On being differently-abled, leadership and love: An interview with Victo Nalule

The first thing you notice about Victo Nalule is not that she’s differently abled or in a wheel chair; it’s her smile. As you get to know her journey through leadership and love, you realize just how inspiring this bright woman is.

Working at a university, many of my friends joke with me that summers must be slow and relaxing. My response is usually a (half-crazy or sleep deprived) laugh. No, my summers are not slow and lazy; they are long but exciting days as my office works our way through hosting the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.

On June 19th when the Fellows arrived, I had little idea just how incredible and inspiring these 25 young African leaders would be. Now, six weeks and a full heart of memories later, I continue to be impressed by each of them. And while I wish I had the time to write a story on each of them, one of the stories I knew I had to write is none other than the beautifully bright and optimistic Victo Nalule.

Victo “Vicky” Nalule flew into my life all the way from Kampala, Uganda. The first thing I noticed about Vicky was not what you would think upon meeting this powerhouse of a woman who is “differently abled” and in a wheelchair; it was her smile.

There’s something that’s so incredibly infectious about Vicky’s smile and how it lights up the entire room. But more on that later.

On being differently-abled

To be quite honest with you, I never really had any deep interactions with someone who was differently abled before meeting Vicky. Not only has she changed my mind on what it means for someone to have a disability, but also what I can do in my own life and how I should live it.

“Differently abled is one of the terms we’re using all over Africa,” Vicky told me. “Disabled was like you were a machine which was disabled and you can’t do anything. The perception is that it has to be fixed or something like that. Because of this fight, the differently abled or a person with a disability (that’s the main term around the world) can say ‘I have one disability, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have other abilities.’”

“Differently abled, it empowers you to know that I am this, but I can do so many other things, just like you. You don’t do everything, but you do the things that you’re abled to do.”

Vicky tells me the story of Chad, one Nebraskan she met here during her time at the Mandela Washington Fellowship Institute, whose story and legacy will continue to inspire her even after she returns home.

Chad has a physical disability who is also in a wheelchair. He can’t talk either and has several other challenges. But that’s not what defines him; Chad is an artist, a photographer.

“Just, wow,” Vicky says as she begins his story. “Despite his challenges, he has been living this life of purpose of having picture and drawings, and selling them. If someone like him can do that, who can’t talk and has a physical disability and all the many things, you say, ‘What about you who is just sitting in a wheelchair? What excuse are you going to give, that I didn’t do anything in this world because I’m in a wheelchair?”

At this point in our chat, all I can think in my head is, Wow. Here is this cheerful woman who looks not at what challenges someone has, but how they have overcome it and what they have accomplished since.

She does not look at others in pity; she embraces and celebrates their success. More importantly, she finds a way to learn from them.

What about me, who is sitting here without any physical restrictions, what excuse I am going to give for not making an impact on this world?

After a meeting with Vicky, you can’t help but to feel inspired to go out and make a change in the world.

But she tells me that her outlook wasn’t always this way; she used to be a crier, have low self-esteem and look down on herself. It has been a journey for her, and as I soon learn, there were many other challenges to overcome for herself.

“I grew up really in different families, all over, because my dad died when I was really young, and my mom died when I was around ten years old. Especially the big sisters on the side of my dad, they’re the ones who were taking care of us and the brothers.”

That is how Vicky begins her story for me. Although her story is an uphill one, it is an uplifting one.

She goes on to tell me there were three key turning points in her young primary school life, the very first of which marked the beginning of her education and going to school. One day, after her family moved to a new neighborhood, the local pastor came to visit and was shocked Vicky was not in school. The pastor explained to Vicky’s mother that her disability did not prevent her from going to school, and soon after she was signed up for primary school.

At her primary school, Vicky explains that there are several other children with a disability, but they don’t let it stop them from doing anything. When the younger students enter, they are paired with an older student who is like their parent, helping them with everyday tasks like going to the bathroom or washing clothes. Vicky’s “mother” was named Olivia, and she was differently abled because she was missing hands; her arms stopped about halfway to her elbow, but that didn’t stop her.

