Photographer challenges the negative images facing albinos and Nubians

Sasha Aphipa, left, with her younger sister, Mary Amoit — who has normal pigmentation wrapped in a Ugandan flag. PHOTO | PAPA SHABANI  

By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

In Summary

• Just like albinos in East Africa, the Nubian community are ostracised, being denied legal recognition and sometimes even citizenship.

East Africa has its share of minority communities who face discrimination based on their being different from the majority communities; this discrimination is nowhere more pronounced and harsh than that faced by albinos.

Albinos in some parts of Africa are treated as outcasts and many are murdered at birth or killed in the false belief that their body parts can be used in witchcraft rituals to bring wealth and good luck.

Albinos in East Africa too have not been spared these ritual murders; and stories of albino kidnapping and killings have been reported from Kenya and Tanzania, forcing their governments to come up with policies to protect them from the very society they live in.

Before she achieved Hollywood fame, Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o produced a documentary, In my Genes, in 2009 on the lives of albinos in East Africa.

Now award-winning Ugandan documentary and portrait photographer Papa Shabani is using his craft to explore the identity and lives of albinos in Uganda and that of the minority Numbian community in a combined photographic exhibition titled Cast A Light On Prejudice that will be on in Kigali, Rwanda from January 29-February 6, at The Office. The exhibition will be presented by the Rwanda Art Foundation in Kiyovu, Kigali.

The exhibition first showed at the Under Ground, Nakumatt Oasis Mall Basement in Kampala on December 5-24, 2015, and was curated by Kei Hashimoto and Violet Lynus Nantume.

Just like albinos in East Africa, the Nubian community are ostracised, being denied legal recognition and sometimes even citizenship.

Shabani’s photographic exhibition comprises portrait works in progress, exploring albinism in Uganda and exploring the lives and times of Nubian women from Kibera in Nairobi.

This exhibition explores the boundary between art and documentary by casting light on the social issues surrounding these two minority groups. The exhibition features pictures shot between 2014 and 2015. His portraits call into question our perceptions and make us confront the fact that it is our prejudices that make these two groups a “minority” or even invisible.

Shabani, 26, is yet to give a subtitle to his work on albinos, which he started as an undergraduate student at Makerere University in Kampala where he majored in photography and eventually wrote a thesis on its role in therapy.

His project also aims to show the positive side of albinos through interviews and portraits as they lead successful professional lives.

His work shows his connection with albinos through the stories they have shared with him over the years, telling of their fears, joys and the burden of living with the genetic condition.

The most intimate of his portraits is that of a beautiful young girl called Sasha Aphipa, dressed in a pink blouse and a pair of denim shorts. In another image Aphipa is captured with her younger sister, Mary Amoit — who has normal pigmentation — wrapped in a Ugandan flag.

Amoit innocently thinks that her big sister is a mzungu (white person) — unaware that Aphipa’s different skin colour is a result of albinism, which may be a source of stigma as she grows up.

Then there is a powerful and well composed image of Mille Kikomeko holding her albino baby, Mukisa Sebutinde — an image that won Shabani the third prize in the Portrait Category at the 2014 Uganda Press Photo Awards.

Discrimination against albinos is not a new phenomenon. People with albinism, because they are few in number — health experts estimate that albinism affects one in 20,000 people worldwide — have been ostracised in many communities as it is believed they bring bad luck to families and communities.

The irony however is that it is also believed that their body parts can be used in magic ritual to make charms and potions to bring riches and good luck.

It is the resurgence of this belief in the past two decades that has seen death merchants in parts of East Africa kidnap and kill albinos or even exhume their dead bodies to smuggle them to Tanzania, where the body parts and blood are sold to sorcerers. A body of an albino is thought to fetch as much as $75,000 in Tanzania.

The situation is not as fatal in Uganda, but in some parts of the country, patients refuse to be attended to by an albino doctor.

According to activists, albino killing is the most extreme form of their marginalisation. In East Africa, Tanzania is the worst hit by albino murders.

