Author: Inverness County Cares Page 1 of 9

The life of an albino in Zambia and many parts of Africa is filled with fear and uncertainty. 

From birth they are misunderstood and persecuted, due to widespread misinformation communities believe albinism is infections and it can be passed on by close contact.  It is not understood that albinism characteristics are inherited and when a ‘white’ baby is born to black skinned parents it is often assumed that the woman has been unfaithful to her husband.  

This creates family strife and the child is often shunned by the community and by their kin. Many albinos often live in isolation, some not even allowed to live in the family house or interact with local children. In addition to the stigma of their appearance most have limited sight which deteriorates as they age. Their white skin caused by a lack of melanin, leaves them unprotected from the UV rays of the sun resulting in melanoma at a very early age. 

Inverness County Cares (ICC) in partnership with Chalice.ca works toward improving the lives of albinos and the blind in Zambia. The two Kawambwa schools, St Mary in Kawambwa village and St Odilia in Mporokoso, Zambia, are administered by the sisters of the Child Jesus a local Zambian order. 

Inverness County Cares relies on the support and generosity of the people of our surrounding communities. ICC collects refundable bottles and cans which are donated and placed at a collection drop off truck in Port Hood at Ted and Hermina Van Zutphen’s lane and a collection truck at the Mabou Freshmart (thank you Wayne and Karen Beaton). Thank you to Ted Van Zutphen, Raymond Debont and Stanley Beaton for managing the collection and sale of the bottles and cans.

Last year ICC planted a large field of organic potatoes at the Judique Farm. It was a labour-intensive project including tilling, planting, irrigation, weeding and picking thousands of potato bugs. We produced an excellent crop and we were very pleased with the financial returns, thanks to our supporters. 

This year 2022, the Judique Farm’s organic garden is producing, beets, cucumbers and beans and in the coming weeks we will have green tomatoes. 

This year we planted a trial crop of garlic, many thanks to Barb Fitzpatrick and Tom Campbell for garlic bulbs and advice. The garlic has exceeded all our expectations and in total we have 1,400 heads of garlic for sale. They are totally organic and presently are hanging to dry and cure. 

These garlic are tasty and edible now and are suitable as seed garlic for next year’s crop which should be planted in late October and into November. We have 400 solo garlic bulbs which are a specialty item where the clove does not divide and produce a lovely, juicy bulb (similar to an onion in appearance) that is easy to peel and delicious. 

For garlic and tomato orders call Colleen MacLeod at 902 227 5425 or email colmac27@gmail.com

Inverness County Cares (ICC) is a local charitable organization, founded in 2012 and based in Inverness County, NS, Canada. ICC works in partnership with Chalice.ca, a Canadian charity, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Chalice provides guidance and assistance to help us provide a better life for the children at the Kawambwa schools. The Kawambwa Project involves supporting two schools for albino and visually impaired students, in Northern Zambia. Inverness County Cares always welcomes new members. Individuals who wish to donate, can use the donate button on our website   https://invernesscountycares.com When using E-transfer, please include your mailing address for CRA tax receipts and a thank you message.   E-transfer address:  invernesscountycares@gmail.com or send a cheque to Inverness County Cares, 5414 Route 19, Judique, NS, Canada, B0E1P0. Taxation receipts provided for USA and Canada.

I am Yvonne Mary Chibwe born from a family of three. My parents’ names were Patrick Chibwe and my mother Mildred Sampa. My mother died of malaria when I was four years old. The first-born Kelvin was 11 years and Moses the second-born was 8 years old, I am the only girl and the last born. My father was murdered recently in 2020 in a terrible incident, when my step mother killed him with an axe.  

When my mother died, we started staying with my aunt, the young sister to my mother. She kept us well, but unfortunately, she died when I was 12 years old. I never felt any discrimination, because my uncle, the husband to my aunt, continued taking care of us until today. Our uncle Mr. Collins Mwitwa is Catholic and very much dedicated to the rosary. The whole family prays the rosary well. When I was baptized, I added the name Mary, that’s why am Yvonne Mary.

I started school at an ordinary village school because my uncle had no idea about a special school for the blind. My Uncle works as a community health worker at an Under Five Clinic, which is a post-natal clinic where babies are taken for immunization and mothers are taught how to take care of their babies until they are five years. The clinic weighs babies, teaches mothers how to prepare balanced meals for their babies and teaches family planning and hygiene in general.  In 2018 Jackson Phiri who is a worker at our Under Five Clinic made my uncle aware of the Kawambwa School. He explained to my uncle about the Kawambwa School for the blind. My uncle agreed and immediately took me to Kawambwa and I joined St Mary’s Special School.

