From ‘devil’s child’ to star ballerina | Michaela DePrince | TEDxAmsterdam 2014

Born Mabinty Bangura in 1995, Michaela DePrince had many identities. One of them was “devil’s child” thanks to her vitiligo. Michaela grew up as an orphan in Sierra Leone during the civil war. Her life was difficult from the start, with her father killed by militant rebels and her mother dying of starvation. Frequently malnourished, mistreated and derided, life only got worse when she had to flee to a refugee camp after her orphanage was bombed. In 1999 at the age of four, an American