XVIII
LOSING MY MIND
April 2012
THE WORD FOR THE first five months of my life in 2012 is ‘crazy’. I’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with sleep. Things hit rock bottom in 2012. I’m lucky if I get four hours of sleep and it’s always interrupted around 2am as if someone has shaken me until I wake up. It takes me hours to fall back to sleep, and as a result I’m always wired on coffee and energy drinks during the day so I can function at work. I pump myself full of the Valium that I buy over the counter on trips that I still take to Tanzania, where I go around different pharmacies to get my stash. Outwardly, my life is great, even if all I do is go to work and hide out at home on weekends, claiming to friends that the distance between Pretoria and Johannesburg is keeping me from socialising, and telling family that my deadlines are the reason I can’t visit.
When I do hang out, I’m on so much wine and Valium that I don’t remember anything that happens after I sneak off to the bathroom to pop three or more pills, hoping to knock myself into a full night’s sleep. When this happens, my mom says one morning, ‘I wonder if you’ve finally killed yourself with these pills.’ She thinks I take the occasional pill to help me sleep. No one knows about the storm in my mind.
One day at work, at a meeting to plan a new issue of True Love magazine, I fantasise about smashing the jug of water against the wall; I need a visual manifestation of what’s happening in my mind. I excuse myself and call around until I find a psychiatrist who will see me before the day ends.
‘What’s troubling you?’ he asks, opening floodgates I have been trying to control since March 2011. I want to scream, but everyone will hear what I’m saying. I whisper my words while bawling my eyes out. In the dreams that wake me up at 2am, I’m in a dark room with broken skulls and skeletons. I never feel afraid when I wake up, only guilty. Sometimes I cry but most times I pop a Valium and roll a joint, and still nothing works. The monsters follow me around even when I’m awake and off drugs. When I’m out for dinner, instead of enjoying my food, a voice whispers, ‘Look at you, back to normal like nothing happened.’ When friends take me out dancing at spots that play hiplife music, I dance to perform for them, while the voice says, ‘You are a fucking sham.’
‘I can’t take it any more,’ I tell the shrink, ‘Please help me.’
He gives me anti-depressants and sleeping pills. I’m supposed to take one anti-depressant daily and half a sleeping pill at night, and still, like clockwork, I wake up at 2am to escape the dark room with skeletons; sometimes I see shadows, other times there is nothing. This also happens on nights when I take two sleeping pills.
I’m back at the psychiatrist’s office two weeks later. He refers me to a clinical psychologist, who, truth be told, pisses me the hell off. She insists that I need to create a vibrant life, that helping other people will make me feel better. I’ve been volunteering to various causes since 1997, and still do. I may be hiding from it but I have a social life.
‘Join a book club,’ she says. I’m already a member of Amabhukubhuku.
‘Look for a job that fulfils you,’ she suggests. I love writing for black women, it feels like conversations with my sisters instead of a job.
‘Perhaps what you need is travel,’ she offers. I was in Zanzibar for Sauti za Busara a few weeks ago, I have a work trip to Washington in a few weeks and I’m planning a trip to Kampala.
‘Please help me,’ I beg her. We sigh and I walk away knowing that I’m wasting hers and the psychiatrist’s time, and mine as well.
I go to the genocide memorials in Ntarama and Nyamata every night in my sleep. I’m haunted by turning tragedy into a show-and-tell. My salvation will come when I stop being a sham. I have to listen to the voice that I heard at the mass grave when it tells me that I don’t have the privilege of saying never again. I have a duty to write Africa differently, to write life where others see death and take my position in the conflicts that still rage in Africa. But I’m afraid to obey.
