Charles porte en lui une particularité qui a façonné son enfance et ses premiers rapports aux autres : l'albinisme. Élevé par sa mère et sa sœur, leur vie est assombrie par la violence d'un père dangereux. En parallèle des drames familiaux auxquels Charles doit faire face malgré son jeune âge, son albinisme le rend vulnérable aux moqueries et à la discrimination, surtout à l'école. Dans cette succession d'adversités, un événement qui sera le point de non-retour contraint sa famille à quitter le pays pour rester en vie. Ils trouvent refuge en Afrique, au Cameroun, où de nouvelles épreuves et discriminations attendent Charles. Mais après des années mouvementées, un retour en France ouvre les portes d'une opportunité qui a changé sa vie à jamais.
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AmusantTranscription
00:00 In Africa, we kill albinos, we hunt them, as if they were animals.
00:04 In my family, I'm the only one who is albino.
00:06 It's a genetic anomaly.
00:08 We can find genes in the mother, like the father.
00:11 From the moment one of the parents has this gene,
00:15 the child will be albino.
00:16 The skin will be lighter because there is a lack of pigmentation.
00:19 The hair will be very light.
00:21 The eyes too.
00:22 We can't be too exposed to the sun.
00:24 It can cause skin cancer in our country.
00:26 We need a sun cream 24/7.
00:30 Light has a real impact on our vision.
00:33 Most albinos wear sunglasses.
00:36 When I was at school,
00:38 I was told, "Charles, try to read the board."
00:40 "You can't read the board."
00:42 Then people started laughing.
00:45 Even in sports, if you want to play football or basketball,
00:47 you're not allowed to play because they can't see.
00:50 They want to put you in a box
00:52 and make you understand that you're not like the others.
00:55 So, put yourself aside.
00:56 The first time I faced my difference was at school.
00:59 I arrived, the whole class was around me.
01:02 They started looking at me, staring at me.
01:04 I said to myself, "What's going on?"
01:05 One of them asked me,
01:07 "Why is your sister black, your hair is white?"
01:10 "Why are your hair like that?"
01:12 That's when I understood that something was wrong.
01:16 I asked my mother, "Why do people ask me?"
01:19 "Why are my two parents black and I'm white?"
01:21 That's when she told me that I was albino.
01:24 It's a rare anomaly.
01:25 When I was little and I was walking down the street,
01:27 I had no problem because I was normal.
01:30 But from that moment on, people started looking at you strangely.
01:32 They started laughing at you, at your skin colour, your hair.
01:37 You tell yourself, "But that's my problem."
01:39 And as you get older, you understand that you're different.
01:42 And sometimes it's hard to accept.
01:44 At one point, I burst out crying.
01:45 I told my mother, "I was in tears."
01:48 "Why are they like that with me?"
01:50 It was like they were trying to send me to a mental institution.
01:52 When I was in primary school.
01:53 Then they tried to send me to a mental institution.
01:55 It hurt me a lot.
01:56 I spent two years there.
01:57 I lost two years of my life there.
01:58 That's where my mother came from.
02:00 She raised me alone.
02:01 Me and my little sister.
02:02 She was there in the most difficult moments.
02:05 If she wasn't there, I don't think I'd be doing this interview.
02:09 It means that I have a lot of respect and a lot of love for her.
02:14 Today, my goal is to make her proud.
02:16 She said, "My son is an intelligent person."
02:19 "You're going to put him in a normal course."
02:22 "And you'll see what he's capable of."
02:23 From there, I showed her.
02:25 And I wasn't the last one in the class.
02:27 Sometimes I thought, "Why did it happen to me?"
02:29 There was a time when I didn't accept being albino.
02:31 I even started dyeing my hair black, my eyebrows black.
02:34 To avoid being looked at.
02:35 And I felt better.
02:36 I was really ashamed of who I was.
02:39 Often, when a human being doesn't understand something,
02:41 he'll move away from it.
02:42 Very often, I was alone.
02:44 And to be noticed, to show that I wasn't someone abnormal,
02:49 I ended up being the clown in class.
02:50 Making the whole class laugh.
02:52 And from there, I started to be accepted.
02:54 When you make others laugh, you attract sympathy.
02:56 Then I started to make friends.
02:58 Over time, those people started to accept me for who I was.