At St Mary’s Special School in Kawambwa, I met Elizabeth Manda when I started school. She really helped to come out of my negative self and to ignore the comments from people. We pray for my uncle, who is harassed because he cares for an albino (me).  His family and the community frankly told him “Yvonne is not your relative” and discouraged him from supporting me. My uncle always answers in our local language, “I accepted to take care of Yvonne with my late wife and I will continue to care for her”. I am so fortunate to have him to depend on.

There is power in praying the Rosary. Our Mother Mary intercedes for those who are devoted to her. I am now in grade ten at St Mary’s Secondary School. I am in a class of 40 with Elizabeth.

Now my Motto is, “Every success should start with me”. I am doing fine in all the subjects and I like civics education. My advocacy is “disabled people, especially girls should have a positive mind towards life”,

Please everyone come and be part of this advocacy. Thank you for your support and for making our school a more comfortable and a safer place to live.

I love you all.

Inverness County Cares (ICC) is a local charitable organization, founded in 2012 and based in Inverness County, NS, Canada. ICC works in partnership with Chalice.ca, a Canadian charity, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Chalice provides guidance and assistance to help us provide a better life for the children at the Kawambwa schools. The Kawambwa Project involves supporting two schools for albino and visually impaired students, in Northern Zambia. Inverness County Cares always welcomes new members. Individuals who wish to donate, can use the donate button on our website   https://invernesscountycares.com When using E-transfer, please include your mailing address for CRA tax receipts and a thank you message.   E-transfer address:  invernesscountycares@gmail.com or send a cheque to Inverness County Cares, 5414 Route 19, Judique, NS, Canada, B0E1P0. Taxation receipts provided for USA and Canada.

By: Evans Simutami

I am Evans Simutami, born on 25th of November 1996. I am the second born in a family of two boys and two girls, three children are black and I am the only albino child and have limited vision. My elder brother James Simutami was involved in a road accident and lost his right eye at the age of 20, today he has an artificial eye. My two sisters are physically and mentally okay and are very active.

When I was 8 years old and I was supposed to start school but my mother and father didn’t know where to take me. At this time, I came to learn that when I was four years old, my mother left me home and she went to the river to wash clothes for the family. An unknown person come and picked me and took to her home and kept me for one week. It was a terrible situation. Today when my mother is narrating what happened, “Her tears flow like water”.

According to my mother’s explanation, on what she got from the court, the lady said that, “Her intention was to kill me and sell my body parts to a named business man in her area.” He planned to take me to a nearby country to sell to a witch doctor, where my body would be used to make charms and potions. When the woman was caught, she confessed and she was jailed for 9 years, from 2000 to 2010.

My mother from then on, lived in fear and never wanted me to go out and play with friends. She only wanted me safely at home but at the same time she wanted me to be educated.

My father was very passive and he never contributed to my well-being. His solution was to blame my mother and there were times when my father could reach an extent of beating her, “Not simple beating but real beating”. Where was the anger coming from? His anger was from the comments from our community. The community had a very big problem, for it was their first time to see an albino child and they did not understand my condition and considered me to be a ghost. If someone became sick or died in the village, the community will come to my parents and accuse them of causing that sickness or death. My father would then transfer his anger to my mother, because the uncle to my mother was albino. The beatings made my mother leave my father and she started living alone.

 

My three black siblings remained with my father and I was the only one staying with my mother. My mother is good at knitting articles and craft work. My mother shifted from the northern area to the central area of our district. It is in this area that God blessed her by meeting Mr. Emmanuel Simoto who was working in the ministry of education as a general worker. He knew about St Odilia Special School because he had a cousin who is blind and was learning at the same school. My mother and our relatives were more than happy. Mr. Emmanuel contacted the school administration and I was accepted and I started my grade one in 2008 and completed in 2019 at the same school.

 

My father was very surprised about my progress in school and is still shocked even today, because my elder brother and my intermediate sister didn’t complete school and they are still just home with my father. Our last born is trying but with a lot of challenges in her academic works. This June, she has started staying with my mother and I encourage her to finish her education. In 2021, I joined the college in Lusaka (capital city) called Zambia Institute of Special Education. I decided to take up a course in Early Childhood Education. I am enjoying the course and it has helped me to understand child development. This year, 2022 from April to June, I was at St Mary’s Special School for the Visually Impaired in Kawambwa, doing my teaching practice and school experience.  I enjoyed my stay and was counseling my fellow albino and blind pupils who are facing rejection at any level of their lives, “I was the living testimony”. I invite you all to be part of us in adding a smile on our faces, in most cases the society fails to understand us, but be among the few who understand. Come and Let us Go.

