People I know don't die. That was me. Just about five years ago. But people die all the time. I just couldn't think of people in my family. Dying. I mean who? Then on 20 February 2010, my grandmother died. Like, yes, she died. She has been dead for three years now. The most important person in my life had died. At least that's how it felt then. Perhaps it still does. And I started dying. Slowly. Inside. My therapy sessions intensified. I went on to psychiatric medication. I got lost in my world. I became dead to life. A part of me is dead. With my grandmother.
Oh shit! For a year, I lived in fear of losing someone else. But I knew no one else in my family was going to die. I thought of all of them. From my eldest uncle to youngest nephew. No, they can't die. At least grandma was old. Old people die. Eventually. But then on 22 April 2012, my uncle died. Just like that. Then I lost it. I developed a death pattern in my head. Scary as shit. People in my family die between January and April in alternate years. Many years ago, my grandfather had died. 1 March 1992. My now-dead uncle's wife is dead. 28 January 2007. But that is it. These were unusual deaths and I had come to terms with the fact that sometimes a person dies, then another, after many years. At least in my family.
14 April 2013 my aunt died. See? January- April. But this time a year wasn't over. Again, I went back to that most-important-person-in-my-life feeling. I have not found reason for her death yet. And I don't buy 'we loved you but God loved you most' style of erasing grief. I cry when I think of her. She was my grandmother's gift to me. My grandmother told me, two months before she died, that I should take care of my aunt. I wanted to. I didn't get a chance. But in my dreams I have communed with her. We have been talking. She is fine but I don't know if I trust her.
So, when people die in succession, you are forced to relive a certain kind of trauma. My friend died last week. I do not know how to think of her in isolation. I do not know how to see one death as unrelated to all the deaths in my life. The pain feels equally excruciating. The pain always feels recent. That all too familiar fear. Who next? Where do souls really go to when people die? Forget all the mythologizing about purgatory and all. Where do these souls go? Are they safe? Lonely? What exactly happens? When people die.
This fear is regardless of whether it's people you know that die or whether it's that perfect stranger with whom you become intimate. This familiar stranger with whom you've connected with through say art, politics, music, mutual suffering, proximity, whatever. Then the stranger dies. And you are back to that feeling. You are back to connecting so many deaths that your heart breaks with every recounting. Chiwoniso Maraire is dead. And yes, I am in pain. I wonder if she is fine. It doesn't matter that she is so many things to so many people but she is Chiwoniso Maraire, a soul sister, a gift, a traveller who has travelled onto the other side. She is dead and a part of me has died. With her. Because death has chosen to destabilize my centre. I have died so many times in this life with death. I fear. Mwari vaita kuda kwavo .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdyWMa0rHow
Friday, July 26, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Wishful Thinking
i want to hold you even in a dream
i want to wake up with my hand shaking your heart
My thigh reaching for the place
between which your thighs meet
i want to hold you
Run away with you
if the gods asked me what i wanted, that's what i'd say
i want to wake up with my hand shaking your heart
My thigh reaching for the place
between which your thighs meet
i want to hold you
Run away with you
if the gods asked me what i wanted, that's what i'd say
i want to listen to the silence in your snores
the loud silence of your dreams
i want to walk in the traces of your subconscious
dreaming with you
everyday
A Girl Called Kathy is Dead
"It is ok luv am here its fun"
July 6th two thousand and thirteen
In a series of texts between you and I
Kathy
But let's rewind
The time is around seventeen after nine
The Place? Club Envy, Tom Mboya Street
Nairobi
But Kathy your curiousity
About me is a thing familiar to my body
My nipples have learnt to tuck themselves in
Everyday
And the composition of things
In my pants doesn't know what exactly to do
When spaces question my biology
Kathy
But your kind of questioning
Has a genuine curiosity that I will indulge
0727 16... number saved
Buzz
I am not sure what we have become
By our fifth night of hanging
And you are Kathy Envy in my contacts' list
Apt
Secrets we've sworn never to tell
Emotional intimacies with a lustful lining
We know the love in our talk so
Forbidden
But let's take risks Kathy
In ways that we all always have
Tell me about your latest shag friend
Trusting
Let's press Fast Forward Kathy
Our audience has that all too familiar curiosity
And we needn't keep them here
Lusting
July Seventeenth eight fifty-one
"Sorry the mobile subscriber cannot be reached"
Answer your phone Kathy, damn it!