03:01 And at 12, there was an event that was a turning point in my life.
03:05 The relationship with my father and my mother was very complicated.
03:09 When I talk about complications, I'm actually talking about marital violence.
03:12 Because my mother is the person I love the most in the world.
03:16 And to see her suffer so much
03:20 under the blows of a man,
03:22 it hurts a lot.
03:23 And then, this event happened in front of my school.
03:27 My mother came to pick me up after class to go home.
03:30 My father was there.
03:31 He hid.
03:32 He was holding a scissor in his hand.
03:36 And he left to use it against my mother.
03:40 My mother was in the car.
03:42 He hit her window.
03:43 The window broke.
03:45 And then he hit this scissor under my mother's neck.
03:49 She was in the apples.
03:51 Anyway, she was on the ground.
03:53 It was very, very hard to see that.
03:56 We took my mother to the hospital, to the emergency room.
03:59 A few hours later, we joined her.
04:01 To see her lying like that on a hospital bed,
04:04 I think it was one of the worst days of my life, clearly.
04:06 The scissor, it's a man,
04:08 it's mixed with the scarf.
04:09 It's the scarf that saved her life.
04:11 Otherwise, at the present time, I would no longer have a mother.
04:13 After this event, we went home.
04:16 And my mother said, "We're leaving. We're leaving France."
04:19 We went back to Cameroon to start a new chapter.
04:22 It was to protect ourselves from the violence,
04:24 the repetitive violence of my father.
04:26 If we didn't leave, my mother, she wouldn't be there right now.
04:30 It was too much for me.
04:32 It was too much for me.
04:33 Sometimes I even felt like I was being cursed, clearly.
04:38 Sometimes at night, I heard my mother crying in the living room.
04:43 "What's going on?
04:45 This is not the life I wanted for my children.
04:48 They should not be blamed for anything at all."
04:51 My aunt, who I consider to be a mother,
04:54 helped us a lot to overcome all this.
04:56 Because during the difficult times,
05:00 when my mother was a victim of domestic violence,
05:02 when my mother was alone,
05:05 she was always there, you know.
05:06 It was just to say thank you for everything.
05:08 My father, he had a ban on approaching my mother.
05:12 Despite that, he always did it.
05:14 He's not in prison.
05:15 Sometimes, French justice is a bit of a bench.
05:19 There will be no turning back in our relationship.
05:22 I could never forgive what he did.
05:24 Leaving like that, to Cameroon, it was complicated.
05:28 It was new landmarks that I had to take.
05:30 I started going to school, to integrate myself little by little.
05:33 I was always looked at as someone who was not normal.
05:38 Yet there are many more albinos in Africa than in Europe.
05:43 When I arrived in Cameroon, I told myself
05:45 that I would not have any problems at this level.
05:47 But in fact, yes.
05:48 You are insulted by a witch like that for nothing.
05:50 You can be called a "failed gang hero".
05:52 You can be insulted by "failed albinos".
05:55 An albino, these are people who are cursed.
05:59 In Africa, albinos are killed.
06:01 And that's a fact that is not very popular.
06:05 When you use such violent words, it hurts.
06:07 You can walk in the street, you are afraid for your life.
06:10 Sometimes, my mother would tell me,
06:11 "Charles, when you go out, be careful.
06:14 Because even in big cities, like Yaoundé or Douala,
06:17 you are not safe from being killed."
06:19 Yes, I did not sink into anger and resentment.
06:24 I will tell you that it is because of religion.
06:27 My mother is a Christian.
06:28 We went to church a lot.
06:30 I think that's what saved us, in a way.
06:33 These rings in Cameroon,
06:35 my sister and my mother, it brought us very close.
06:39 We are very, very, very, very close.
06:41 It allowed us to see that in life, you have to fight.
06:45 When I came back to France, it was for the basic BAC.
06:49 But I decided to stay to realize my dreams.
06:53 Because I had the ambition to become a model.
06:57 My ambition is due to social media.
07:00 When I saw people,
07:02 I don't know, like maybe the model Winnie Harlow,
07:05 or other models, quite atypical, succeed.
07:09 I said to myself, "Why not me?"
07:11 And I came across a YouTube video of a fashion show
07:13 for the Paris Fashion Week.
07:15 I think it was Jacquemus.
07:16 I saw models walking like that.
