Mwanahawa Yusufu, 27, lives with her 2-year-old albino son, Yusufu Sereman, in a 6 m2 rented room in Dar es Salaam. When she gave birth to Yusufu, her husband got very angry and left her saying that she had slept with a ‘mzungu’, a white man. Since then, she has never heard from him. Mwanahawa survives as a single parent roasting and selling Cassava and other small food items. Her son Selemani already has badly damaged skin from exposure to the sun, but she can’t get him treat because she has difficulties to pay for the treatments. Usually developing by a very young age a facial rash of dark melanomas is often the precursor of the skin cancer that kills so many albinos in early adulthood. Albinism is a recessive gene but when two carriers of the gene have a child it has a one in four chance of getting albinism.
 
Tanzania is believed to have Africa' s largest population of albinos, a genetic condition caused by a lack of melanin in the skin, eyes and hair and has an incidence seven times higher than elsewhere in the world.
 
Over the last three years people with albinism have been threatened by an alarming increase in the criminal trade of Albino body parts. At least 53 albinos have been killed since 2007, some as young as six months old. Many more have been attacked with machetes and their limbs stolen while they are still alive. Witch doctors tell their clients that the body parts will bring them luck in love, life and business. The belief that albino body parts have magical powers has driven thousands of Africa's albinos into hiding, fearful of losing their lives and limbs to unscrupulous dealers who can make up to US$75,000 selling a complete dismembered set. The killings have now spread to neighboring countries, like Kenya, Uganda and Burundi and an international market for albino body parts has been rumored to reach as far as West Africa.