 

Inverness County Cares (ICC) is a local charitable organization, founded in 2012 and based in Inverness County, NS, Canada. ICC works in partnership with Chalice.ca, a Canadian charity, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Chalice provides guidance and assistance to help us provide a better life for the children at the Kawambwa schools. The Kawambwa Project involves supporting two schools for albino and visually impaired students, in Northern Zambia. Inverness County Cares always welcomes new members. Individuals who wish to donate, can use the donate button on our website   https://invernesscountycares.com When using E-transfer, please include your mailing address for CRA tax receipts and a thank you message.   E-transfer address:  invernesscountycares@gmail.com or send a cheque to Inverness County Cares, 5414 Route 19, Judique, NS, Canada, B0E1P0. Taxation receipts provided for USA and Canada.

 

 By MWABA GOODSON

I am an albino man with low vision and I was born on 23^rd March 1992 in Chilubi district of Northern Province of Zambia. I am the fourth born child in the family of 6, where they are five sisters who are poor and not working and one man who happens to be myself. I was born from a very poor family with no acceptance by my biological father and the society where I was born never accepted me. That made my mother to live an unhappy life. At some point some members of the community wanted to kill me for ritual money and that worried my mother so much.

 Due to the difficult circumstances my mother went through, she was forced to find ways and means to take me to a school where I could be accepted, so she had to seek guidance on where to go so I could learn and stay safe without stigmatization. At the age of 10, the Sisters of the Child Jesus helped my parents by giving them information on where I could go and learn.  It was at the St Odilia, Mporokoso school for the blind.  On that fateful day, I met my fellow children living with albinism in Kasama where I was taken by a cousin using a bicycle as means of transport.  Sadly, I was the only child with sores on my skin due to lack of proper lotions, I felt neglected and that day I came to St Odilia in Mporokoso and started learning how to write and read Braille materials. Honestly, it was a difficult moment for me, in that at first, I couldn’t adapt to the environment. However later I became very good in almost all the subjects such that I was liked by every teacher. When I was in grade 8, I was chosen as the head boy for the school, and during my term of office, there came a white man by the name of David Moffat who came to offer support to the school. Fortunately, I was again chosen to give a speech and the speech I gave touched him profoundly. Mr. Moffat suggested that he would offer me a sponsorship from grade 10 to college if I performed well at grade 9 examinations. I was overjoyed and did extremely well and became the best student in northern province. 

Thanks to Mr. David Moffat and his wife Christine, who adopted me as their child and helped me to go to secondary school and up to college without any help from my family who had completely overlooked me as a nobody. After I completed my education program course, poverty came upon my life that I couldn’t even afford to have a meal. I had to move from one place to the other, in order to search for work. I asked the sisters of the Child Jesus to help me by providing me with any work to do in order to earn a living. They gave me a position teaching at my former school for a small amount of Zambian kwacha (currency) just to buy food not even clothes.

I worked there for 1 year, and then by God’s grace I was given a chance to teach at the

St Odilia school. I worked there for a good two years. I thought of getting married so that I could keep my old poor mother, who loved me so much. I was very fortunate to find my wife, Litress Simatembe, who is a beautiful Tonga by tribe lady. She cares very much and loves me regardless of my poor status.

I wish to thank the sisters of the Child Jesus for the support they gave me during my wedding day in a Catholic church in Mporokoso. With the help of Mr. and Mrs. Moffat, I am happily married even though I am earning little to look after my old poor mother, my wife and our firstborn child.

I wish also to give my profound thanks to Chalice for giving me work with them.  I am very grateful for the support given by Inverness County Cares and Chalice to my fellow albino children at school.  I give thanks especially for the wall fence which is vital to protect them from ritual killings which are common in the area where the school is located.

May the good lord bless every hand that is here to help vulnerable children like me in the society of different continents.

