At Home

Seated at home.

He is leaning against me. Listening to a song in one of our mother-tongues on the TV.

The cd-player is on. Mozart. For some reason I like it in the background. Un-obstructive.

Cosy home life. Apparently.

It is. It has to be.

Today in the morning, I saw an email from an ILGA contact. On the far side of the continent, another couple had the same. Dakar, Senegal. They decided to go ahead and formalise their relationship in a marriage. A gay marriage.

They had it. Their wedding day.

They are happy. They were happy.

That is, until the pictures of their wedding bliss got into a local newspaper. It has turned, predictably into a national furor. A wedding. Two men getting married. And that moment of personal bliss turns into the nightmare of arrest and prosecution.

It doesn’t matter that those two guys love each other. It doesn’t matter that they have risked their all in the name of this love. It doesn’t matter that the occasion does not have any victim, or indeed, that the people who went out of their way did it in secret. What matters to the community, is that some mores have been broken, and that the community has gotten to know of it. So the outcry is, horror! Arrest them!

And, ridiculous as it seems, the press is announcing that the country’s highest ‘Criminal Investigation Body’ is doing its best to trace all of them, and arrest them.

Did I mention that we were cozy at home?

Yes. An idyllic time. Monday evening.

The weekend was hectic. Couple of parties that I attended. And new school term started today. Traffic jams.

Needed a rest today, and the evening was particularly beautiful. Calming, as the heat of the day melted into night and coolness.

Our forbidden love indeed. Aint we lucky to be able to share it?

I don’t think I am brave. A series of logical steps which I had to take, we had to make. Yet, though we do love each other, and are not harming anyone, our communities would throw off all other problems in the outrage of us celebrating our love. Like we celebrated seven years of living together. Guess we should be thankful for this celebrity status of our personal life.

Life is beautiful. I, we know that we risk. And we know that it may be life itself.

But, in the same breath, I look at what I would be without my lover. Is unhappiness in life a good bargain for having to conform?

I, we chose happiness. Of course it is no guarantee. The audacity of hope? Yes, we can still hope.

I hope that the guys who celebrated being together in Senegal have some peace. But apparently the full wrath of the law will descend on their poor heads. Because they love, they are condemned.

My, our love is precious. We shall celebrate it as we can, day to day, in the rising of the sun, and its beautiful setting. I have one life, and in it, I have been blessed with love.

GayUganda