According to the United Nations, nearly 80 albinos have been murdered in Tanzania since 2000 for their body parts. In March 2015, former president Jakaya Kikwete vowed to stamp out the practice which he described as an “evil” that has brought shame to the country.

Nine albinos were killed in 2008 and three in 2009, with one disappearing without trace, in a macabre series of murders in Burundi.

The growing trade in albino body parts comes as no surprise to the region — as many East and Central Africans believe that albino flesh has magical powers. In this part of the world the occult maintains a strong hold.

Parents in the region have been known to disown their albino children or to hide them from the public. The pointing of fingers at albino children in public has resulted in children dropping out of school altogether.

The condition

Albinism is a congenital lack of the melanin pigment in the skin, eyes and hair that protects the body from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Albinos are thus vulnerable to medical complications.

Albinos also need special skin creams to protect them from the ultra violet rays of the sun but even where they these are available, they are too expensive for most families.

In Kenya, the government runs a programme to give free sunscreen lotion to albino children as long as they are enrolled in school. Most such children are enrolled in special schools that also cater for the blind since albinism is also known to affect eye sight, thus impeding normal learning.

In addition, experts say that most children with albinism show signs of skin cancer by the teenage years and only two per cent of live to their 40th birthday.

According to the Albino Association of Kenya, 90 per cent of albinos in the country are raised by single mothers as their fathers run away out of socialised fear of the condition

“Due to this, families with albino children tend to have low incomes and are inclined to be less educated. In addition to all the odds stacked against them, some people believe that albinism is contagious, unaware that the condition is genetic, thus inherited. They avoid albinos and treat them as outcasts,” he adds.

According to Shabani, his photography is meant to portray albinos without prejudice or bias, showing them to be as human as anybody else and deserving to be treated as such. “They are beautiful; their beauty is unique. This is on a very personal level,” he told The EastAfrican.

Nubian project

Shabani’s other photography project is on the indefatigable spirit of the Nubian community in East Africa — a story of defiance and hope in the face of insurmountable odds. Titled Queens In Essence, 2015-2020, These pictures were part of an exhibition that was also held in Nairobi in May, 2015.

Queens in Essence features portraits of Nubian women in their regal traditional dress, shot in a modern photo studio. The photographer intends to educate the new generation of Nubians about their rich history.

The women are mostly photographed in their flamboyant traditional dress called “gurbaba,” matched with rich fabrics, jewellery and headdress; temporary henna tattoos and traditional artefacts such as the colourful reed mats and “kuta” used to cover food.
The Nubian community of Kenya consider Kibera in Nairobi their homeland — where nevertheless they have to contend with poverty and ethnic violence. The community is still struggling with issues of citizenship and land ownership in the only country they call home.

Background

In his book titled Kenya’s Nubians: Then and Now, American award-winning photographer Greg Constantine writes that Sudanese soldiers were incorporated into the British Army in the late 1880s and brought to Kenya in the early 1900s. They served in the British Army in the King’s African Rifles during World War I against the Germans, and in World War II in places like Somalia, Abyssinia, Madagascar and Burma. 

Unable to return to Sudan, the Nubians and their families remained in Kenya and in 1912, the British government designated some 4,197 acres of land for their settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi. In 1917, the British gazetted the land for the Sudanese askaris and their dependants. The Nubians named the land Kibra.

“Most of the Nubians were not recognised as citizens of Kenya after Independence. Up until the most recent census conducted in mid-2009, the Nubian community was not a formally recognised tribe of Kenya. They were considered as ‘other Kenyans’ or simply ‘others,’” he adds.

Over the years, the Nubian community has strived for recognition. Few people are aware of the dynamic and rich heritage of this community.

Nubian women are known for their elegant sense of dress and their excellent culinary skills. “What makes the Nubian women beautiful is that they still wear their traditional garb despite the pressures and influence of modern culture,” Shabani told The EastAfrican.

Shabani became interested in photography in 2011 and turned professional the following year, and has since been using it as an artistic medium for art and documentary