Inverness County Cares (ICC) is a local charitable organization, founded in 2012 and based in Inverness County, NS, Canada. ICC works in partnership with Chalice.ca, a Canadian charity, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Chalice provides guidance and assistance to help ICC provide a better life for the children at the Kawambwa schools. The Kawambwa Project involves two schools for albino and visually impaired students, in Northern Zambia. Inverness County Cares always welcomes new members. Individuals who wish to donate, can use the donate button on our website   https://invernesscountycares.com When using E-transfer, please include your mailing address for CRA tax receipts and a message of thanks from ICC.   E-transfer address:  invernesscountycares@gmail.com or send a cheque to Inverness County Cares, 5414 Route 19, Judique, NS, Canada, B0E1P0. Taxation receipts provided for USA and Canada.

I am Beatrice Chipulu, an albino child aged 15 years. My family has three girls and four boys. All the boys are black and all the girls are albino and we girls all suffer from low vision. I am the second born in the family of Prosper and Grace. Both my parents are black but with a brownish skin. Albinism was inherited from both our parents. On our mother’s side, l was told, my great grandparents had one albino child and on my father’s side my aunt has three albino children and they live in the Copper Belt of Zambia.

My father is not educated and has never stepped his foot in the classroom, but he knows how to write his name. Despite his lack of classroom learning he is an expert in fishing and he has three nets and a boat. He was taught these skills by the fishermen he worked with. He is proud of his ability to provide for all his family.

My mother reached her secondary level grade nine and she then married my father. Last year their marriage was blessed in church at Christmas, it was a great celebration. She is good at knitting especially baby layettes and people come to buy these beautiful sets. She sometimes works selling my father’s fish. Our family home is at the shores of Lake Bangweulu the only lake in Zambia which doesn’t share with other countries. Bream is the species of fish found in this river.

My father and his family love us very much, especially our paternal grandmother Elizabeth who truly loves us totally. My mother’s family were not very welcoming to us three albino girls. Our mother Grace was happy to send us for extended amounts of time, to her mother in law’s home for meals, bathing and daily living. Our grandmother Elizabeth understood my mother’s attitude toward us for Grace preferred for her children to live with their paternal grandmother and left us there for months. Eventually our father joined us at our grandmother’s home.

Grandma Elizabeth taught us all domestic works, she taught us a love of flowers and vegetable gardening. She also encouraged us to associate with others despite the beliefs and myths perpetrated concerning albinos. The greatest gift she has given to us is praying the rosary. Grandma Elizabeth and my father are strong Catholics.

I entered St Mary’s Special School with the help of our parish catechist who once lived in Kawambwa and knew about the special school for the visually impaired and blind. He communicated this to my grandma Elizabeth. In 2015 when I was 8 and Abigail was 6 she took us to school. Abigail was in the pre-school for two years. In 2022, Abigail is in Grade 6, and am in Grade 8. When we left home to go to the St Mary’s School, our youngest sister Hellen Chipulu was very upset since she was separated from her sisters when we went to the Kawambwa school. At the age of two years seven months, she joined the Kawambwa school after my father talked to Sr Agnes and explained the situation.

The People in our village were challenged by our unusual confidence and activeness. It is common for albinos to be shunned and isolated from their community members because of the superstitions perpetrated by witchcraft and black magic. Grandma Elizabeth taught us that we were clever, loveable persons. With this confidence in our hearts, we became involved in community activities. We can dance all sorts of dances, sing and are very good story tellers. We have joined the Holy Childhood group at church, we read in church and share the word of God. Our interaction with our people has unveiled volume and volume of our being. Everyone is surprised as to our abilities. We are well treated and loved, because, “We have provided a mirror.”

My dream is to be social worker and fight for the rights of the disabled and the vulnerable. Parents and communities need to be educated concerning the cause of albinism and understand albinos are not supernatural or dangerous. I have accepted my condition of albinism and I encourage my young sister Abigail to accept herself as well.

l love St Mary’s School so much for it has enabled me to fulfill my dream, because, “The sky is the limit”.

Inverness County Cares (ICC) is a local charitable organization, founded in 2012 and based in Inverness County, NS, Canada. ICC works in partnership with Chalice.ca, a Canadian charity, based in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Chalice provides guidance and assistance to help us provide a better life for the children at the Kawambwa schools. The Kawambwa Project involves supporting two schools for albino and visually impaired students, in Northern Zambia. Inverness County Cares always welcomes new members. Individuals who wish to donate, can use the donate button on our website   https://invernesscountycares.com When using E-transfer, please include your mailing address for CRA tax receipts and a thank you message.   E-transfer address:  invernesscountycares@gmail.com or send a cheque to Inverness County Cares, 5414 Route 19, Judique, NS, Canada, B0E1P0. Taxation receipts provided for USA and Canada.