To my friends

I am dedicating this post to my friends. All my friends, known and unknown, knowing and unknowing.

Writing this blog, I use the experiences of my life. My gay life. And I am ever talking about being gay, and being what I am, a Ugandan, an African. Yet I realise that many of my Ugandan friends simply do not know what I mean when I use some of these terms.

Sexual Orientation is what the scientists call our attraction to another sexually. One is most commonly attracted to those of the opposite sex. That is the heterosexual orientation. But one can be attracted to the same sex, the homosexual orientation. Or to both: bisexual.

I am a homosexual. I was born that way, far as I know. For a long time I denied it. I said and thought that it could not be true. Then I did accept it. Accepted that I was a homosexual, attracted to other men.

I am also gay.

Yes, one can be homosexual, and not gay. For example, Senator Craig insists he is not gay. Of course he is not. But there is a lot of evidence that he may be homosexual. Pastor Ted Haggard too.

To be gay or kuchu is to accept your sexual orientation. To accept that one is different. To go ahead and affirm that being homosexual does not decrease your worth as a human being.

I am gay. And I have taken it a step further. I have raised the rainbow flag, decided to embrace the struggle for equality of the gay community in my country. Uganda.

Once I did not think this way, but now I do. I am homosexual. Gay, and that does not make me any less a Ugandan. Or un-African. However much other people may insist that my sexual orientation is ‘un-African,’ ‘immoral’, ‘against culture’, that I learnt it from the decadent west.

Yet, I could have stopped at being homosexual. I could have accepted the majority view that because I was born homosexual, I am bad, less than human, a sinner, and worse.

I could have tried desperately to change. Doctors say it is impossible. I tried. There are many homosexuals who try to change. I am thankful I failed, and accepted myself. Some do not.

I could have walked the straight path. Gotten married. Had children. And maybe had my lovers on the side.

My lover believes in monogamy. He would not have accepted being on the sidelines. I know it happens a lot.

What actually started me off on this was this story. From Israel. Click the link and read it.

Guy like me. Homosexual. Took the straight path. Got married, 20 years! Had 4 sons, was an ultra-orthodox Jew. He tried his best to be straight, and failed. He got a lover, a male lover. But still he was not happy in his marriage.

He talked to his wife. Told her a partial truth; that he was transgender. Maybe to him it seemed a ‘lesser evil’. The lady took it well, but later, went on to seek a divorce. Marriage broken down.

The guy killed himself. His family was rejected by his community. Hypocrites, but then, that is society.

That could easily have been a script for my life. Because 95% of my country men disapprove of my sexuality.

But I cannot change my sexuality. Ssempa says that he can do that for me. I am a bit dubious of his claims. He is not a medical doctor. Maybe he is a witchdoctor.

I will not hide, because I am a man attracted to men, in Uganda.

I will say that I am me, a homosexual, a Ugandan, an African, and a human being.

I will pray desperately that my friends understand me. But I will not be less than what I am, because they disapprove.

GayUganda

A Return

Yes, there has been a gap. A big one, a considerable one.

I have been procrastinating. It seems too big a task, to start writing again. Then someone rang me to tell me about the blog. I thought he knew about it, but apparently he had not read it. Most people tend to be put off by prose! He was laudatory. I was encouraged, and I thought, yes, I will write again. I will put down more of my daily thoughts and ruminations.

So, why the gap?

I am of a mind not to explain. After all, the blog is mine (Ahem!!!!) And no one is going to force me to bare my thoughts. I do it (compulsively) of my free will!

Ever watched a child learn to walk? The uncertainty, the stumbling wide gait, the falls and cries. That is me. Yet I am no child, though I will claim that as a human being I have the right to fall and the sheer stubbornness to try and stand again.

Oh yes. I fell.

I stumbled and fell. Rolled downhill and was bruised and battered at the end. Fell into the muck and nearly drowned, barely keeping my head above the stinking putrefying essence of it. But I did not drown. I am still alive. The spark of life still burns in me, and that is something.

Ever thought of life as the sheer continuity of life? That flame. Once it is extinguished, then it is gone. Before it is extinguished, it still burns. And it may gutter and falter, or may turn into a brush fire. When it still is, whether it still is, that is what is important.

I will fall, and get up. Battered, bruised, aching. But if I am still alive, life goes on. And like the child learning to walk, sometimes I will cry in utter frustration, other times I will glee with joy as I land on my bum. But I will always get up and stumble on.

So, to all out there, welcome a bright new day!

GayUganda