Bones of gold: ‘You never know
Dangerous myths persist about people living with albinism, but a community in Malawi has had enough
Agroup of children shout excitedly as they chase after the car passing on a gravel road at the foot of Mount Mulanje in southern Malawi. “Did you hear those kids outside? They are saying ‘the car has taken money, millions of money is passing’ — because I’m in the car,” says Elizabeth Machinjiri.
She looks different to the rest of the passengers in the car, which is heading to Phalombe, about 85km east of Blantyre.
“They think that through our blood they can get riches,” the middle-aged woman remarks.
Looking in the car’s side mirror, Machinjiri pats her blonde afro. She has albinism, a rare genetic condition that leads to a lack of melanin in the hair, skin and eyes. As a result, her coarse hair is blonde and her skin is white, but Machinjiri is a black woman.
People who look like her stand out because most of the African continent’s population is dark-skinned.
“Growing up I learned that persons with albinism don’t live long. While I was at school my friend told me that: ‘ Why are you bothering yourself coming to school? You will not reach the age of 40.’ It’s when I got an idea of getting married and having my children before the age of 40. So I got my child at the age of 13.”
Machinjiri, who is the secretary of the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi, didn’t die at 40. She will be turning 45 in October.
“It seems here in Malawi people do not understand. They think that a person like me doesn’t die therefore we have some magical power in our bodies that can heal diseases. They also think that by using our body parts, our blood, our hair, they can get riches.”
Because of these beliefs, Machinjiri and other people with albinism live in fear. “I am very, very scared, because you never know when a person can just try to kidnap you,” she says.
A recent study by Amnesty International, the global activist organisation, found that people with albinism often face discrimination, which results in abuses ranging from ridicule by family and community members to more serious cases of violence “that include killings, abductions, mutilation and infanticide”.
According to the study, “attacks against people with albinism in Malawi were first noticed around 2009, but there was a marked increase since November 2014”.
The report estimates that at least 18 people have been killed since November 2014; five were abducted and are still missing. The United Nations estimates that more than 65 attacks have been reported to the police in the same timeframe.
‘When I grow up I want to be an accountant at the bank,” 14-year-old Chipililo Maiden says, while wrapping his arms around his knees. He buries his face in the crevice of his elbows. Maiden squirms under the attention of the rest of his neighbours who have gathered under a big tree in the local chief’s yard in Phalombe. But his grandfather, Caverson Maliko, beams with pride.
“At school he is brilliant. He even knows how to use a computer,” says Maliko.
The 72-year-old and his grandson are inseparable — they go everywhere together. Maliko walks Maiden to school every morning and meets him at the school gate in the afternoon for their walk home.
“I enjoy the trips to school,” says Maiden. “I like walking with my grandfather.”
The air is hot and dry but he is dressed in long trousers, socks and shoes. His long-sleeved shirt is torn, revealing pale skin.
Melanin is the agent that protects the skin from the sun’s harmful rays and because Maiden has albinism, he does not have any melanin in his skin and eyes.
According to a 2012 article in the j ournal BMC Dermatology, albinism and exposure to the sun are leading factors in the risk of developing skin cancers.
But he does not have sunscreen, so wearing long-sleeved clothing is the only way he can prevent sunburn.
“But the children at school mock me. When they see me they say: ‘Money, money, money.’ Others say: ‘This one is not allowed here, he must die,’ ” says Maiden.
There are an estimated 10 000 people with albinism in Malawi, a tiny minority in the country’s population of 16.36-million people, says Amnesty International official Simeon Mawanza. But these are not official figures. The ministry of gender, children, disability and social welfare says it has recently completed a study that is expected to establish an exact number of people with albinism.
Malawi is only one of 23 African countries where “people with albinism face extreme forms of discrimination that include abductions, killings and mutilations on the basis of superstitions and myths about their pigmentation”, says Mawanza.
In February, a KwaZulu-Natal teenager was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend after a traditional healer told him that mixing her body parts in muti would make him rich.
Similar cases are increasingly being reported in several villages around Malawi, including Phalombe, since the end of 2014.
“When Chipi was born there were no problems. But since the attacks started happening and we know that someone might try to abduct him. We have to be with him all the time,” says Maliko. “That is why I take him to school. We can’t allow him to go alone.”
Twenty-one-year-old Martha Chipesu narrowly survived an attempted abduction. Last year while collecting water at the local borehole, she heard that someone was planning to kidnap and sell her to buyers in Mozambique.
When Chipesu told her sister what she heard, her sister flew into a rage and kicked her out of her home. Left with nowhere to go Chipesu and her two children went to her church for protection.
“My family came to the church and convinced me to go back home,” she says, fiddling with a piece of rock.
That night, while Chipesu and her children were asleep at home, a man broke down the door. But before he could get to Chipesu he was spotted by neighbours who stopped him.
“When the police questioned the man after he was arrested we learned that Martha’s sister and her husband found someone in Mozambique who wanted to buy Martha. The buyer was going to only chop the parts which he needed and then the rest of the body will be buried and the sister would keep her children,” says Machinjiri.