Silence.
Formalin doesn't smell like a scent you'd wear
For six nights you have been in this
Including the weekend, who knew Kathy?
Dead.
And I sit here calling Kathy Envy
She will tell me about her death I know
She's been mad with me before
Damn!
July 6th two thousand and thirteen
In a series of texts between you and I
Kathy
But let's rewind
The time is around seventeen after nine
The Place? Club Envy, Tom Mboya Street
Nairobi
But Kathy your curiousity
About me is a thing familiar to my body
My nipples have learnt to tuck themselves in
Everyday
And the composition of things
In my pants doesn't know what exactly to do
When spaces question my biology
Kathy
But your kind of questioning
Has a genuine curiosity that I will indulge
0727 16... number saved
Buzz
I am not sure what we have become
By our fifth night of hanging
And you are Kathy Envy in my contacts' list
Apt
Secrets we've sworn never to tell
Emotional intimacies with a lustful lining
We know the love in our talk so
Forbidden
But let's take risks Kathy
In ways that we all always have
Tell me about your latest shag friend
Trusting
Let's press Fast Forward Kathy
Our audience has that all too familiar curiosity
And we needn't keep them here
Lusting
July Seventeenth eight fifty-one
"Sorry the mobile subscriber cannot be reached"
Answer your phone Kathy, damn it!
Silence.
Formalin doesn't smell like a scent you'd wear
For six nights you have been in this
Including the weekend, who knew Kathy?
Dead.
And I sit here calling Kathy Envy
She will tell me about her death I know
She's been mad with me before
Damn!
Thursday, June 27, 2013
AUDREY MBUGUA IS IN THE NEWS (AGAIN): BE/BECOMING/BEING TRANSGENDER IN KENYA
So, the Kenyan state, and almost the entire nation, is going insane over Audrey Mbugua's court case against the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) and the Attorney General's Office. Interesting. Indeed, Audrey Mbugua is not new to gender identity controversies and the corridors of justice. She has been in the Kenyan news for a while now. A few years back she was suing the then Minister for Health, Prof. Anyang' Nyong'o because the biggest government hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital denied her request for gender re-assignment surgery. No one would do it. It was not right, they argued. The doctors hands were tied, as they say. Tied by what/who exactly? Please ask me another. I do not know. Audrey, being Audrey, is back. With more viciousness. She is more annoying now, as the 'national' mood shows. She is that person that is distressing the state. But she is getting all the attention. Anyway.
Audrey has revealed her previous name. She was born Andrew. She sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) as Andrew Mbugua in 2001. But she is not Andrew. Not anymore. She is Audrey. A woman. A transwoman. So, why is it so difficult for the concerned authorities to change her papers to reflect the person that she is now? I will tell you why. But in a bit. Audrey is not employable. Audrey does not exist as a Kenyan. She is not registered with the Registrar of Births. Because I mean, Audrey came to be. She became. She was not born at the same time as Andrew. Or may be she actually was, only known by something else then. But then, Andrew does not exist either. He stopped existing when Audrey came to be. It is called transitioning. One ceases, another begins. Sometimes they exist separately at a given historical moment in one's life. Sometimes they co-exist as one. So, when Andrew became Audrey Kenya lost it. It is sickening. It is disgusting according to the 'God-this' Nazis. But then one wonders, where did Audrey come from? In a country where sexual diversity and all things SOGI are discredited by arguments around what is 'African', 'natural' and often 'religious'/moral, it is so ironic that we don't marvel at the many dynamics and gymnastics of 'nature'. Instead, as a country, we are so caught up in our own hypocrisy to ever be bothered with stepping out of our own prejudices, even for a second, before we can get euphoric about others' identities.
