1st of Tanzanian albino kids with missing limbs goes home
By VERENA DOBNIK
18 hours ago
Associated Press Videos
New Hope For Africa's Hunted Albino Children
Doctors at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Philadelphia recently created new artificial limbs for Kabula and four other youngsters. And New York City resident Elissa Montanti provided housing about two hours away in the borough of Staten Island and organized all their daily, medical and travel needs.
Kabula boarded a plane Tuesday at Kennedy Airport, heading to Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam. She'd been in the United States since June with the four other children, ages 5 to 15, who also were fitted with prosthetics.
"God be with you till we meet again," she wrote neatly on a piece of paper left for Montanti and the Global Medical Relief Fund, the charity she founded.
Montanti, who lives up the street from the charity's "Dare to Dream" house, has spent years flying in children missing limbs from dozens of crisis zones including Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.
While the 200 or so youths Montanti has helped were victims of land mines, earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters, "this is deliberate" she said of the witchcraft victims.
Lacking natural pigmentation, people with albinism look almost white — ghosts of departed humans, according to witch doctors who order body parts to be hacked off: hair, nails, teeth, tongues, hands, feet, even genitals. More than 200 witch doctors have been arrested so far in the killings of Tanzanians with albinism. The government outlawed witch doctors last year.
Still, attacks continue; at least eight were recorded in Tanzania in the past year.
There's another, even more cruel twist.
The father of 5-year-old Baraka Cosmas Lusambo was arrested after part of the little boy's right arm was sliced off last March amid ear-piercing screams.
Tanzanian diamond dealers, businessmen and politicians have paid as much as $75,000 to hunt albino people, says Rwela. "Elections are high season for the witch doctors," she says. "And people with albinism live in fear."
But the kids' lives aren't consumed by the monstrosities.
"Guess what? They're still capable of loving," says Montanti, who constantly holds their hands and hugs them.
Emmanuel Festo Rutema, a 13-year-old missing his left arm and several fingers on his right hand, also goes to a dentist to replace the front teeth knocked out as a witchcraft prize. Attackers tried to cut out his tongue but only damaged it.
On a summer afternoon in the Staten Island home, the rooms are alive with laughter.
"Baraka Obama!"
That's the nickname his friends jokingly call the small boy. He cracks a shy smile, adding, "I don't know who Obama is."
Kabula is studying for the school exam she faces after returning to Dar es Salaam, where she and the other four have been living in a "safe house" far from their impoverished villages.
"God says forgive your enemies, but as a human being, I cannot forgive them, because they can do this again," says the teen, whose right arm was cut off to the armpit.
She wants to become a human rights lawyer.
At Kennedy, Kabula wiped tears from her eyes, crestfallen at the prospect of leaving her friends and the safety of New York.
"But I told her, 'this is not the end, it's only a bright new beginning,'" says Montanti.
The other children are leaving in late September. And they'll be back next year for new prostheses matching their growth.
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Online:
Global Medical Relief Fund: http://www.gmrfchildren.org
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