Cheyenne-1.25.10-Positive Exposure

I was excited to see what Positive Exposure was like. I learned a LOT when I was there. Violet, Parker and I went to Pizza Box after school on Monday. We were meeting Ruby near Washington Square Park. She had a dentist appointment but she was late meeting us, so we waited outside for her. We waited about 15 minutes and Parker was going bizerk off of a sugar rush, Violet and I begging her for just one more gummy bear.

We got to the studio, Rick was really nice and he had a really playful dog named Buster. He was so fun. Miche, Violet’s mom, mostly talked to us about the organizations and we watched videos of Rick in Tanzania. Rick worked with people wit Albinism and helped them feel beautiful and accepted. There were some terrible things going on in Africa and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, seeing and reading about.

Here’s what I learned:

1. “Albino” is technically not correct. It’s also a bit rude, like calling an African American the n-word.
2. There is this new superstition going around in Africa that the limb of a person with albinism in a doctoral potion can help cure people. This is not true.
3. There are people who have gone to people’s houses in Africa in the middle of the night and cut off a baby’s limbs who have albinism. They tell the mother not to cry, or scream or yet or else they will kill the rest of her children as well. After the limbs are taken, they leave quietly, leaving the rest of the body of the baby on the ground in front of the house to rot.
4. Rick goes down to Tanzania and educates people about Albinism and tries to prevent things like the above from happening.
5. A lot of people with Albinism have skin cancer because; the mother would put him/her out in the sun in belief that the kid would “darken up.” Of course this didn’t work and the kid develops skin cancer, which are the darkened splotches found on the faces of those who have skin cancer.
6. What causes the light skin, is a loss of pigmentation in the skin and partially in the yes which is why some people with albinism are partially blind.
7. People with albinism have very sensitive skin. If they get even the smallest of a cut, they could bleed excessively.

We are supposed to do another visit for Positive Exposure. I don’t know when but I think we will be stuffing envelopes.

Love, Cheyenne