You see what shocks me most is that we refuse to engage with our own sex/sexual/sexuality inconsistencies. We refuse to think of sexuality as a continuum. We refuse to engage with what the sexual and bodily practices we ourselves engage in might mean in another's life. But why am I posing this as something new. That's how heteropatriarchal normativity works. People have to be put in place lest they destabilize the order of things. We must have binaries for patriarchal power to validate itself and to work with minimum interference. Men have to be men and women must remain women.And when one is born with ambiguous genitalia/intersex in the midst of the parents whispers, the doctors have to 'correct' that. I mean how dare you be both? What are you gonna be once you grow up? Man or woman? So, one has to be either, albeit without their consent. Now if we are so biased against intersex persons, tell me how we can even begin to imagine gender transitioning! How dare a man desire to be a woman? And vice versa? "That's not a man", "Some men should get balls", "This Andrew man is such an embarrassment". All these are comments I have seen being thrown around on that noisy place called the internet. But strangely I do understand these kinds of reactions. I can smell misogyny even before it knocks the door. Women are hated. Audrey is giving certain masculinities a bad name by rejecting them. Most men, as tokens of heteropatriarchy, do believe that being male-bodied and being a man are the greatest honour that 'nature' -in collusion with all systems of patriarchy- has put in place. At least they are men. They can be poor or whatever but they are men. They are better than poor women. And Audrey rejects that? She is putting masculinities on the spot. How dare she? Oh how fragile! And these systems need to stay in place for oppression to work effectively.
So, people, I mean human beings, those creations of nature, can only be one or the other. Human beings, the entire freaking human race, can only be millions and millions of men and women. Really? Is that even possible? May be I just don't know much but I know for sure this is by no means possible. I mean how? In my mind, no one and absolutely no one is born a man or woman. If you think I am lying ask Simone de Beauvoir. (You see, it really helps to read. Just try). Because people are born male, female, both and neither/nor. That is at a biological level which is often flawed anyway. Thanks to Medicine's prejudice.
But let's go the Medical way for a minute. There are way too many medical theories about why people are transgender. These differ depending on the lens that we choose to use. So now, as I suspect was the case with Audrey before the transition from Male to Female (MTF), psychologists may not agree with biologists for instance on one's bodily geography and their psyche. And I have heard the name Audrey being mentioned in the same sentence with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and she seems to comfortably use the term 'diagnosis'. That pathologization makes me really uncomfortable but well may be that's one strategy if you live in a country called Kenya and you have to feign some form of mental illness to live in your skin. I mean you must be mad to think 'God is a fool'. And that marks one of the problems with medicine but also sets a perfect analogy of transgender and/or transsexual persons. So, for the sake of all these Kenyans trolling on the internet (#KOT, for instance) and mainstream media (Have you ever listened to Maina Kageni and Daniel "King'ang'i" Ndambuki bully people on Classic 105?), I will use this rather unfortunate analogy. Let's say, for the sake of illustration, that the biologist represents your male body and that's all there is to declare you a man. The psychologist, on the other hand, reads your mind and thought patterns that are incongruent with your male body and that do not agree with your being a man. Your psyche screams, 'woman' not 'man'; even though you are male-bodied. The result is DISAGREEMENT; between your internal and your external self. The biological cannot in essence reflect your psychological. Now that is what it means to be transgender. Got it? I know I oversimplified it. It is rather complex.
So now, Audrey Mbugua is MTF and is no longer a man; she is a woman. A transwoman. Because somehow she has managed to reconcile her physical expression with her real gender identity. She is a woman. Oh, before people start asking me silly questions about her body, let me say one thing. I don't know. Whether she has had gender reassignment surgery/ other medical procedures or not, that is not what we should be focusing on. When people ask me about my genitalia I have learnt to ask them about theirs before I can answer. It makes them uncomfortable and that settles it. I know so many Transpersons who are not even on hormonal treatment (yet)...flip, this shit is expensive!! Some medics have speculated (yes, I said speculate) that fluctuations or imbalances in hormones or the use of certain medications during pregnancy may cause intersex or transgender 'conditions'. Other research indicates that there are links between transgender identity and brain structure. Biologists tell us that sex is a complicated matter, much more complex than what we may have been taught in school. Well, if you went to school in Kenya, you know these things were never (to be) unpacked. They were given. Shoot! I have imbibed a lot of bullcrap in the name of education but well, I have had to unlearn and re-learn (more like teach myself) various other truths.