“She used to tell me, ‘You have to do this! You can do this. We have to go.’ I think she really moved my perception about life. I feel like before I went to school, my mom was like maybe I [Vicky] was the only one with a major disability. But reaching there, you could see people with totally different disabilities and they surprise you how they could do most things, like my mom Olivia.”

Sometimes, when Vicky faced hard times, she felt like it was impossible to overcome or unfair. When her birth mother passed away in primary school, she tells me that it was a dark time for her. But the light returned thanks to her mother's sister Eva Nattabi, who helped Vicky realize her mother was at peace. She recalls fondly how Eva and her friends would work together to bring home snacks for Vicky after school and how much she helped her.

Another turning point in her early years, Vicky informs me, is when she met Elizabeth. It seems that Vicky, despite becoming an orphan at a young age from her birth parents, was blessed with many mothers in her life. In addition to Eva, Olivia and other family who looked after her, Vicky looks up to Elizabeth, an Englander who would guide her through many transitions in life.

“I met this lady, Elizabeth, and she used to always bring us to church and I could go back with them sometimes. One day, she was asking me, ‘Do you want to walk?’ and I said yes! So she talked with her friends and they helped sponsor my operation in the hospital to help me really walk.”

Unfortunately, however, the surgery brought a lot of pain with it, so much so that Vicky regretting saying yes at times. Sometimes the pain became too intense for Vicky to concentrate at school. But Vicky says Elizabeth was always there for her, even when she was back in England.

At primary school, she slowly grew used to the pain, and thanks to Olivia’s help, she found many friends who could help her throughout school and stairs. In fact, Vicky went on to become a “mother” herself, helping guide younger children at school through their disabilities.

Elizabeth was also there when Vicky transitioned to secondary school; she had a friend at another school that was outside of the city but felt that Vicky would benefit greatly at. As she got into the car to go to her new school, Vicky was struck by how far the school was from her home. The other catch—this school was not specially prepared for differently abled students, and it has stairs everywhere.

"I think that Elizabeth was sent by God to be in my life. For both of us. I got through my challenges in life with the love of God, and Elizabeth was sent like an angel for me."

Despite her initial challenges, Vicky went on to succeed, too, at secondary school. She refused to go to science classes at first since they were on the opposite end of the school complex and people would forget to help her to class. Instead, she devoted herself to reading books, especially the novels the higher levels would read. This, she explains to me, is how she met students at school and made many friends. One of those friends who made a lasting impact on Vicky’s life was Robert.

“One day, Robert told me that back home, there was a lady who is differently abled and is a doctor. But she was weaker and couldn’t do everything I can. He told me, ‘Now you, who has strong hands, who can do all these things, you’re here playing around. You know that you can also become someone in life? So stop pitying yourself and thinking you can’t do this.’ And I was like okay. I thought about it and he was right, so we studied together and I went through [secondary school and sciences] and passed, and went to university.”

“I advise people to be open-minded when you meet a differently abled person. It is until you’re open to this person, that’s when you get to know how talented this person is.”

In university, Vicky refused to let her different abilities limit her activities. She joined sports, was a member of the chess team, joined the student government and represented students with disabilities on the Guild. Even in the short span she was there, she left her mark on the university, leading a change to add ramps around campus and the student dorms and securing accessible classrooms for her peers.

“Getting awareness out there, that we have different types of disabilities and some of them need certain types of attention, that’s my target. But going forward, I would advise when you see someone with a disability, just treat them normally like any other person.”

The relentless energy that she discovered in herself along her journey through schooling is the same that has encouraged others to make a change, such as her current employment in Safety, Environment and Health who moved to a lower building to accommodate her different abilities. It is also the same passion that she dedicates to her nonprofit organization, Tunaweza Foundation, which aims to empower differently abled humans.

On leadership

“For me, every time I hear the word ‘leadership’, it means servant. Someone who is there to help, to serve the other party. That’s the leadership.”