07:18 And I said, "I'm going to do that.
07:21 I want to be a model. It's my dream."
07:24 My mother always asked me,
07:25 "Charles, you have to find a passion in life.
07:28 You have to look for yourself."
07:29 I didn't really know what I wanted to become.
07:31 And when I came across this show, I said,
07:33 "I'm going to be a model.
07:34 I want to walk, to do campaigns."
07:37 I'm going to use all means to get there.
07:40 So when I took the plane to return to France,
07:43 I said to myself, "Charles, you're going to be a model.
07:46 No matter what happens, you're going to sign up
07:48 in a big agency."
07:49 I was on the plane.
07:50 I received a message from Hassan,
07:52 who is an albino and also a model.
07:54 We didn't know each other at all.
07:56 He said, "Hi, brother. Are you in Paris?
07:59 Because there's a cliff with Damso and criminal cage."
08:01 I wasn't in Paris, I was in Cameroon.
08:03 I said, "Yeah, I'm in Paris, don't worry.
08:05 I'll be there."
08:07 The title was "Golden Goal".
08:09 He told me I was invited to participate.
08:11 And Damso and criminal cage are people I listened to a lot.
08:16 It really boosted me.
08:17 I made two other clips.
08:18 It gave me a lot of exposure.
08:20 And that's when I wanted to leave all the model agencies.
08:25 I really wanted to continue on my journey.
08:27 It was clearly a revenge for me and for others too.
08:31 All my life, because of my albinism,
08:34 I was put in a box.
08:35 I was made to believe I couldn't achieve great things.
08:38 I said, "Okay, you'll see who I am."
08:40 I decided to do a job that was related to my difference.
08:44 I was born to shine.
08:45 It wasn't positive the first few times.
08:48 I sent one or two emails,
08:50 but they didn't answer.
08:51 I went to the agency,
08:52 I said, "Yes, hello, I want to be a model."
08:55 They took a picture of me.
08:56 Then they said, "Maybe a week later, it won't work.
08:59 You have to keep going.
09:00 When you have dreams, you don't give up.
09:02 At one point, it was a big blow.
09:04 When I signed my first contract with my first agency,
09:06 I shed a tear.
09:08 I called my mother directly.
09:10 I said, "Mom, now your son is represented
09:13 by one of the best agencies in London."
09:15 She said, "No, that's not true.
09:17 That's not true."
09:18 I said, "Yes!"
09:19 I sent her the contract.
09:20 She was so happy.
09:22 All the efforts she made there were not in vain.
09:24 I was so happy to feel that.
09:26 I am very proud of myself
09:29 and proud of the education my mother gave me.
09:32 My sister heard that and said, "No."
09:34 She said, "You're lying."
09:36 She said, "Yes, I'm a model."
09:37 And for me, it makes even more sense
09:39 because it's my difference that is highlighted,
09:42 which complicated my life for many years,
09:45 which today makes me strong.
09:47 After that, I did my first fashion week in Milan
09:50 for Anne Kajberling.
09:52 She's a Danish designer.
09:53 I did my first cover, my first editorial
09:56 for the magazine eSquare.
09:58 Recently, I did a campaign for Adidas.
10:00 Then I had an agency in Paris.
10:02 Then I had one in Germany.
10:05 Then it's the United States.
10:08 We will continue to move forward
10:10 and grow to have a great career.
10:12 For a good part of my life,
10:14 I was made to look like a person
10:16 who was not able to succeed in life.
10:18 It was the same people who made fun of me
10:21 who ask me for advice today.
10:23 I feel like I'm starting from scratch.
10:25 All the bad memories are behind me
10:27 and now I look ahead.
10:29 My next goals right now
10:31 and the Paris Fashion Week
10:32 would be to launch a big show
10:34 for Jacquemus or Olivier Rousteing.
10:36 It would be incredible.
10:38 I really want to break a record in my career.
10:41 It's not certain.
10:42 Maybe I won't have the career I want to have,
10:46 but I'm going to give myself the means.
10:49 And if it doesn't work,
10:50 at least I won't have any regrets.
10:51 With determination,
10:53 no matter where you come from,
10:55 anything is possible.
10:56 Anything is possible, you just have to believe in it.
10:58 Fight for it.
11:00 And you will succeed.
11:02 That's it.