normally travel with security and separate to my loved ones and I don’t tell friends where I’m going because you never know who is a good and who is a bad friend,” he said. Mr Haule retrained as a teacher after his brother, who also suffered from albinism, died aged 39 from tuberculosis, having dropped out of school and spent much of his life depressed and drinking heavily. “He refused to go to secondary school, because trying to learn in school was so frustrating when you could not see the blackboard and the other children bullied you,” he said. “I developed my own strategies like standing close to the board or getting a friend to read for me.” He said UTSS’s community seminars had revealed the extent of misunderstanding about albinism. “Even people who have albinism do not understand that it’s just about the skin,” he said. “They too believe they are somehow not fully human.” January Makamba, one of a number of candidates vying to take over from President Jakaya Kikwete when he leaves office in October, said a better solution had to be found for people with albinism to live safely in Tanzania. “It’s an embarrassment to this country that we have to keep them in camps like this,” he said. “It’s also an embarrassment to the business and political elite that we are associated with what’s happening to them. “It’s true some of those who procure body parts operate at the highest levels of society. These are deep-seated beliefs and we must confront them as a nation.”
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