Everyone knows what it feels like to be hurt because they are different. Everyone knows what it looks like when you see it. And everyone knows what it sounds like when we hear about it happening to poor far-off people in poor far-off places.
Race, gender and religion are persecutions we have felt, seen and heard of regularly. But there exists a rare yet terrifying practice of persecuting those for their genetic code. In several coastal east African countries, Albino citizens live with a thin fog of fear hanging about every day of their lives. They are not hated for being inferior or a sin against a god. In truth, the average Tanzanian or Malawian takes no issue if their neighbor has blonde hair or burns easily in the Sub-Saharan sun.
However, a sick combination of lynch-mob and poacher exists in the men who hunt Albino children and sell their body parts to witch-doctors. These murders fuel the underground market of potions and good luck charms that witch-doctors make from pale corpses.
This practice, combining the senseless death of hunted exotic animals with the rage of daring to force us to compare a human being to a hunted exotic animal, probably makes you mad. Good. The world at large shares your displeasure. In fact, the world at large encourages you to learn as much as you can in order to be a part of stopping these crimes once and for all.
But too often in these times we get stuck talking about despair. Today, I would speak with you about hope.
Take a trip with me. Follow these steps to the letter if you can. Be sure to pack far more toilet paper than ever necessary. This will guarantee you get the full travel experience when the customs officer tells you with a thick accent and bemused indignation: “Of course we have toilet paper in our country. Why would you think we do not have toilet paper?”
Bring your little brothers and all of their friends. Or better yet, let them bring you on their mission trip. Take a 20 hour flight across three continents. Land when the sky is dark, the air is still, and the earth holds that warm and fresh baked smell of the Equator in mid-August. Arrive in Moshi, Tanzania, cradled in the very shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.
And should you visit a certain primary school on the outskirts of town, you will find the most adorable people in the whole world under four feet tall. Among these world record holders is where I met her.
She was too shy to ever give me her name but I called her what every other Tanzanian girl insisted on being called: dada, or “sister”. In her floppy hat to protect from sunburns and her glasses to aid weak eyesight, you are reminded that every part of her life is lived differently. But in her wide eyes and wider grins, you never forget that Dada is a child. She laughed with them, ran with them, tripped, ate dirt, cried, and laughed with them all over again. Dada and the other girls would grab any careless adult's hand and lead us on endless walks to nowhere in particular. The Tanzanian boys would try teaching us Australian Rugby Haka dances, which they found endlessly amusing.
Though I have no kids and was one myself far too recently, never before in my life have I seen the world’s future so clearly bottled up in such energetic containers.
Bad guys are bad; hashtags and news ratings rise like the statistics of the dead; but let us never forget what we protect and why it is so precious. While the hunting of Albino children brings forth images of horror and carnage, I would remember the image of Dada smiling without a shred of fear. Though she may never have what we term a normal life, Dada has a fantastic future ahead of her.
When I speak of hope, it is the hope that we, the world at large, will have that future waiting for her when she comes to claim it.
