JE NE SUIS PAS UN TALISMAN
Franck VOGEL
Editeur : MICHEL LAFON
Année de parution : 2012
Bibiana nous raconte son quotidien – qui est celui de tous les autres albinos –, ses traumatismes, ses craintes et son envie de vivre.
Son récit a été écrit avec la collaboration de Stéphanie Braquehais, correspondante en Afrique de l’Est pour plusieurs médias français, dont RFI et Libération.
BIBIANA, A LIVING TALISMAN
Bibiana has white skin although she lives in Tanzania and is African. She is a member of the group of people known as ‘albino’. Due to a genetic disorder, their skin has no pigment and they are prone to the effects of the sun’s rays. And because albinos tend to live in the hottest regions of the Earth, the disorder is even more difficult to live with! Fate sometimes plays a bad hand and they are dogged by bad luck, for in Tanzania when you are born albino, you are considered to be a good-luck charm; the witches and witchdoctors said so. In a country where witchcraft is very much alive, an albino can be sold for protection against a prediction or a spell, or to be used to find gold on someone’s land or as help get an important job. Popular thought does not help to abolish these barbaric acts, as most people think that an albino’s amputated limbs will grow back; because of their physical difference, they are attributed magical characteristics.
But there is nothing magical about Bibiana, she is just a ten-year-old girl who had one of her legs amputated to help tell somebody’s future. Her leg, of course, did not magically grow back. Orphaned, she was picked up by a deputy, Mrs Shaymaa Kwegyir, herself an albino who fights on behalf of those who look like her.
Bibiana tells the story of her life, which is the same as other albinos, and of her traumas, of her fears and of her will to live.
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