Day 2

The second day of my intervention was fairly uneventful, it is becoming less awkward to appear as I am, I did stop and go into a fuel station where I had a lot of people stare at me and the man that served me behind the till began to laugh while serving me, he however did not ask why I was dressed as I was or why my face was as pale as it was. The students in the lower years around college are now becoming comfortable enough to ask about my body intervention, few of them had realised to begin with that I was supposed to appear albino however after I had pointed it out had said that yes I did actually look fairly albino.

Animals with Albinism.

African Albino Child.

 This is a photograph of an albino African child (foreground) surrounded by other normal children of his race. This picture shows clearly how much of a difference there is between an albino and normal African children. It helps one to try to understand how difficult and uncomfortable it might be for an African child to be an albino, how they stand out physically from all those that surround them.

Day 1

My first day yesterday was very uncomfortable. To start off with I had a very intrigued and humorous reaction from the two female domestic workers that clean and cook at the digs I stay at, I then got a lot of strange looks while driving my car as I was dressed as a domestic worker and its not usual for domestic workers to be able to afford their own car, people firstly seemed to notice how I was dressed and then noticed how pale and off colour my face is. I found that Caucasians reacted the least to the way I look, with Africans having the most noticeable clear reactions and not being afraid to stare even when I have noticed them staring. Fortunately due to cyclone Irene I had no need to be covered up while going outside. Physically the uniform is quite comfortable although I have found the head scarf to make my head very itchy, it often slips off and I tend to tie my hair into the knot while putting it on which is painful. Outside of all of this it was very embarrassing and uncomfortable to be dressed as a domestic worker due to all the attention it caught especially as being a caucasian, it is also very uncomfortable not looking like every one else.

Planning my Intervention.

So with the lead up to my 10 days of being an albino I had things to consider such as what to ware how to make my self look as albino like as possible and what specific behaviours I would have to adopt.

After some thought I decided that I would dress in a domestic workers outfit but try to make myself pale as though i was albino, i decided on this as i thought it would be the biggest contrast for an African person to be an albino as the rest of their people are such a contrast in colour, i therefore decided to ware a domestic house cleaners outfit as today in South Africa it is stereotyped that all domestic workers are African.

I then went about trying to find ways to make myself look more pale and albino like. The first and most obvious idea i had was to put baby powder on my skin and hair, but after first trying this discovered that baby powder doesn’t quite make dark hair such as my eye brows light enough, i then made use of a very fair base and the white lengthening solution that comes with some mascaras to further lighten my eyebrows and eyelashes and put powder on my face and not apply any of my usual make up for the 10 day period. I also considered waring white or pale stockings to make my legs look much paler, at which point i discovered that there are in fact no stockings provided for people with such pale skins.