XIX
BRAVEHEARTS
August 2012
I’M STILL FRIENDS WITH Angela, Pepe, Sandra and other people I meet in Kampala in 2010 to write against David Bahati’s hate bill that wants gay Ugandans to be killed or jailed for life for their sexuality. Angela has moved continents. I live vicariously through her and spend a lot of time chatting with her on Facebook. One day, she sends a message saying, ‘If I were you, I’d be in Kampala in the last week of July’. All she says for now is that something big is brewing. She introduces me to her best friend, Michelle, whose real name I can’t reveal. It’s still too early to let me in on the secret but if I make sure that I’m in Kampala in July, I can stay at her house. My features editor, Melinda Ferguson, says I don’t have to take leave as long as I come back with a killer story.
Michelle picks me up at Entebbe International Airport on the first Monday of August. I keep my promise to her and Angela: I do not tell anyone that I’ll be in town, not even Pepe, whom I see in Washington a few days before the trip to Kampala.
It’s as if I never left. The road to Kampala still has convoys of trucks transporting matoke, vendors still sell slices of watermelon and chunks of pineapple from wooden wheelbarrows, and families of four still travel on one boda boda.
Michelle leaves me at her flat in Lunguja while she goes back to work and I catch up on my sleep. She comes back home with a bottle of waragi to fuel us for our night out. We hit the club scene and avoid places where we might run into activists. She hasn’t asked her boss for leave, to avoid explaining her absence. We go to a meeting in one of the city’s suburbs the next day, at the Freedom and Roam Uganda offices that are disguised to blend in with the houses around it. I finally discover what brings me to Uganda.
‘Remember, if anyone asks what we’re doing at any of the events, tell them that we are celebrating Kasha’s birthday, are you hearing me?’ Sandra, or Crazy as we call her, is standing in the middle of the room to address twenty people. Kasha, the ‘radical feminist’ and ferocious fighter for gay rights in Uganda and Africa, is the perfect person to throw under the bus if we run into trouble. She is indomitable.
The room remains pensive as Crazy continues with laying down the law. We must be on our best behaviour, be polite when people call us names and turn the other cheek if someone attacks us. ‘I know we’re all very happy but please, banange,’ she says, using Ugandans’ term of endearment for each other. ‘More than anything, this is your moment – enjoy it.’
After they get over the shock of my sudden arrival when only the organising committee knows about Pride Uganda until a week before the event, Kasha points at my camera. ‘You are the official photographer.’
The bravado that Michelle shows in the run up to Pride Uganda disappears on our way to the inauguration night. Her mood keeps shifting between euphoria and the terror of being discovered by her landlord and boss. The only thing that stops her from making a u-turn back home is the gridlocked traffic. The hotel owner is an ally and gives us a conference room that’s far from the main building. There is no need to disguise the event. The room is decorated with rainbow flags and banners, and even though there are thousands of people in the gay community, around one hundred and fifty show up. LGBTI Ugandans still pay a very high price for their sexuality, they can still lose their jobs and homes if they are found out.
The mood is electric. A lot of people I know from my stay in 2010 are here. Bob, the man who breaks his rule to never speak to journalists to meet me and introduce me to Pepe, is here. He finally tells me his real name. There’s an Ebola outbreak and, to contain it, we should not kiss, but we do anyway and spend a lot of time in each other’s embraces. There are new faces as well: Lipstick lesbians in tight miniskirts and high heels, butch queens, femme boys, preppy boys, people dressed so plainly you’d think they’re running errands. Pepe arrives in a white kanzu; his voice has become deeper. His transition is almost final. Didi’s face now has stubble, and Stosh is in baggy clothes and a cap
.
We move inside to get the formalities underway. They open with a prayer and a performance of The Kuchu Anthem by a band called Talented Uganda Kuchus, or TUK for short. I’m one of few people in the room who don’t sing along to lyrics that assert that we are gay and proud and here to stay.
We are in church with hands stretched out to the heavens. Spirits remain high as speakers take their turn on the mic. Dr Frank Mugisha, the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, says he still can’t believe that Pride Uganda is happening. Kasha wants to be pinched and Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who is expelled from the Anglican church for his tireless work against homophobia, says he’s happy to see people who turned to him when no one would care for them, smiling. ‘Even though tomorrow life will go back to fear and the struggles of being LGBTI in Uganda, I want to remind you that your struggle is justified – there are no gay or straight people. Human beings are made sexual, and we should all celebrate our sexuality.’