So in Biology (which I eventually had to quit because Mr. Kariuki couldn't stand me), we were taught that a person who has XX chromosomes is generally considered female, while a person with XY chromosomes is generally considered male. Great, that was a settled case. But only for a while. Only for the time I hadn't started teaching myself. So, in my home-based self-taught biology classes, I learnt that there are also people who have XXY, XYY, and other variations of chromosomes for which genetic differences may or may not be visibly apparent or known to the person. On further reading and stumbling upon bits and pieces of isolated information, I also realised that there are some people who are born with XY chromosomes, but are unable to respond to testosterone (that thing has the potential to mess up your mind in a month....or at least that's what the transmen in my life tell me) and therefore develop bodies with a vagina and breasts, rather than a penis and testes. Anyway, let's just say that a variation in gender is by all means part of the natural order and there are more varieties than we generally realize.
So, now back to Audrey and Kenya and you have so much crap to sail through before you can successfully, or at least bearably, walk around the streets with a repulsive body without all the self-appointed Deputy Gods stoning you with cursing eyes.
Let's see how I make it through Tom Mboya today.
Audrey has revealed her previous name. She was born Andrew. She sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) as Andrew Mbugua in 2001. But she is not Andrew. Not anymore. She is Audrey. A woman. A transwoman. So, why is it so difficult for the concerned authorities to change her papers to reflect the person that she is now? I will tell you why. But in a bit. Audrey is not employable. Audrey does not exist as a Kenyan. She is not registered with the Registrar of Births. Because I mean, Audrey came to be. She became. She was not born at the same time as Andrew. Or may be she actually was, only known by something else then. But then, Andrew does not exist either. He stopped existing when Audrey came to be. It is called transitioning. One ceases, another begins. Sometimes they exist separately at a given historical moment in one's life. Sometimes they co-exist as one. So, when Andrew became Audrey Kenya lost it. It is sickening. It is disgusting according to the 'God-this' Nazis. But then one wonders, where did Audrey come from? In a country where sexual diversity and all things SOGI are discredited by arguments around what is 'African', 'natural' and often 'religious'/moral, it is so ironic that we don't marvel at the many dynamics and gymnastics of 'nature'. Instead, as a country, we are so caught up in our own hypocrisy to ever be bothered with stepping out of our own prejudices, even for a second, before we can get euphoric about others' identities.
You see what shocks me most is that we refuse to engage with our own sex/sexual/sexuality inconsistencies. We refuse to think of sexuality as a continuum. We refuse to engage with what the sexual and bodily practices we ourselves engage in might mean in another's life. But why am I posing this as something new. That's how heteropatriarchal normativity works. People have to be put in place lest they destabilize the order of things. We must have binaries for patriarchal power to validate itself and to work with minimum interference. Men have to be men and women must remain women.And when one is born with ambiguous genitalia/intersex in the midst of the parents whispers, the doctors have to 'correct' that. I mean how dare you be both? What are you gonna be once you grow up? Man or woman? So, one has to be either, albeit without their consent. Now if we are so biased against intersex persons, tell me how we can even begin to imagine gender transitioning! How dare a man desire to be a woman? And vice versa? "That's not a man", "Some men should get balls", "This Andrew man is such an embarrassment". All these are comments I have seen being thrown around on that noisy place called the internet. But strangely I do understand these kinds of reactions. I can smell misogyny even before it knocks the door. Women are hated. Audrey is giving certain masculinities a bad name by rejecting them. Most men, as tokens of heteropatriarchy, do believe that being male-bodied and being a man are the greatest honour that 'nature' -in collusion with all systems of patriarchy- has put in place. At least they are men. They can be poor or whatever but they are men. They are better than poor women. And Audrey rejects that? She is putting masculinities on the spot. How dare she? Oh how fragile! And these systems need to stay in place for oppression to work effectively.
