Jim Entwistle meets a feisty ten-year-old schoolgirl with albinism who is determined not to let the condition dominate her life.

VICKY JACKSON applies sun screen as part of her daily routine. A minimum of sun factor 25, every day, even in the depths of winter. Otherwise, the ten-year-old’s pigment-free skin would burn, even in the weakest rays of sun.

The ten-year-old is a beautiful little girl, with poker-straight, ice white hair and big blue eyes. Her striking appearance is the result of a genetic condition which affects one in 17,000 people, a condition that many will have heard of, but very few understand – albinism.

Most people would refer to Vicky as “an albino”, but there is a movement away from this term, which evokes images of white rabbits with red eyes. To brand a person an albino is to brand them an anomaly, an abnormality, a freak.

Vicky, from Hummersknott Avenue in Darlington, is not unaccustomed to insensitive reactions because of the way she looks, although for every person who stares in the street, there is another standing there in admiration.

But speaking to Vicky it becomes obvious just how difficult it must be to be a child growing up with a condition that affects not only appearance, but also has a serious impact on eyesight.

Vicky is registered partially-sighted and will never be allowed to drive, for reasons she wholly understands.

“I could be driving along really fast and not see the slow sign,” she says.

The poor eyesight is caused by a lack of melanin in her body. Melanin is the pigment which controls a person’s skin and hair colour and is crucial in the formation of eyes.

It is her inability to see properly that Vicky attributes to a difficult start to her life in school. “When I was little, I didn’t have a best friend,”

Vicky says. “I think it was because I didn’t like games. If I played tig, I couldn’t see the people chasing me and if I played hide and seek, I would walk right past people.

“There was a time when I didn’t really like playing with anyone because I couldn’t join in. I just walked around by myself. I didn’t want to play because I knew I wouldn’t be very good at it.”

But although she found adjusting to school life difficult at first, Vicky found ways of dealing with the problems posed by her condition that astounded her mother, Ann Marie.

“I couldn’t believe how well she adapted. When she went to nursery she knew which child was arriving because she learnt the colour and shape of their parent’s cars. She was taking it all in,” says Ann Marie.

“From an early age she would remember what people were wearing.

That was fine at first, but it created problems when she started school where everyone was in uniform.

Now she knows everyone by their hair.”

“I know who people are by where they are in the playground and who they are with,” says Vicky.

She wants to be an author or poet when she is older. The top-set student has already made a start and has put together a collection of poetry which she plans to sell to raise money for the Albinism Fellowship, the charity that provides support and increases awareness of the condition.

She hopes to raise more money on Saturday evening when she will get up on stage to sing Heather Small’s Proud at The Crown Inn in Manfield, near Darlington, during a beer and music festival.

Vicky’s life has been made difficult enough by the symptoms of her condition, but it is other people’s reactions to her that most upset her.

Ann Marie says: “At Beamish a couple of weeks ago she just turned to me and said ‘can we go? Those boys are staring at me’. She was really uncomfortable with it, really aware of it.

The stares and under-the-breath mutterings betray society’s view of albinism as an abnormality. But that’s society’s problem, not Vicky’s.

Her condition has thrown a range of challenges at her, challenges which the vast majority of children will never have to face. But each time a barrier is put in her way, she finds a way around it. Now, instead of avoiding sports because she struggles to master them, she joins in regardless.

“I enjoy playing tennis, but I don’t hit the ball very much,” she says.

“People say to me, if you’re not very good at something then how can you enjoy it? But I like trying – sometimes I hit the ball.”

■ For more information, visit albinism.org.uk. Vicky’s poetry book will be on sale in aid of the society at The Crown on Saturday and is also available by emailing ann_mariejackson@hotmail.com

WHAT IS YELLOW?

Yellow is the sun

Shining like mad

Yellow is sand

Dotted about

Yellow is happy

And makes you

Smile when you’re down

Yellow is a stinging hornet

Striped with black

Yellow is a Smiley

Sticker making

You proud

Custard, bananas,

Lemons too, all of

These are yellow and

Good to eat

Nearly everything

Is yellow

Don’t you see?

Vicky Jackson