When she introduces Call Me Kuchu, the award-winning documentary about Uganda’s LGBTI community, our MC Cleo holds her tears. ‘I remember the hate and rejection from my family and how they called me a freak for wearing makeup and women’s clothes.’ She is a transgender woman. ‘I remember how I was called a big mistake by my father and how badly it hurt when my friends and family turned against me. It hurts when you have no sense of belonging, but tonight, I belong.’ Kuchu is East African slang for gay. Call Me Kuchu is filmed against the backdrop of David Bahati’s hate bill and the life and murder of David Kato as the coming-of-age tale of Uganda’s LGBTI community. David finds his belonging in Johannesburg, where he lives for six years before coming back home to become the first openly gay person in Uganda. As the film follows David’s life, we also meet other people and hear their stories. Growing up in Rwanda, Naome Ruzindana’s mother thinks she’s possessed by demons, and kicks her out. Stosh’s rapist infects her with HIV after she comes out and her family forces her to abort the resultant pregnancy. We also celebrate a long-term couple’s tenth anniversary and watch Long Jones put on a drag show.
Even the fun parts of the film hurt. David is attacked and killed with a hammer at his house and Long Jones has fled to the West. Tonight is the first time that people whose lives have been shown in film festivals across the world see their story. The film is banned in Uganda. The organising committee has snuck a copy into the country for Pride. The film’s sound is drowned out by our tears. But this is Kampala, where hard-partying is a national sport. We warm up outside after the screening with a live show from TUK, and other entertainers who lip sync pop hits. The after party is at a club in the same area as the hotel. We take over one section of the outdoor club, and do not hold back. No one tries to disguise themselves. Girls are in each other’s arms, boys are flirting and grinding up against each other on the dance floor. It’s pretty obvious that we’re at a queer party, and other revellers don’t care. This wouldn’t have happened two years ago when I first met queer Uganda.
Pride Uganda starts in November 2011 as a persistent idea in Kasha’s room at a hotel that’s across the street from Amnesty International headquarters in Amsterdam. Thinking about the places her activism has taken her to, she gets angry that she can be free anywhere except at home and that, unlike her, many people in her community don’t have the privilege of experiencing a gay pride event.
She reflected on the possibilities and thought: ‘Why not have a Pride Uganda?’
A Facebook page is set up, funds raised and history made on Thursday 2 August 2012, as the first Pride event is held outside of South Africa, where activists Simon Nkoli and Bev Ditsie led the first-ever Pride event in Africa in Johannesburg twenty-two years ago. The event has a film festival every day to incorporate aspects of gay and lesbian film festivals. Friday’s main event is the fashion and rock show organised by Michelle and the parade happens on Saturday at the Entebbe Botanical Gardens. Staging Pride anywhere other than at the botanical gardens would be irresponsible when people still pay with their lives. We arrive in matatus, cars, boda bodas and hordes of minibuses.
Pepe and Didi are in black kanzus. Frank’s black skin glows against his white sailor’s uniform. Crazy adds a rainbow-coloured head umbrella to her uniform of shorts, a T-shirt, sneakers and socks that are pulled up to her knees. T-shirts and posters bear declarations like ‘get something straight – I’m not’, ‘gay and proud’, ‘African and Gay, not a choice’, ‘marching for those who can’t’ and ‘killing gay people solves nothing’. Shoulders are in rainbow fairy wings. Chests have rainbow sashes, rainbow flags are tied over shoulders like capes and national flags wave in the air. Faces are painted in red, yellow and green stripes, others are covered with paper bags. Instead of following floats, we follow a bakkie with a sound system, taking our place behind Jamaican gay rights and HIV activist Maurice Tomlinson, who is leading the parade. A growing crowd of onlookers joins us. It’s mostly old people and the children they smack on the head to stop them from joining us. ‘What’s this?’ one woman asks me. ‘Freedom, sister,’ I tell her. I blow her kisses when she sniggers. The parade ends with hugs, kisses and high fives. Frank bounces around the stage and the catering committee fires up pots with rice, matoke, beef stew and chicken.
