Tales of an Albino [Episode 2]

Kate Ekanem tells a brilliant and touching story of motherhood, childbirth and the hardship, stigmatization, and remorseful events that surrounds giving birth to a female child and an Albino.

Read Episode 1 here

“Abasi Akan!” the midwife exclaimed, raising a tiny figure soaked in blood high to the heavens. I had no idea what drew her into such shock. As she held you high, so high like she’d seen something strange and wanted to have a clear view of it. I knew it, I knew you were a girl because it was only when a girl child is born that midwives carried such looks; Girl babies were nothing to rejoice or jubilate about, so I knew that could be the reason behind her expression of shock.

As I lay still, ashamed to manage a movement. “The baby is a female,” she said, pacing around the room in a rather confusing and slow state. When she walked back to my mat, her eyes on me were without void. Then she dropped the bombshell, “She’s an albino!” The truth tore into me like an evil proclamation; it sent shivers down my spine.

At that moment, I wished for nothing but death.

I knew the story, we all knew it; Ikot Itam village forbade a woman to conceive an albino; it was a taboo that no one dared commit. It was not heard in my generation or in your father’s either, not even in the generation of anyone I remembered in Ikot Itam. How I had you still puzzled me. A woman who conceived female children could still be pardoned and left to paddle in her shame but not a woman with an albino. The only woman recorded in history to have delivered an albino some years ago never lived to touch talk less carry her child. Her name was Koko, one of the wives of a high chief In neighboring Mbobong village, the gods had earlier blessed Koko with sons until that day when the cry of labour announced the calamity that had befallen her womanhood; she died shortly after being told what she had delivered, and the albino was thrown into the Ukakan River. Not even the fact that she had earlier delivered strong boys for her husband could grant her a befitting burial- Her corpse was fed to the birds in the evil forest.

We all knew the story, so the period of being pregnant were viewed as moments of crossing the red sea, whatever the outcome, we rejoice, lament or die.

So the gods cursed me with you, after all those years of tortures and lamentation, your arrival into my life marked the beginning of more sorrow. I wished to be dead;. Your father stared at my bloody inert body and your tiny bleached figure with eyes filled with implacable hatred. I felt if he had his way, right there, he would have strangled us both.

Everyone walked away silently from your birth-bed, those who came with gifts left with it, your father left last with a warning that I don’t ever return home with you.

The mid-wife could not accommodate us, she advised we left for another village

As we had being rejected by your father and his people.

I took you away, walking all around the market square with you wrapped in my arms, going somewhere that was nowhere. By nightfall, the blood on my thighs had dried up but birth- pain still hovered, you were coughing hard, reacting to the cold that covered your bare skin. The gown I wore bore the reek of thick dried blood, it was too small to cover you, and I feared you would die. But because I wanted you to live and because you proved to the world that I wasn’t barren, I returned home to your father, even though I had been warned.

Read Episode 3 Here

Kate Ekanem is a writer and a Girl’s Right Activist.  In 2012, her first travel story, ‘Journey from Kora-Le Berlin’ with the ‘Derive Project’, Austria was published online, translated in French, German and other languages. In 2013, her second story titled ‘Lagos to Ibadan’ was published on online journals. She formerly runs a column for Tru Applause Magazine. In 2015, she was chosen as a delegate to represent Nigeria and (AU) African Union in the G(irl)20 Summit Istanbul Turkey, and also a delegate for the Development Dialogue Lagos, Nigeria.

She is the founder of Kate Tales Foundation: Visit Kates Tales Foundation