I was born as the only child with albinism into a family of six in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia. Neither side of my family had a history of albinism, so my parents couldn't understand where I had come from.
The main question was "How come?"
How could two black people have a white child?
The confusion I created led to the divorce of my parents, and my mother was left to raise me as a single parent. Here in Africa, many women are not empowered, so my mother struggled raising me alone.
Once my father found out more about albinism, he came around to a new way of thinking. When my mother died, I went to live with him and his new family. My father educated himself about the dangers of the sun and warned me to avoid it. I didn't understand his advice at the time but I followed it anyway: I stayed away from the sun, and wore long-sleeves and a cap. The cap became part of me. Because of my dad's vigilance, my skin is in good condition today.
School was not so easy.
I first went to primary school in Copperbelt, but I struggled to read the board because of my vision. I was sent instead to a school for the blind, where the teachers were trained to handle visually impaired children and there were devices to help us see. I always yearned to be in a mainstream school, but when I tried it for a year I faced a lot of discrimination from my teachers and peers. I didn't belong in special school, but no one wanted me in normal schools.
"People would mistreat me, avoid me, call me names."
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