I don’t know when or how the commotion starts, only that trouble knows where to find me. Crazy, Kasha, Maurice and Dr Stella Nyanzi, another formidable defender of human rights, are arrested. Some people run in the opposite direction. I go to the van, and yell ‘stop touching me’ when a cop tries to stop me from taking pictures. ‘This is so stupid, man, are you going to arrest all of us?’ I ask. ‘No, but you’re coming with them.’ He holds my hands to help me into the truck.
‘What doesn’t kill you makes a killer story,’ I remind myself, already plotting how I will work my arrest into the feature I’m writing for True Love. I’m excited about the twist in my story even, until we get to the police station and reality hits me. Our ambassador is Jon Qwelane, a venomous man who hates gay people. ‘How soon before some idiot demands to “marry”’ an animal?’ he asks in an opinion piece, renouncing gay rights as human rights. He is not going to help me.
We stand in line while officers book us in. My turn to get an international criminal record is three people away.
‘On your marks,’ I mumble when I’m second in line.
‘Get set,’ I say under my breath when the uniform asks my name.
‘I’ll only tell you when I know why I’m arrested,’ I reply. I insist on it and start screaming for him to pinpoint my crime. Two officers come over. A tall female uniform orders me to shut up.
‘And if I don’t?’ I increase my volume and rattle off curses in Xhosa for effect.
‘Ready?’ I murmur to myself. She loses her cool and threatens to take me to the cell if I don’t stop.
‘Gosh, you are so clueless, you don’t even know how to do your job – you need to book me in first and it’s not happening until you tell me what I’m doing here.’
She grabs my hands. We wrestle for a few seconds before she pushes me. I hit the wall.
‘It’s go-time, bitches,’ I hiss, before I remember the day we buried my maternal grandmother. It’s the most painful moment of my life, and part of my arsenal in my fight against uniforms.
I turn on the waterworks. When I feel bad for using her death to get out of trouble, I take myself back to the mass grave in Ntarama. I sound like demons are escaping my body. The male uniforms are the first to break.
‘You need to calm down,’ one of them says, making me wail louder than ever. The second uniform tells me to go outside.
‘Aren’t you arresting me?’ I ask.
‘Not any more,’ he says.
‘Thank you,’ I say, composing myself so he knows my distress is an act. I should have saved my drama for another day as everyone who is arrested is released before making it to cells after contacts from the American embassy show up. The detour to the police station ruins Saturday night. People are ra
ttled and, even though we go to the after party determined to not let the police ruin the day, spirits are low. It’s the first time I’m home before 3am.
The crowd’s still thin at the closing event the following day at a café in Kabalagala, my old stomping ground. A power cut puts an end to the planned performances and film screening. We hang out and reflect on the four days. ‘Even though Pride Uganda was small in numbers, the rest of the world’s homosexual communities will be inspired by this event. They will look to you and say “if they could do it, then so can we”,’ Maurice says in his closing speech.
‘My bravehearts, we have done it. It has been a long journey but we will not be intimidated. In fact, the police did us a favour when they arrested us because they put us on the world map. Now everyone will know that we had Gay Pride in Uganda,’ Kasha says, ‘I keep dreaming about freedom.’
This moment, that the world will only know about next week, is one of the biggest acts of defiance against homophobia in Uganda, Africa and many parts of the world where LGBTI people dare not reveal themselves. I think of lesbian women who are slaughtered in South Africa while the powers stand and watch, and about the countless people around Africa who have been attacked, jailed or killed for their sexuality and gender identity. I refuse to remain silent while Africa keeps writing its history in blood.
Vagabond Page 21