So, people, I mean human beings, those creations of nature, can only be one or the other. Human beings, the entire freaking human race, can only be millions and millions of men and women. Really? Is that even possible? May be I just don't know much but I know for sure this is by no means possible. I mean how? In my mind, no one and absolutely no one is born a man or woman. If you think I am lying ask Simone de Beauvoir. (You see, it really helps to read. Just try). Because people are born male, female, both and neither/nor. That is at a biological level which is often flawed anyway. Thanks to Medicine's prejudice.
But let's go the Medical way for a minute. There are way too many medical theories about why people are transgender. These differ depending on the lens that we choose to use. So now, as I suspect was the case with Audrey before the transition from Male to Female (MTF), psychologists may not agree with biologists for instance on one's bodily geography and their psyche. And I have heard the name Audrey being mentioned in the same sentence with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and she seems to comfortably use the term 'diagnosis'. That pathologization makes me really uncomfortable but well may be that's one strategy if you live in a country called Kenya and you have to feign some form of mental illness to live in your skin. I mean you must be mad to think 'God is a fool'. And that marks one of the problems with medicine but also sets a perfect analogy of transgender and/or transsexual persons. So, for the sake of all these Kenyans trolling on the internet (#KOT, for instance) and mainstream media (Have you ever listened to Maina Kageni and Daniel "King'ang'i" Ndambuki bully people on Classic 105?), I will use this rather unfortunate analogy. Let's say, for the sake of illustration, that the biologist represents your male body and that's all there is to declare you a man. The psychologist, on the other hand, reads your mind and thought patterns that are incongruent with your male body and that do not agree with your being a man. Your psyche screams, 'woman' not 'man'; even though you are male-bodied. The result is DISAGREEMENT; between your internal and your external self. The biological cannot in essence reflect your psychological. Now that is what it means to be transgender. Got it? I know I oversimplified it. It is rather complex.
So now, Audrey Mbugua is MTF and is no longer a man; she is a woman. A transwoman. Because somehow she has managed to reconcile her physical expression with her real gender identity. She is a woman. Oh, before people start asking me silly questions about her body, let me say one thing. I don't know. Whether she has had gender reassignment surgery/ other medical procedures or not, that is not what we should be focusing on. When people ask me about my genitalia I have learnt to ask them about theirs before I can answer. It makes them uncomfortable and that settles it. I know so many Transpersons who are not even on hormonal treatment (yet)...flip, this shit is expensive!! Some medics have speculated (yes, I said speculate) that fluctuations or imbalances in hormones or the use of certain medications during pregnancy may cause intersex or transgender 'conditions'. Other research indicates that there are links between transgender identity and brain structure. Biologists tell us that sex is a complicated matter, much more complex than what we may have been taught in school. Well, if you went to school in Kenya, you know these things were never (to be) unpacked. They were given. Shoot! I have imbibed a lot of bullcrap in the name of education but well, I have had to unlearn and re-learn (more like teach myself) various other truths.
So in Biology (which I eventually had to quit because Mr. Kariuki couldn't stand me), we were taught that a person who has XX chromosomes is generally considered female, while a person with XY chromosomes is generally considered male. Great, that was a settled case. But only for a while. Only for the time I hadn't started teaching myself. So, in my home-based self-taught biology classes, I learnt that there are also people who have XXY, XYY, and other variations of chromosomes for which genetic differences may or may not be visibly apparent or known to the person. On further reading and stumbling upon bits and pieces of isolated information, I also realised that there are some people who are born with XY chromosomes, but are unable to respond to testosterone (that thing has the potential to mess up your mind in a month....or at least that's what the transmen in my life tell me) and therefore develop bodies with a vagina and breasts, rather than a penis and testes. Anyway, let's just say that a variation in gender is by all means part of the natural order and there are more varieties than we generally realize.
So, now back to Audrey and Kenya and you have so much crap to sail through before you can successfully, or at least bearably, walk around the streets with a repulsive body without all the self-appointed Deputy Gods stoning you with cursing eyes.
Let's see how I make it through Tom Mboya today.
