Beyond the Pale by Emily Urquhart

Author:Emily Urquhart [Urquhart, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443423588
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2015-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Albino United

WE ARE STANDING IN A DUSTY FIELD A FEW PACES FROM OCEAN ROAD in Dar es Salaam watching a group of young men practice soccer. They gather here six evenings a week. The uneven earth is swampy at the edges and occasionally long grasses brush the players’ legs as they run drills. Some of them are barefoot. Player number 9 wears one shoe. Brown and fraying, the soccer ball has lost its black spots. The players arrive each day at around 4 p.m. as the sun descends and the glare and heat fade into dusk. The team has thirty players and most of them have albinism. They participate in fifteen matches a year in the professional Tanzanian soccer league, which is remarkable considering many of them are legally blind.

This is Albino United, a soccer team founded in 2008 by a group of young men who met through the Tanzania Albinism Society. It was the same year that Vicky Ntetema’s investigative report on the mutilations and murders of people with albinism aired on the BBC, and a year after the first public acknowledgment of these atrocities by an elected official. The men got together and talked about what they could do to change their collective fate. How could they end the killings? How could they convince people that albinos were the same as everyone else? How could they end the relentless stream of discrimination? What is more powerful than witchcraft?

“Through that meeting we decided to form a soccer team and use it as a tool for educating people, creating awareness, and joining people with albinism together,” said Saidi NDonege, a founding member, player, and current team leader.

I’d met Saidi in the lobby of the Heritage Motel in Dar es Salaam earlier today. He is thirty-three years old and his face, arms, and hands are spotted like a cheetah’s coat from sun damage. He speaks in a gravelly voice, closing his eyes and rocking forward when asking questions. He wears a green Adidas shirt, and a black-and-white John Deere baseball cap. He works as a carpenter when he’s not playing soccer. Saidi was accompanied by Jacob Mwinula, the team captain who is also a founder and the group’s only university-educated and English-speaking member, which means he’s tasked with translating our conversation. Jacob facilitates requests like mine—to meet the players, watch a practice, take photos—which have trickled in over the years from media organizations across Europe and North America.

I’d written to him months before, telling him about Sadie, about our trip, and about my desire to understand the beliefs concerning albinism in Tanzania. Jacob writes emails using only capital letters, which gives his messages a sense of urgency, as if he were shouting to make himself heard over the din of fiber optics. When we met, I was surprised to discover that he was soft-spoken, sometimes withdrawing into silence while he scanned his smartphone or mulled over a question I asked. He is twenty-five years old and recently graduated with a law degree from the University of Dar es Salaam.

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