It’s this servant leadership style that has spurred Vicky to create the Tunaweza Foundation. Before starting the organization, Vicky started a project called the “Young, Enterprising and Able” (YEA). According to her, the project focused on giving entrepreneurship training to those who are differently abled to show the outside world that these are not disabled people, but young, enterprising leaders.

Eventually, Vicky and her team decided that YEA had outgrown its entrepreneurship focus; they wanted to make a nonprofit organization that was larger and included YEA as a sub-project.

“Tunaweza means ‘We can’ in Swahili. The inspiration was from an African language because we wanted to make it African. We felt that we needed to focus not just on the country we’re in, but on the meaning we wanted to put in and using a local language.”

“Leadership is being a servant. It’s about seeing these people growing and leading them to become a healthy being.”

As the executive director and one of its founders, Tunaweza has given Vicky a chance to exercise her leadership skills that she learned as a human resources management major at university. Although in my undergraduate studies, I had studied a brief introduction of human resource management, it was another thing completely to hear HR and leadership described by Vicky.

“Human resources are leaders because we’re the people who try to work on bringing in the new people. A leader is like a mother and a dad. It’s about seeing these people growing and leading them to a health being. Right now, I’m ready to be a mother and the organization that I’m taking in [Tunaweza], I need to see my children grow into a healthy being.”

After hearing her comparison of leadership to leading a family, I wondered how much her definition stemmed from her personal experiences compared to her academic courses. According to her, it’s both. But the learning does not stop.

The training on Gallup Strengths and the Social Change Model of leadership that Vicky has studied at the Nebraska Institute has added to her understanding of leadership as well. (In case you’re curious, Vicky’s Top 5 Gallup Strengths are Includer, Positivity, Developer, Connectedness, and Empathy).

“Some things I learned seven years ago, I summarized it in a thesis around a family. But I feel like now, I’ve learned the human-centered design part of it. Leadership is about human beings, what we’re doing and whom we’re leading.”

The model of Human-Centered Design that she learned through the Mandela Washington Fellowship Institute is incredibly applicable to the work she does through Tunaweza, including a personal finance group she leads.

In Uganda, Vicky has gathered a group of women and taught them how to save their money and the value to continue growing it. The goal, she explains to me, is not to impose her own way of doing finances, but rather to teach them what the women want to know. She’s already seen how excited the women are after they’ve saved their money to make bags to sell for profit, and how careful they are after understanding the effort behind the funds. The key to their success and serving as the leader, she says, is understanding the human in her and those she serves.

“Be a human being,” she advises for future leaders. “Treat others as human beings. As a leader, you need to bring that humanity in you and know that there will be some challenges on your team, but it’s finding how do we bring these humans together.”

On love

At one point in our conversation, Vicky informs me it’s time to talk about love.

Love. It’s such a simple, four letter word, yet it carries so much meaning and weight and different definitions for those who use it. I wonder how Vicky defines love, especially of the romantic kind.

“I think true love takes time,” she declares. “For me, I treat myself like I’m just like every other person. I try to show the other person my confidence. But if someone tells me ‘I love you’ and I don’t back, I don’t say it. Some say that telling someone ‘I don’t love you’ is a crime, but if I don’t have your feelings on the other side, I have that right as a human being to decide what I want, especially in the terms of love.”

No matter her age, no matter that she's differently abled, Vicky is not going to just settle for any man and get married because others think she should. She’s determined to take her time to fall in love and find the one to be with.

Naturally, of course, my next question is: Has she ever been in love before?

“Yeah, I’ve been in love,” she giggles to me. “I’ve been in love with many different people.”

Vicky tells me there was one man whom she fell truly in love with, with her soul, but it didn't work out. She and others know that as a differently-abled person, it's not always easy to overcome the stereotypes society places on her, even if the partner can. Although the break hurt initially when they let it go, Vicky is excited and looking ahead to life.

