killing an albino

I was having lunch at my friends school when one of his teachers said to me, "sorry for your student." I didn't know what she was talking about. She then told me that she heard on the radio that one of my students had died the previous day. I was at my school the previous day and I didn't hear about the death of a student. Then I recalled that two days prior I had brought a student to the hospital who was in pretty rough shape, malaria or something. Well, that's that, I figured.

I wasn't completely surprised that noone had mentioned it to me at school. Death is an event that occurs more often here, and is handled by the community less melodramatically than it is in the states.

I went to my first village funeral on a Sunday the weekend before. The men sat around on benches, dresssed in dress pants, buttoned shirts and (usually unmatching) ties. They greeted each other, asked about the family and the farm, and engaged each other in small talk as they would on any other lazy weekend afternoon. The women took care of the emotional side of the event. They sang and wailed on the opposite side of the house, out of the view of the men. The 2-year-old body arrived in a 1 by 3 foot box on the back of a bike. We brought it back to the freshly dug hole, dropped it in, covered it with sand, said a prayer, gave some donations, ate lunch, and went on our way.

When I arrived back at my school I asked about the dead student. I was informed that there was no dead student. Not at my school, at least. But "something might have happened to a student in a school down the trail from mine." After some digging I got some explanations. The student was a 7 year old Albino from the local public day school. He was apparently kidnapped and, as one of the teachers told me, "he had been absent since then and the administration has stopped calling his name during morning role call."

Why kill an albino? Because witch doctors use "special parts" of the albino for a potion which is then drunk by someone willing to pay enough to become rich. The myth goes, drink albino potion and you will be become rich.

Yes, witch doctors are present here. No, I have not met them - they have no interest in me. What they do is not much talked about in the community. But I am an american peace corps volunteer so I can talk about whatever I want to talk about on my superblog, particularly if it makes me feel like I am living in an especially dangerous part of the world or I am really roughing it out here. This is not the case. This stuff goes on behind closed doors. And there is little chance that I will ever find myself behind those doors.