Fire survivor’s harrowing ordeal, constant airport identity drama

Ms Shalet Mkamzungu, 28, has endured accusations of false identity at a major airport, a national park and a respectable bank.

Reason? The pictures on her passport and identity card do not match her made-up face. She is a third degree burn survivor who has to constantly explain the mismatch between how she looks and her official photos.

Five years ago, while at the airport checking in to fly to Sri Lanka, she was pulled aside for an hour for the officials to confirm that she was the genuine owner of the documents. Had she not been at the airport two hours before the scheduled departure time, she would have missed her flight.

The next time, when she walked into a bank where she has been a client for more than 10 years, the bank manager asked her to remove her mask so he could confirm it was really her. 

The same happened at the national park. In all these cases, she had make-up on, but had none when the picture on her document was taken, or vice versa.

“All of these are because of the scars on my face. Incidents like these make me feel hurt and remind me of all the bullying I experienced while growing up, which are experiences I have tried hard to forget,’’ says Ms Mkamzungu.

Form One bullying

She recounts what she refers to as the most harrowing bullying while in Form One. It happened the morning after her first night in secondary school.

She and her schoolmates would wake up at around 3am to prepare for the day. Because of the burns, the scars on her lower back -- they extend below the waist and onto the upper part of her hips -- made her feel self-conscious, especially because all the girls shared ablution.

‘’I would take a bath with my underwear on, with my back facing the wall,’’ she recollects.

“On that day, which would mark the start of my troubles for four years, I was confronted by some students in senior classes, who demanded to know why I was bathing with my undergarments on.  I could not show them my scars, so they demanded I pull them off, backing me into a corner,” she recalls.

Later, she called her mother crying. She wanted to quit school.

With a scar on the left side of her head, she only had hair on the right. That meant she had to do her hair when no one was watching her, and she would part her hair in the middle to cover the scarred and hairless part. To keep her secret, she slept on the upper part of the bunk bed.

When she accompanied her sister swimming, she always wore long-sleeved swimsuits with shorts to cover the scars on her hips. Her sister, for moral support and so that her sister was not conspicuous, did the same.

‘’I would either be the first one or the last one to get to the changing room to avoid getting attention due to my scars,’’ she says.

Other bullying instances were not that severe, she notes.

‘’Other than being called ‘kachomeko’ (a term to mean the one who got burnt) in primary school, and being ridiculed and touched on my face because of the white patches on my forehead, people stared when my mother and I travelled, which prompted my mother to be aggressive in protecting me.”

What happened

When Ms Mkamzungu was one, a fire broke out when she and her older sister, aged six, were home with their house help. Their mother was at work, and their father had just stepped out to get a packet of maize flour for lunch. When he got back, he found a few items in the house had caught fire, but his children had been seriously injured, and had been rushed to hospital.

The next day, the older child died. Shalet was in the hospital for a year, with doctors treating severe burns. She suffered 54 per cent burns, third degree.

The house help said she was pouring kerosene into a burning stove when it exploded and started the fire. She didn’t suffer the same fate as the children, and the house didn’t catch fire. While father and daughters were in hospital, she slipped out of the house, never to be seen again.

In 2013, while winding up her university education, Ms Mkamzungu tried to enrol at a modelling agency. She was turned away because the judges at the audition felt she was not beautiful.

“They told me I had a great body for modeling, but with my face, I wouldn’t make it. I knew then that it was because of my scars,” she says.

Still laden with hope, she tried another modeling agency, but got the same results. She stopped auditioning.

“I one day got tired of ridicule and bullying that I wanted to end it all.”

Surgery

Before she joined university, she underwent tissue expansion surgery to cover the scars on the left side of her head. This is a technique used by plastic and reconstructive surgeons to make the body grow additional skin.

“Tissue expansion involves a bag of plastic being placed under the skin, where there is a wound, then inflated to create more skin,” says Dr Raymond Bosire, a physician at Komarock Hospital.

“From the inflation, the skin, which is elastic expands from the dermis upward, creating more skin on the outermost part. So instead of doing a massive skin graft, a little skin graft can be done,” he explains.

With her head covered and hair grown back, she faced another challenge-getting a hair dresser who understood the sensitivity of her skin. With a sensitive scalp, she needed a patient and gentle hair dresser. She rarely blow-dried her hair, and has had to wear wigs.

‘’I am still not confident going out without my wig. I see my younger sister go out without makeup, but I cannot do the same because people usually stare at me. To avoid that, I wear makeup everywhere I go, whether I want to or not.’’

She is grateful that her family has been supportive. Her husband, with whom she has two children, has been her backbone.

Pregnancy troubles

Enjoying her happily married life, living in her skin became a struggle when she fell pregnant with her firstborn. Her skin was stretching to make a home for her growing baby.

“My back was always itchy, and no ointment helped relieve me of the itchiness.  The more my body grew, the itchier the scars on my back and arms got, and I spent most of my time scratching them,” she says.

Three months after the birth of her son, she fell pregnant again. This time, her doctors were worried about her, but she pulled through.

The scar, says Dr Bosire, makes it hard for the abdomen to expand.

In the spirit of giving back to society, she often visits burn survivors at Kenyatta National Hospital to encourage them. It is her desire to one day set up a foundation for burn survivors that will aid in recovery and rehabilitation.

“My foundation will also serve as a memorial to honour my mother’s brother, a soldier who died when the helicopter he was in crashed in 2005 near Salama, Makueni District,” she says.

“I love spending time with children. We eat, play and talk. I ask them about what they wanted to be before they got burnt and encourage them that they can still achieve their dreams. That helps distract them from their pain. I have met some who, apart from their painful burns, struggle emotionally since they are not visited by their loved ones.”

“My scars tell a story. They are a reminder of when life tried to break me, but failed. They are markings of where the structure of my character was welded.”

Trauma

Even with such positivity, psychologists recommend that burn survivors get treated for trauma.

“A burn by itself can be a traumatic experience for a victim. He or she will be wondering whether they will get back to their normal skin or whether they will be disfigured,” says Mr Cleopa Njiru, a psychologist at Chiromo Hospital.

Such people need to be counseled by a therapist who is competent to treat trauma, and help the victim find a purpose and meaning of life that transcends physical beauty.

Mr Njiru explains that most people who have experienced or witnessed traumatic events such as floods, fire, and bomb blasts get stressed. If not counseled, their brain registers danger, prompting the body to go into a protection mode and is always alert. As a result, victims will be prone to looking out for things that they feel could trigger another traumatic event.

He notes that two trauma victims can experience the same disaster, be treated in a similar manner, yet one may become resilient, accepting that life has changed and adapting to it. The other may not.

“We help trauma victims get to a point of resilience, which helps them to delink their trauma from other sections of their life. That helps them refocus their thoughts, regulate their emotions and even build social relationships.”

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