Monday, May 27, 2013
I dare you to be ambiguous/queer. Anywhere. Say may be in Kenya.
When I first tweeted #KOT (yes, if you don't get Twitter Lingo that's read: Hashtag, Kenyans on Twitter), and cc'd. Dennis Nzioka, Eric Gitari and many others at the beginning of May 2013, I was optimistic. No. I was, in fact, super excited. This was a few days before one of the most important dates on the LGBTI calendar. I mean, May 17th is phenomenal. Well, theoretically this should be huge. Anywhere. Everywhere. Can you imagine beating Medicine at scrapping off homosexuality from their disease/dis-ease list? I mean that was 23 years ago. Surely, we should be far in our thinking by now. Or shouldn't we?
Ok, I am getting derailed.
So, I was saying that I tweeted to check whether there would be any events scheduled for IDAHOT (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia) in Kenya. Sometimes when I say Kenya, I just mean Nairobi. Sorry. And yes, OutInKenya did confirm that the Kenyan chapter of IDAHOT was in the oven. IDAHOBIT: Mbona U Hate?, they called it. So, this was good news for several reasons. Firstly, this was going to be my first major gathering with Queer folk in Kenya. Secondly, since I was going to miss the big ass Johannesburg one organised by my colleagues at Iranti-Org (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FprO7w4GJyg#!) and the FEW (Forum for the Empowerment of Women), I had to come up with a plan. Thirdly, I really really wanted to just hang out with non-conforming Kenyans. I wanted to forge friendships, find chosen family, dance with all the feminine gay boys, lock thighs with 'butches', transmen and the genderqueer. I wanted to be in the moment. I longed for this feeling. In Nairobi.
This was just perfect timing. I had christened the May 13 through May 17 period my Social and Economic Justice week. This was the same week that 'Occupy Parliament' happened. Well, although I had to relive memories of police brutality, come to terms with my 'animals have a soul' mantra in the midst of all the pigs, rethink patriotism, law and order and unpack Kenya's general feeling of apathy, I was glad to be there. I remembered that as a come-back protester in Nairobi, it goes without saying that you do not go to protest without water and a handkerchief. Yes, that includes a peaceful protest. It doesn't matter what you do; some running and tearing will be seen. No, not the famous kind of marathon running. A running of a different kind. Running away from [insert noun].
So when May 17th came, I was up. In time. I wanted to see everything. See queers catwalk into Freedom Corner (this should remind you of Wangari Maathai), Uhuru Park. I wanted to just get there and sit. Watching. So, by nine in the morning, I had my shorts, shirt, waistcoat and tie ready. Immediately my colleagues and I were in a matatu towards the City Centre. But firstly, I had to get my head in order. I had to, for solidarity sake, join other activists who had been arrested during 'Occupy parliament'. I had to first go to Parliament Police Station where we would be gathering as the police filed charges against us. Weird, ati being charged with "behaving in a manner likely to breach national peace"! Wow, do you remember Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi? Do you remember days that universities acted as the official opposition in Kenya? This charge took me back to those days of assassinations, mysterious disappearances, burnt bodies in forests. Just oppression and repression. Fuck the new constitution. Or try telling Kenya Police that. What a bad start to an otherwise promising day. Well, I got there. I got involved in shouting matches with a number of people. I got to call a member of parliament 'stupid' and other obscenities. I was right though. I hated him. I didn't even know him.
Goes without saying, I didn't get to join queers as early as I thought I would. I got to Freedom Corner all the same, they were there. Still. That alarmed me. Immediately. I saw a few policemen walking around the Park but nothing major was going on. The placards were ready. People had t-shirts on. They looked good. Some did. Others just made me sad. Just that disturbing sight of poverty and its associated stinks. So, yes, I was right, something was wrong. It was past noon, I mean! The police had decided, after a long process of consultation and required deliberation I suppose, to stop our marching through Nairobi streets. This, they said, would be tantamount to 'promoting homosexuality'! Somebody please shoot me. I mean, after seeing all these heterosexual people walk in the streets, no one should be gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual, genderfluid and I guess Intersex persons get conflated into this 'ish' too! I just got deflated. That made me mad. I was angry. I hated being Kenyan. Right at that point. I wanted to pack my bags and just leave. I wished all queers could just freaking stop paying taxes and go. Away. Out of this flippin', freaking and f***ing country. Talking peace, all the fucking time. Peace for only the priviledged cisgender heterosexual male who repeatedly attempts to strip me in the streets, who has been raping women since peace-knows-when. The cisgender heterosexual male who still thinks saying that he will rape gay men is 'straight'!! I was pissed. Mad. Mad. Mad.
