Growing up I realised I had albinism when I was about nine years old.
I have four siblings, one who has albinism,
and
I had neighborhood friends who asked my older brother
if I was adopted. There were lots of times where I felt different,
out of place,
not welcomed by a lot of people because of the way I look: in school,
even just on the train with my mum, being a child, there would be
parents, adults, who
stared at us and laughed at us because we had albinism, and I didn't understand.
This is the grown person; why are they pointing fingers at me and
giggling. It made
me and my younger brother have to grow up or mature faster
to understand that people can be ignorant when they don't know things.
We just had to be strong and
know that we are all human just like everyone else.
It is not easy with having albinsim;
there is still a lack of understanding of what albinism is.
Even just in the modeling industry
we are looked at as
something that is maybe extraterrestrial,
an odd beauty,
not just you know like all regular beauty, whatever that is.
So for me that's challenging because
when I initially started modeling, I just knew; I was like "I want be a model and
I'm gonna be this
beautiful model just like the rest of the models, 'out of this world'.
Which can be fun and entertaining but
I don't think it should be a freak show, I just want to be a beautiful girl
like anyone else.
They don't come as challenges to me because
now I can say I'm confident in who I am,
I know who I am as a person with albinism,
just as a woman, so that
stuff doesn't bother me anymore.
I would like to change... one of the things I would like to
change is when people think
that we are all related (giggles)
It might be silly but it so ridiculous to me;
just because you all may have the same
skin color, hair color or whatever, we are all obviously not related.
I think it's important for all children with albinism to know that
they are beautiful,
they're not any different than anyone else. And I think it is also important for
parents to instilled that in their children as well,
to make them feel comfortable in all situations
and let the people around them know
what albinism, just inform people on what it is and how it works and
that is not anything
odd or weird so that they can have an easier life.
I always wanted to start something like this
just because growing up I know that I would love to have had
someone who's older around that had albinism and
I could see how I was going to
look when I grew up just
to motivate me and that would understand some of the things that I was going through
and help me through them.
For this group I would like for us
maybe have some sort of Big Brother/ Big Sister program to
mentor younger children that have albinism,
for us to help parents that have children albinism
understand more what it is and how it can affect us
physically, emotionally.