JESS MEYER

- A journey to the home of Standing Voice -

By Standing Voice

July 31^st, 2018

Everyone at Standing Voice has the same energy of caring about people. That coherence runs all the way through the organisation and there isn’t a single person I met in Tanzania who didn’t give me that impression.

Jess Meyer joined creative communications agency Zetteler in 2015, and has since gone on to become co-director of the company. This summer, she joined Standing Voice in Tanzania to help renovate our Umoja Training Centre and deliver the Summer Skills Workshop. With her fellow Zetteler colleagues, and an inspiring roster of visiting artists and creatives, Jess brought an injection of colour, vibrancy and new functionality to our training facility, laying the foundations for a successful round of workshops to follow.

Below, Jess reflects on her extraordinary journey into the heart of Lake Victoria, to the home of Standing Voice.

I first encountered Standing Voice through my co-director Sabine, who’s a trustee of the charity. Last year, Sabine came back from a trustees’ meeting and wrote ‘Summer Skills Workshop 2018’ on a post-it note, and stuck it on the window. From that moment, we began to see the workshops as a space where we could add value: a pathway of greater collaboration between Standing Voice and Zetteler, where we could mobilise our network of clients, and creative skills, to amplify and maximise the impact of the Summer Skills Workshop.

This sounds ridiculous, but even the journey to Tanzania was magical. It’s so far away, but the process felt captivating: absorbing everything, taking in the sights, sounds, colours. Getting the afternoon ferry to Ukerewe for the last leg is an absolute must – that sunset is inexpressibly beautiful.

Before I went to Tanzania, I think I struggled finding the fluency and confidence to properly represent this issue. I’d watched In the Shadow of the Sun, I’d followed Standing Voice for years – I knew the charity was doing incredible work. I had a strong theoretical appreciation, and I could see that the plight of people with albinism in Africa was uniquely defined by sets of interlocking challenges: the medical implications of albinism, like low vision and vulnerability to skin cancer, but also the struggles to access education, housing, justice and employment, as well as the more highly publicised risk of violence.

And yet, somehow, I still felt like a fraud. Like I needed to know the beneficiaries, and meet the people, to put a human face on this issue, and to become capable or even comfortable exploring its nuances.

With this trip, that all fell away. Getting out there and spending time at the Umoja Training Centre made me see what it meant to the beneficiaries for us to be there. Just meeting someone like Paschal—abused and rejected for the majority of his life, but living, now, in a safer and happier environment—enabled me to actually feel the impact Standing Voice has had on the ground. Sensing how valuable it was to Paschal to have people speak to him, touch him, acknowledge him, share meals with him: that was something I never could have envisaged. I can’t imagine what it feels like not to have someone always touch you and love you, so that was a shock.

It was a privilege to see the workshops in live action. The storytelling and performance group were a particular highlight for me: going out into the heart of communities and using theatre to challenge preconceptions around albinism, the workshop was an incredibly innovative way of bridging community divides and demonstrating the shared humanity of people with and without albinism. The group would begin by singing songs or performing scenes before a small crowd, which would grow and grow. I understood very little of the dialogue, snatching bits of sentences from a translator; but I could see, from facial expressions and body language, how intently the crowds were listening, how a collective conversation was being brokered. It felt like a shift in perceptions through the power of theatre and experience. I discovered through translation that one girl with albinism had stood up and confronted her detractors, saying she had been bullied and called names her entire life. An older man, watching, became a picture of remorse: “you’ve been called these names all your life. Now I understand who you are, please tell me your actual name. What should I call you if not these things?”

I could see how these performances were a release valve for community ignorance—getting everything out in the open, airing problems and prejudices—and an entry point for empathy.

What became clear, though, was that all the workshops had this power. Take the English lessons: for a person with albinism who has been abused and segregated and denied education, you cannot overstate the impact of a new skill. English isn’t widely spoken on Ukerewe Island, so learning to speak and understand it is a huge opportunity for a person with albinism. That skill becomes social capital: evidence of one’s potential to contribute to society, and proof, also, that albinism is not limiting.

The future of collaboration between Zetteler and Standing Voice seems clearer and stronger than ever now. The work everybody did this summer is a wonderful anchor for our own partners and supporters to understand the brilliance of what the charity is doing. We have plans for a major fundraising print sale and exhibition later in the year, so watch this space!

Returning to London, I feel invigorated and energised. My time in Tanzania has clarified so many things, professionally and personally, and I have a sharper radar for where I should be focusing energy in my own life. I’m seeing everything in colour. For that, I have the people of Tanzania to thank.