So, in what looked like 'doing us a favour', the police allowed us to march within Uhuru Park and to the nearby Railways Club where our events would be running from. Next time I hear fascists scream 'God this, God that', I am gonna break a neck. This walk was sickening. To the core. Seriously. Well, may be not the walk itself but just that context. Firstly, walking only in the park made me feel like an outcast. It made me really sad. I had to, in that moment, cognitively push myself out of a Bipolar low. No, not now. I could not afford to relive my traumas. So, as we walked, I decided that I was going to have a silent protest. Alone. I decided to walk, silently, alone. Just me. I carried the smallest placard to express how insignificant I felt. I wanted to be swamped in this sea of screaming protesters and the obviously disgusted on-lookers. This God thing in my head kept ringing as people screamed at us: 'God created Adam and fuck-knows who', 'Look at you. Such beautiful women', 'You are all going to hell', 'We are going to kill all of you', 'Mashoga nyinyi kutombwa kwenye mkundu na wazungu' (I won't even translate this)....I was shocked. An idea came into my head though. Right at that point. I was gonna write something on my small blank placard. I quickly wrote, "God hates you too" (remember "God hates fags"?). I felt such hatred for all these people. I really did.
Then just as these thoughts were stampeding in my head, there, some man from the sidewalk came after me and started spitting on me. Yes, spitting. The whole time he kept calling me 'shoga' 'malaya' and made references to how smart I looked yet my asshole was so dirty after years of being fucked from the back. He couldn't stand me. My sight irritated him. I was the most frustrating and embarrassing person in this crowd of Kenyans-giving-the-country-a-bad-name. He had to (re)act to my presence. God had called him to act on his behalf. He had to show me how disgusted he and God were. After his first spit, two more God-fearing men joined in showering me with slime. Yes, I got the point. I was disgusting. To them. I was worse than everyone else threatening us with rape and murder. I was supposed to be really ashamed of myself. I wasn't.
I have seen worse. In this country. I walk away. I walk towards. Everyday.
Ok, I am getting derailed.
So, I was saying that I tweeted to check whether there would be any events scheduled for IDAHOT (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia) in Kenya. Sometimes when I say Kenya, I just mean Nairobi. Sorry. And yes, OutInKenya did confirm that the Kenyan chapter of IDAHOT was in the oven. IDAHOBIT: Mbona U Hate?, they called it. So, this was good news for several reasons. Firstly, this was going to be my first major gathering with Queer folk in Kenya. Secondly, since I was going to miss the big ass Johannesburg one organised by my colleagues at Iranti-Org (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FprO7w4GJyg#!) and the FEW (Forum for the Empowerment of Women), I had to come up with a plan. Thirdly, I really really wanted to just hang out with non-conforming Kenyans. I wanted to forge friendships, find chosen family, dance with all the feminine gay boys, lock thighs with 'butches', transmen and the genderqueer. I wanted to be in the moment. I longed for this feeling. In Nairobi.
This was just perfect timing. I had christened the May 13 through May 17 period my Social and Economic Justice week. This was the same week that 'Occupy Parliament' happened. Well, although I had to relive memories of police brutality, come to terms with my 'animals have a soul' mantra in the midst of all the pigs, rethink patriotism, law and order and unpack Kenya's general feeling of apathy, I was glad to be there. I remembered that as a come-back protester in Nairobi, it goes without saying that you do not go to protest without water and a handkerchief. Yes, that includes a peaceful protest. It doesn't matter what you do; some running and tearing will be seen. No, not the famous kind of marathon running. A running of a different kind. Running away from [insert noun].
