African Adventures: Watoto Wapole

Children here are fabulous, hence the watoto wapole (cool children).

We've been doing a lot of traveling out into the communities this week, which is always fun because they are so excited to see new people. Being a minority has been one of the more difficult things to get used to, everybody staring and following you around. Kids are the funnest to run into, if someone knows a little bit of English they will always shout it out to you- Mzungu! Good Morning!! This most often occurs at night, which I always think is funny.

First we traveled to another BCC (Building Caring Community). Apparently there are 11 different BCC's that are associated with CCBRT. We walked down to a local primary school to chat with some of the teachers about their students with disabilities. When we first arrived the children ran up to us and grabbed our hands and yanked us inside. While Lily was speaking to the teachers in Swahili, the kiddos were whipping out their notebooks and showing us all of their homework and writing. One of the little boys saw I had a camera, and insisted I snap a photo.

Next was another school visit. Mwereni is a primary school specialized in educating students with visual impairments. There are about 75 students who are visually impaired and they are mixed in classes with students without impairments. In total there are around 600 students. The school is actually a boarding school for the visually impaired students, while a day school for the other students.

The first thing I'd like to enlighten you with is the topic of albinism in Tanzania. They typically prefer the term person with albinism (PWA) instead of "albino." This condition results in a lack of pigmentation in the hair, skin and eyes, causing vulnerability to sun exposure and bright light. Almost all people with albinism are visually impaired, with the majority being classified as “legally blind”. This school had a very large number of PWA.

Albinism related attacks are growing in parts of Tanzania due to the belief that the body parts of PWA possess magical powers capable of bringing riches if used in potions produced by local witchdoctors. There are some evil people that kidnap children and murder them for their body parts to sell on the street. It's quite horrifying. Some other myths surrounding albinism include that they are not human, and that touching them will bring bad luck, sickness or even death.

As a result of these and other myths, many families do not bother to educate their children with albinism. Also, employers avoid hiring a PWA due to fears that their customers and staff will "catch" the condition, or that food would be contaminated. Sadly, in some social settings, many PWA are not offered the same kind of social & physical contact, due to this kind of misinformation.

The lack of, or reduced levels of, melanin in the skin of a PWA creates high risk for skin cancer due to sun exposure. Combine this with the profound lack of protective sunscreens, wide brimmed hats and proper clothing in Tanzania and you find epidemic rates of skin cancer in all ages. As a result, the average life expectancy for a PWA in Tanzania is 30 years, with only 2% living beyond 40 years.

You can see by the pictures that all of the children with albinism are covered by wide brimmed hats and are protecting their skin from the sun.

This school had a special building that was designed for a "play area" for these children. The windows are tinted so that they are more protected from the sunlight.This is also where the children ate their meals.

There is also a considerable lack of glasses, magnifiers and specialized vision sensitive computer equipment in Tanzania. This results in tremendous difficulty completing educational programs, increasing the likelihood of dropping out and subsequent unemployment. We went into a few different classrooms, and noticed that in every room the children that were visually impaired sat very close to the blackboard. This school also has some incredible technology for the children. They actually had two separate computer labs, one with normal computers for the children without impairments, and one with specially designed computers and computer programs for children with visual deficits.

There is this program on the computer that reads everything out loud so you can navigate your way around without having to use the mouse.

One of the things we learned about today was Braille. They had special typewriters for Braille and we were even taught how to use it!

There are 6 keys which make up 6 different dots. So the whole alphabet steps from different combinations of these.

The far right is Swi, our awesome bus driver. The tall one with the black shirt is Shedrack, the new physiotherapist that just started last week. Lily is the OT that has taken us around the community with her. And on the far left is the awesome guy who gave us a tour of the school (and I feel horrible for not remembering his name).

This is called an abacus. It's a counting frame used kind of like a calculator.

This school also had an onsite medical building, which was awesome. The building had quite a few exam rooms and a nurse on site with different medications available for the children. They also have a dentist that comes in once a month to see the children if needed. We also got to walk around the garden, which was very large and beautiful. They use the crops to help feed the children and also to make some money for other aspects of the school.