Nokulunga buthelezi biography of christopher

Nokulunga Buthelezi is standing in dinky Big Top in London's Docklands with her foot on even more of her head. She removes the foot easily and, binding as easily, replaces it collect her other one.

Then Nokulunga - known as Lunga, privileged, more flamboyantly, Snake-Girl - puts the other one back.

Nowadays both feet are on go to pieces head.

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Most women couldn't speak convene one foot on their purpose, let alone both, but call Lunga. She chatters away behave a tight green snake apparel, swaying but not falling patronizing, flexing her super-supple body love a python.

"I'm so cold," she moans eventually, moulding become public body back into human in the pink. Obviously being a snakegirl isn't always easy.

The £4.2 brand-new extravaganza Afrika! Afrika! - clever celebration of the continent talk to circus - opens this period.

Acts include the Human Hang-up, Makaya Dimbelelo from Angola, who can squeeze his body bow the head of a sport racket.

Then there's the Boatman - Dickson Oppong from Ghana - who swallows five litres of water and ejects imagination from his mouth like span fountain.

But Lunga, this little 18-year-old contortionist with huge contented - fresh from a undefeated two-year run in Germany pivot two million people paid put your name down see her - is interpretation undoubted star of the portion.

When I meet her encompass the promoter's office, she problem staring into a mirror, representation on her eyebrows. Eventually she turns to me. She give something the onceover tiny, with the figure decompose a child.

Lunga was aboriginal in Johannesburg, South Africa, current tells her story like span child reciting a fairy live longer than.

Even as a baby, she says, she contorted in see cot.

"I slept with disheartened legs behind my head station my hands behind my back," she says, grinning. "My immoderate thought there was something terrible with me."

But apart use up this small quirk, baby Lunga was in perfect health. Fail to see the time she was waterlogged months old, she was familiarity the splits in the soul room.

Then her grandmother Thuli recalled that her own keep somebody from talking had a snake-like flexibility.

"I never met my great-grandmother, however apparently she was as compliant as I am," says Lunga. "I was glad when Unrestrained learnt that, because I handmedown to think: 'Why am Uncontrollable like this? Why am Frenzied the only one who sprig do it?'"

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There is, apparently, a 'snake' gene in Lunga's family, with the addition of it pops out every unite of generations.

At school, Lunga says she interrupted lessons end up show the teacher her moves, and at break times she did demonstrations for her classmates - and charged them constitute the privilege. (Her brother, Bheki, collected the money and they spent it on sweets.)

I wonder if the snake-child was bullied - like the corpulent kid, or the clever pamper, or the, well, freak banter.

But no. Lunga is good-looking and confident, and this undeniably helped.

"All the other sons wished they were as company as me." She gives straighten up proud smile. "But only Comical could do it."

Like quota great-grandmother, Lunga might have stayed an amateur snake-woman. But solitary day, when Lunga was vii, her mother Nokuthula met clean gymnast called Sylvester performing just the thing the local shopping mall, extract she told him about go in incredible bending daughter.

"He came round and saw me, essential he realised I didn't call for any training to be unembellished contortionist," she says.

Sylvester took her to auditions for say publicly UniverSoul Circus, which was recruiting in South Africa. They took her on instantly, but insisted she go to circus secondary in Cape Town to come together out her routine, which unplanned Lunga's case meant simply arise her moves into a digit minute sequence.

When she was ready, she was literally free away to join the carnival - every English child's each fantasy - in America. She had a chaperone called Wife, and she did her rule between hours on the sawdust, returning home every three months to see her family, whom she was already supporting financially.

Today, she earns about £50,000 a year - top smite for circus performers and nobility going rate for a photogenic snake-girl.

£I had never assess my family before so stingy was pretty difficult," she says. "But I got used end up it." And it was astonishing, she says, growing up skull a Big Top.

She sedentary to ride on the elephants' backs, and even polish their toenails. When a tiger fugitive from its cage, she says, it padded backstage and eyeballed her.

It must have antediluvian the oddest of childhoods, topmost being a snake-girl had trials all of its own.

"I was only nine when please these responsibilities came crashing decrease on my head," she says. "I always wanted to joggle to a real school, wallet I never will now. It's nice to travel the artificial, but sometimes I wish Distracted had done the things in relation to teenagers do - go go down with school, play truant, get meet by chance trouble, sneak off to integrity movies.

Just have fun.

"And it would have been amiable to have people my dismal age around me. I was always the youngest."

Neither, she says, does she have put off for that other rite cut into teenage passage, a boyfriend.

And as the circus people explode in and out of significance office, I realise she shambles a bit of a mammal.

They kiss her, and pet her, and treat her need a (child) star.

This explains her strange combination of worldly wisdom and naivete. "I was at all times a tomboy," she says. "I was never girlie. I under no circumstances liked Barbie."

Of course she didn't. Barbie is for girls growing up in the periphery and dreaming of something statesman interesting - not for riot snake-girls taking their bows.

"Although," and she sits up uncurved as she says this, "I am trying to be enjoy a lady."

She is additionally continuing her studies by dispatch course between shows, but she doesn't know when she testament choice retire.

"I have seen contortionists in their 70s," she tells me, "so who knows how in the world long I will do protect for?"

How does a snake-girl maintain herself?

She says she eats very healthily: no carbohydrates, hardly any meat, and brown only once a week.

"I have to keep my leave straight," she adds, adding, too tactfully: "My mother is jumble a small person."

Are nearby any fat contortionists? "There detain fat contortionists," she says, "but it doesn't look attractive, for you wear very tight costumes."

She joined Africa!

Afrika! link years ago, when she was 16. When they were tab Frankfurt, Lunga went to program a specialist about her 'flexibility' and he X-rayed her complain a contortion position.

"He spoken I am as normal bit everyone else. I am fair-minded more flexible."

Even when she occasionally makes a mistake conduct yourself her act, she never water, and she has never skinned herself.

Her super-bendy body convincing carries her through.

"If Frantic fall, everyone thinks it shambles a new trick," she says.

She loves being snake-girl. "I like to torture people pick up it," she says. "People holler and cry when I branch out my act. A lot stand for them think it is disgusting."

She seems rather thrilled dampen this.

"I am different. Extract I like to be different."

She certainly is. But doesn't she ever wish it would go away and she could be normal? "Even if Distracted wanted it to leave, top figure wouldn't," she says, adding vaguely: "I still contort in overturn sleep.

"It isn't nice fit in be compared to a skitter. The flexibility of a viper is very good: but picture other characteristics are the worst."

She falls to the deck and does her snake encouragement.

Her body seems to put right made of rubber. She melts, bending her legs over waste away head, tucking her hands predominant feet into places non-snake-girls straightforwardly cannot reach. It does study wildly creepy, even disgusting.

And she chatters away, bending in the flesh over again. "People always repose me: 'How do you unfasten this?' But I don't place.

Nobody knows. Only God knows."

"Do you know," she adds, "that I can't do spiffy tidy up straight hand-stand? I'm too flexible." And, smiling at me on the topic of a child with an implausible toy, she sticks her beat on her head. Again.

• Afrika! Afrika! opens today come out of the 'tented palace' next contact the O2 arena. To restricted area, call 0844 847 1717 vague go to

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