Impact Stories
& Lived Experience

I just knew I was changing, and no one around me had answers. People asked questions about my skin every day, and I had none to give, because I was still searching for them myself.

I live with vitiligo. I call it vitiz — my own way of naming it, claiming it, and making it familiar. The name came from vitiligo, but the choice was mine. At the time, though, what mattered most was not the name, but the feeling of being different, exposed, and alone. There were no visible spaces offering information, care, or community for people like me. That absence shaped how I saw myself.

I stopped imagining a future.

I truly believed I didn’t have one. I thought I had already failed at life before it even began, simply because no one could tell me how to live with vitiz or how to move through the world with confidence. I started hiding. I avoided people. Isolation became a way of surviving. Being alone felt safer than facing stares, whispers, and explanations I was exhausted from giving.

Then one day, Martin from Muundo called me. He asked how I was doing. He asked how I was marking World Vitiligo Day. He asked if we could meet, not to fix me or study me, but just to talk. That conversation shifted something in me.

For the first time, I wasn’t explaining my existence. I was being listened to. Through Muundo, I began meeting other people living with vitiz. People who understood without needing long explanations. People who showed me how to communicate, not only with those who shared my condition, but with the wider world.

Inside that community, I learned confidence in a safe space first. Slowly, I carried that confidence with me into public life. Visibility was still difficult. I am honest about that. Even now, public spaces can make me anxious. Many people still don’t understand vitiligo.

Often, it feels like we are expected to justify ourselves or explain our skin before anything else. But Muundo helped me understand that visibility does not have to mean exposure. It can mean agency. Being visible through art, conversations, shared spaces, and public engagement allowed me to reclaim control over how I was seen. I was no longer being looked at. I was standing.

One of the moments that shaped me most was the Cultural Exchange Excursion to West Nile, organized by Muundo in 2023. It brought together people with vitiz and people without, across generations and communities. We traveled, met local groups, exchanged stories, and sat in conversations that were honest and grounding. I met people who had lived with vitiligo longer than I had. They carried wisdom instead of fear, and perspective instead of silence. That experience changed how I saw my future and what was possible within it.

That realization stayed with me.

When modeling entered my life, it didn’t feel accidental. It felt prepared. By then, I had learned how to carry myself, how to walk into a room without shrinking, and how to trust that my skin did not reduce my worth. Muundo did not make me a model, but it helped me become someone who could take up space without apology.

Today, I am still growing. I am still learning. I am becoming better, not in spite of my skin, but in it. Vitiz is not something I need to overcome to be powerful. It is part of how I understand strength.