“I no longer feel that feeling when you’re hurt, it’s all now washed away. I’m waiting for the new life.”

In the meantime, Vicky is already in love with someone else: herself.

“For me, I define self-love as living a life without limits.”

When she was younger, Vicky would often elect to stay home when her family and friends invited to her parties. It was difficult, at times, to be the only person in the wheelchair, to be stuck at the front and have people ask questions about who you are or what happened to you. But, she says, as she continued to grow up, she realized she needed to have more self-love.

One of the turning points for Vicky when she finally started to embrace herself and her own unique beauty happened at a sauna. Before, teenage Vicky was self-conscious about her legs or her body being uneven, taking after her father in looks, etc.

One day, Vicky was struck by a woman who came to the sauna, dressed very smart and beautiful. But as she undressed for the sauna, Vicky realized that the woman also had things that weren’t “perfect” about her body, as we all do. As I do, too.

“What I realized in that moment, is that I am beautiful, she is beautiful. We all have something we don’t like on ourselves; it’s how we dress up and love yourself. That’s what matters.”

In another moment of self-love realization, Vicky confesses to me that there was a point in her life where she never used to smile.

At this point, I laugh: surely she must be joking? If you’ve ever met Vicky, or even see photos of her, such as the ones in this post, you’ll notice that her smile is as bright and present as ever at all times. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s the first thing I noticed about her.

But, no, she assures me that in her teenage years as she was growing up, Vicky refused to smile because she was worried about how big her lips were.

“One day, I smiled in the picture. And oh my god, the pictures came back and the picture was niiice! That’s when I got to know and realized that I’m this beautiful person. From that time on, I smiled.”

I like to consider that I smile a lot myself, and while it may not light up a room like Vicky’s does, I hope that it can bring inspiration to others.

If I’m being honest though, there are some days where a smile doesn’t come so easily to my face, days where I feel a little lonely or left out or different. I ask Vicky how does she deal with these kinds of days that we all face, in our darker moments?

“Despite life’s challenges, you are called to live a life with no limits. That’s my message.”

“You get to know who you are as a person. If you know your purpose and have a hopeful tomorrow, you let go of what’s around you and you move forward to that purpose.”

To find our purpose, is a hard question to answer. But Vicky’s simple answer is to do what you love most of the time. According to her, when you do what brings you joy, it inspires others.

My final question for Vicky, after all of the lessons we’ve discussed on her ability, journey, leadership and love, is: What does she want her legacy to be?

It takes her a minute as she mulls over it, but she eventually looks me in the eye with all of her self-confidence and determination, and tells me, “I want to be remembered as a selfless woman who loved with no excuse, lived with no limits, and impacted as many lives as possible in what I’m doing.”

That, my dear readers, is a legacy and life truly worth living.

What I’ve learned from Vicky

As our one-hour interview turned into a three-hour conversation and dinner, I barely felt the time passing. Vicky is one of those people who you can talk with for hours (clearly), and still find new things to talk about or learn new nuggets of wisdom from. Although I’ve had the joy to see her almost daily in the last six weeks, I know I’ll continue to learn lessons from Vicky long after she departs UNL’s campus (at least for now).

In particular, I’ve learned:

1. Live a life without limits because there is no excuse to not go out into the world and leave your impact if others are doing it.
2. Always keep the people, your fellow human beings, at the center of decisions you make as a leader.
3. True love takes time; get to know those around you and yourself to find a love with all your soul.

Thank you, my dear Vicky, for sharing all of your words of wisdom and uplifting story. It has truly been a joy to get to know you in the last six weeks on the Mandela Washington Fellowship at UNL, and I look forward to staying in touch with you no matter where in the world we end up.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a sub-grantee of IREX and is implementing a U.S.-based Leadership Institute as part of the Fellowship. For more information about the Mandela Washington Fellowship, please visit yali.state.gov/mwf.

To stay inspired by Vicky and her organization, follow her on Twitter at @VictoNalule and her organization @TunawezaO.