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IF you take a stroll in Harare these days, chances are that you may come across a well-groomed albino lady minding her own business in the city centre.
These ladies are fashionable, to say the least.
They sport fancy hairstyles, dress elegantly and turn heads.
Charmed by these ladies, I trekked one of them, Dudzai Mureyi recently.
With her profile on Facebook, I was in no time at a leading pharmacy in town where she does part time work. Here, I got her contact number.
We arranged to meet at a restaurant where we could enjoy hot coffee while chatting.
The 23-year-old is not your ordinary albino young lady who is shackled by the stigma that has prevented many albinos from achieving their dreams.
She is an achiever having been part of the 2008 winning team of the prestigious Imagine Afrika, a reality show aimed at raising awareness of HIV and Aids. The show was broadcast in more than 30 African countries.
She is also a third year pharmacy student at the University of Zimbabwe where she was recently elected 2010/11 secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Pharmaceutical Students Association.
Besides studying at the pharmacy school, Dudzai has gone on to work with HIV and Aids activism organisations, among them UNAids and Trust Africa.
I ask Dudzai what makes her tick considering she has broken many barriers prohibiting albino women from excelling in life.
The young woman opens up and starts talking about her gospel of self-liberation.
“I’m not bothered at all about being an albino; it’s something I got over, lest I spent the rest of my life in a shell.
“Once you liberate yourself as an albino, it's pretty out there. People give back what you give them.”
Dudzai was born in Masvingo on July 8 1987 and moved to Bindura at the age of five. This is where she started her primary education.
Out of 800 pupils at Sandringham where she did her O-Levels, she was one of the two albinos at school.
At St Dominics where she did her A-Levels, she was unmistakably the only albino.
As a kid, Dudzai said she endured hardships as she was constantly teased by other children.
“When I was young, people passing derogatory comments were a daily bread, which was to be expected considering I stood out. It’s something you live with.”
But at that tender age, Dudzai says she was not discouraged by her skin pigmentation and excelled at school.
She did extremely well in her O-Level examination: scoring 9As, a B and a C.
At A-Level, she came out with 15 points in Maths, Biology and Chemistry.
With these impressive results, Dudzai could have easily enrolled to study medicine, but instead chose pharmacy.
“It’s a subject close to my heart. In future that can put me in a strategic position to provide sunscreen lotions to albino people,” she said.
I ask her to explain a bit about the lotions.
“For us albinos, sunscreen lotion is not a luxury, its life-preserving because it reduces the likelihood of developing skin cancer,” she says.
Apart from fighting skin cancer, albinos have to deal with eye problems.
But Dudzai believes, whatever the odds, albinos may have no-one to blame for their low-esteem.
“Stigma starts with the victim. You should become confident, be vocal, and burst out of your shell.
“If you think that you are unattractive, you become self-conscious and you lose self-esteem and confidence and you reflect that to the outside world. And that is when you get negative feedback from the world,” she says.
Does she have a boyfriend?
“I don’t have a boyfriend but I have a few exs. Because I believe that I am attractive and naturally funny, attractive guys find me funny and attractive. I don’t date ugly guys.”
Does she think about getting married and settling after she is through with her UZ studies?
“In Africa, it seems women are given deadlines to get married, not me. Don’t mistake me for a feminist but I have goals to achieve.”
Among these goals is to have a post-grad qualification in Public Health before venturing into humanitarian work.
But what if a fairy tale Mr Right comes knocking on her door, would she resist?
“He would have to wait,” she says without mincing her words.
Dudzai admits like any other young person she sometimes indulges in some mischief.
“Smirnoff vodka storm for a typical young person. I pretty make sure I don’t miss a stage but everything that I do, I do it safely.”
She also regularly visits Mbare where Tina, a hair stylist does her hair.
“I don’t do make up. Imagine, I have not mastered the art yet,” she says.
While she is very proud of what she has achieved so far, there is something that she is not too happy about.
“I don’t really like my name Dudzai. I am tempted to think that my getting that name had a bit to do with my albinism.”
To deal with that, Dudzai is mainly known by her friends as Bonnie.
Her last words to all albinos: “Invest your energy in the things nobody can take away from you: an education, a talent and a good heart. Nurture your positive attributes so that you can be noticeable for other things less superficial”.
BY WALTER MARWIZI
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