Alicia Cañas was only a few months old when the teasing began. Her skin looked like no one else’s.
She lives in Toledo, a coffee-growing town in Norte de Santander, Colombia, and ever since she was born, she has had a genetic disease that dries out her skin until it turns into a hard bark, as if it were wood. Her hands and feet suffer the most: the pain, she says, is intense and never leaves her. For 25 years, rural doctors were unable to tell her what she had. Only after her daughter Yurley was born did American doctors identify the condition in both of them.
It is an incurable and noncontagious disease. And yet, Alicia’s routine includes something few can imagine: every two months, she has to cut off the excess skin that grows, because if she doesn’t, she can’t move or do her daily activities. Even so, she told Los Informantes: “This disease has made many things difficult for me, but when it comes down to it, it is a challenge to get up and fight day after day”.