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| At 'Occupy Parliament' long before teargas and water cannons. May 14, 2013. |
So when May 17th came, I was up. In time. I wanted to see everything. See queers catwalk into Freedom Corner (this should remind you of Wangari Maathai), Uhuru Park. I wanted to just get there and sit. Watching. So, by nine in the morning, I had my shorts, shirt, waistcoat and tie ready. Immediately my colleagues and I were in a matatu towards the City Centre. But firstly, I had to get my head in order. I had to, for solidarity sake, join other activists who had been arrested during 'Occupy parliament'. I had to first go to Parliament Police Station where we would be gathering as the police filed charges against us. Weird, ati being charged with "behaving in a manner likely to breach national peace"! Wow, do you remember Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi? Do you remember days that universities acted as the official opposition in Kenya? This charge took me back to those days of assassinations, mysterious disappearances, burnt bodies in forests. Just oppression and repression. Fuck the new constitution. Or try telling Kenya Police that. What a bad start to an otherwise promising day. Well, I got there. I got involved in shouting matches with a number of people. I got to call a member of parliament 'stupid' and other obscenities. I was right though. I hated him. I didn't even know him.
Goes without saying, I didn't get to join queers as early as I thought I would. I got to Freedom Corner all the same, they were there. Still. That alarmed me. Immediately. I saw a few policemen walking around the Park but nothing major was going on. The placards were ready. People had t-shirts on. They looked good. Some did. Others just made me sad. Just that disturbing sight of poverty and its associated stinks. So, yes, I was right, something was wrong. It was past noon, I mean! The police had decided, after a long process of consultation and required deliberation I suppose, to stop our marching through Nairobi streets. This, they said, would be tantamount to 'promoting homosexuality'! Somebody please shoot me. I mean, after seeing all these heterosexual people walk in the streets, no one should be gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual, genderfluid and I guess Intersex persons get conflated into this 'ish' too! I just got deflated. That made me mad. I was angry. I hated being Kenyan. Right at that point. I wanted to pack my bags and just leave. I wished all queers could just freaking stop paying taxes and go. Away. Out of this flippin', freaking and f***ing country. Talking peace, all the fucking time. Peace for only the priviledged cisgender heterosexual male who repeatedly attempts to strip me in the streets, who has been raping women since peace-knows-when. The cisgender heterosexual male who still thinks saying that he will rape gay men is 'straight'!! I was pissed. Mad. Mad. Mad.
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| IDAHOT at Uhuru Park. Waiting for the Police to make a decision. Photo Courtesy: Liz Storer |
So, in what looked like 'doing us a favour', the police allowed us to march within Uhuru Park and to the nearby Railways Club where our events would be running from. Next time I hear fascists scream 'God this, God that', I am gonna break a neck. This walk was sickening. To the core. Seriously. Well, may be not the walk itself but just that context. Firstly, walking only in the park made me feel like an outcast. It made me really sad. I had to, in that moment, cognitively push myself out of a Bipolar low. No, not now. I could not afford to relive my traumas. So, as we walked, I decided that I was going to have a silent protest. Alone. I decided to walk, silently, alone. Just me. I carried the smallest placard to express how insignificant I felt. I wanted to be swamped in this sea of screaming protesters and the obviously disgusted on-lookers. This God thing in my head kept ringing as people screamed at us: 'God created Adam and fuck-knows who', 'Look at you. Such beautiful women', 'You are all going to hell', 'We are going to kill all of you', 'Mashoga nyinyi kutombwa kwenye mkundu na wazungu' (I won't even translate this)....I was shocked. An idea came into my head though. Right at that point. I was gonna write something on my small blank placard. I quickly wrote, "God hates you too" (remember "God hates fags"?). I felt such hatred for all these people. I really did.
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| IDAHOT March at Uhuru Park. Interview with BBC World. May 17, 2013. My buddy, Daniel (front) wasn't leading the March:). Photo Courtesy: Liz Storer |
I have seen worse. In this country. I walk away. I walk towards. Everyday.
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