It was from neighbours that Scola Joseph
first heard of two strange men in the village asking after her children. She
knew immediately the moment she dreaded had come.
Packing small bags for Elijah, 3, and
Christine, 5, she led them away from their home and towards the nearest town,
to a government camp where hundreds others like them were living under
protection. It was the only way to keep them alive.
Buhangija is one of nine such centres
across Tanzania. This is where the country’s endangered class of
albino children are moved in a desperate attempt to keep them safe from
witch-doctors, who claim their body parts, ground up and put in charms, can
bring wealth and fortune.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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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