KEVIN ARULRAJAH

By Standing Voice

July 31^st, 2018

Kevin Arulrajah works in marketing and public relations at creative communications agency Zetteler. Founded by Sabine Zetteler—a trustee and long-term advocate of Standing Voice—the organisation sent half its team, including Kevin, to join our charity in Tanzania for a whirlwind week of renovation and design. Assisting artist Camille Walala and art director Julia Jomaa, Kevin and his colleagues applied one-of-a-kind patterns to the walls and water tanks of the Umoja Training Centre, injecting the facility with vibrancy and colour ahead of the 2018 Summer Skills Workshop: an integrated training event providing skills development opportunities for the Ukerewe community.

Zetteler is all about telling the best stories for our clients: using the power of human connection to amplify the voices of artists and designers. Standing Voice’s similar professional culture, and ethos for empowering people with albinism, felt like a natural home for us.

This was my first ever experience in Africa. My expectations were shaped by things I’d seen on the news: poverty, misery, malnutrition. And it was certainly sobering to witness the specific challenges facing people with albinism in Tanzania. I was distantly aware of the visual impairment that arises in albinism—and I knew skin cancer was a risk—but I didn’t understand how severely these problems manifest in that part of the world. I learned so much about the wider discrimination that people with albinism are forced to navigate—the myths and suspicions, the lies and misconceptions.

Increasingly, though, I saw those barriers breaking down. The expectations I had taken with me to Tanzania—of destitution and struggle—began to crumble, or at least seem incomplete. All around us was hospitality and joy! Members of the community would stop by, curious, and watch as we worked, collecting water from the very tanks we were painting. There was constant interaction, an unexpected rapport.

Once the renovations were over, the workshops began. In the art workshop, there was a young boy with albinism whose hand had been amputated in a ritual attack; it was humbling to see how he worked with his pencil and paintbrush, producing the most beautiful drawings. His resilience and resourcefulness—his determination to succeed and hone his skills even in the wake of trauma—stayed with me.” Kevin Arulrajah

It was beautiful to see all the participants improving their abilities without any pressure to be ranked or ‘outperform’ one another. More than anything, it felt like an opportunity (and a catalyst) for greater integration, not competition. People with and without albinism were working alongside each other, and any divisions—if they were there to start with—quickly slipped away.

I was overwhelmed by what Standing Voice has managed to build on the ground in Tanzania: the organisation, the teams, the infrastructure. It’s challenging to deliver workshops in an environment with fewer resources than we’re used to in the UK, but people are so self-sufficient and the team is so capable, it never feels like a limitation. “There is always a solution!” was a phrase I always heard.

The first person with albinism I met was Paschal. Abandoned by his family and almost murdered by his cousin, Paschal spent much of his life as an outcast on the fringes of an already impoverished community. In his darkest days, he drank battery acid in an effort to end his own life. Knowing that history, and seeing Paschal participate so gleefully in the Summer Skills Workshop—as an included, respected, and valued contributor—made me understand why Standing Voice is so important. It crystallised, in one person, my reason for going to Tanzania.