Homosexuality; The wrong that will never be right

Honestly, what is going on?? Why do people all of a sudden want to air their dirty laundry in public? For weeks, I have been trying not to hear anything concerning the Issue of homosexuality, a subject that have become sensitive to many African nations most of them condemning it but it has been impossible. It’s everywhere; on the Facebook, televisions, twitter, blogs and even telephones!! It is not that I have never heard of homosexuality before or never seen a gay man or lesbian woman. I have but for some reasons I chose not to pay much attention to it because it is disgusting to think of a man having sexual relationship with another man, or a woman with a woman.

The crazy thing about all this is that, while homosexuality remains to be unacceptable to many African nations few of African Icons have dared to come out of the closet to declaring their homosexuality in public; and some have even dared to say they were born that way. Now, I don’t know what gave them the courage to do so or why they think it is important for them tell us about who they are attracted to but I think it must be one of the two reasons I could think of; first, they themselves know it is unnatural and they are indeed committing a crime against nature, against God (if they do believe in God) and against the society that surround them and so they feel the need to justify what they are doing (after all there is no need for justification if what you are doing is the right thing). Secondly, since being gay is something that is largely frowned upon, they feel the need to lie to the society that they were born that way and that it is not their fault, so that they don’t get blamed for bringing shame in to their families.

Before you start giving me that-you-are-a-conservative kind of a look, let me remind you that for more than a century scientist have conducted thousands of experiments trying to prove the existence of a “gay gene” that in one way or another would have been blamed for personal choices of being homosexuals with no success. You know why?? Because the gene does not exist and you cannot find something that does not exist. For those who believe in God, no matter which religion or congregation you belong to the answer is simple; it’s Satan at work. But even if we put all the blame on Satan, does not make it right?

The real question that I keep asking myself is why do people choose to be gay? Yeah I said choose because to me being gay is a choice otherwise how do you explain a man who has been straight for more than 30 years of his life then all of a sudden turns into a gay?? How would you explain a teenager who used to be straight with a girlfriend until he found a sugar daddy who could give him all the money he wanted and suddenly he became gay? Cynthia Nixon an actor in sex and the city once said “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice”. This is indeed another proof from the gay community that being gay is a choice. So why do people choose wrong while we can choose right? This is a question that am yet to find the answer.

While some gays try to justify their behavior by saying they were born that way, that they have been gays all their life, I have come across others who brag about turning straight teenagers into gays (shocking). I know you are wondering how all this can be possible but we all know if you are loaded with cash anything is possible. The deception of our young and innocent children can start with a simple post Facebook as “I will pay someone 100,000Tsh to suck my nipples.” Sound simple right?? But the more he pays this young boy the more he demands and before you know it your son, brother, or cousin is a gay. He learns to live a lie until the lie becomes his life then find the nerve to say he has always been gay, that he was born that way... all because he succeeded to convince himself that it was not his fault. Finally, when they have succeeded to convince themselves they want to convince us to believe in what they believe in. For me, that will never happen because the wrong will always remain to be wrong even if everybody is doing it.

I have heard of fate being talked of, I have heard of Satan being blamed for someone being gay, I have heard of biological and psychological explanations but I think in the end we make our own choices. How we live our lives is our own doing. The truth is even if gay people can never stop being attracted to members of the same sex they can learn not to act on their desires; we have all done it at one time or another. At some point or another you have ever loved someone or something you could not have and you had to learn not to act on your desires. A lot of people have learned how to stop their addiction on drugs, smoking, alcohol and even sex because it was the right thing to do. ... so why can’t they? Why do they fight so hard to turn a moral wrong into civil rights?

I know that gay people think coming out in the open makes them brave and all that but it does not. There are so many ways to be brave in this world and sometimes it does not mean laying dawn your life for something you believe to be bigger than your self... sometimes it means nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain and the work of everyday, the slow walk toward a better life for you and everyone around you.

I am a Homosexual, Mum by Binyavanga Wainaina

 

(A lost chapter from One Day I Will Write About This Place)

11 July, 2000.
PICTURE CREDIT: Allan Gichigi (http://allangichigi.com/star/binyavanga-wainaina/)

This is not the right version of events.

Hey mum. I was putting my head on her shoulder, that last afternoon before she died. She was lying on her hospital bed. Kenyatta. Intensive Care. Critical Care. There. Because this time I will not be away in South Africa, fucking things up in that chaotic way of mine. I will arrive on time, and be there when she dies. My heart arrives on time. I am holding my dying mother’s hand. I am lifting her hand. Her hand will be swollen with diabetes. Her organs are failing. Hey mum. Ooooh. My mind sighs. My heart! I am whispering in her ear. She is awake, listening, soft calm loving, with my head right inside in her breathspace. She is so big – my mother, in this world, near the next world, each breath slow, but steady, as it should be. Inhale. She can carry everything. I will whisper, louder, in my minds-breath. To hers. She will listen, even if she doesn’t hear. Can she?

Mum. I will say. Muum? I will say. It grooves so easy, a breath, a noise out of my mouth, mixed up with her breath, and she exhales. My heart gasps sharp and now my mind screams, sharp, so so hurt so so angry.

“I have never thrown my heart at you mum. You have never asked me to.”

Only my mind says. This. Not my mouth. But surely the jerk of my breath and heart, there next to hers, has been registered? Is she letting me in?

Nobody, nobody, ever in my life has heard this. Never, mum. I did not trust you, mum. And. I. Pulled air hard and balled it down into my navel, and let it out slow and firm, clean and without bumps out of my mouth, loud and clear over a shoulder, into her ear.

“I am a homosexual, mum.”

July, 2000.

This is the right version of events.

I am living in South Africa, without having seen my mother for five years, even though she is sick, because I am afraid and ashamed, and because I will be thirty years old and possibly without a visa to return here if I leave. I am hurricaning to move my life so I can see her. But she is in Nakuru, collapsing, and they will be rushing her kidneys to Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, where there will be a dialysis machine and a tropical storm of experts awaiting her.

Relatives will rush to see her and, organs will collapse, and machines will kick into action. I am rushing, winding up everything to leave South Africa. It will take two more days for me to leave, to fly out, when, in the morning of 11 July 2000, my uncle calls me to ask if I am sitting down.

“ She’s gone, Ken.”

I will call my Auntie Grace in that family gathering nanosecond to find a way to cry urgently inside Baba, but they say he is crying and thundering and lightning in his 505 car around Nairobi because his wife is dead and nobody can find him for hours. Three days ago, he told me it was too late to come to see her. He told me to not risk losing my ability to return to South Africa by coming home for the funeral. I should not be travelling carelessly in that artist way of mine, without papers. Kenneth! He frowns on the phone. I cannot risk illegal deportation, he says, and losing everything. But it is my mother.

I am twenty nine. It is 11 July, 2000. I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five. I have never touched a man sexually. I have slept with three women in my life. One woman, successfully. Only once with her. It was amazing. But the next day, I was not able to.

It will take me five years after my mother’s death to find a man who will give me a massage and some brief, paid-for love. In Earl’s Court, London. And I will be freed, and tell my best friend, who will surprise me by understanding, without understanding. I will tell him what I did, but not tell him I am gay. I cannot say the word gay until I am thirty nine, four years after that brief massage encounter. Today, it is 18 January 2013, and I am forty three.

Anyway. It will not be a hurricane of diabetes that kills mum inside Kenyatta Hospital Critical Care, before I have taken four steps to get on a plane to sit by her side.

Somebody.

Nurse?

Will leave a small window open the night before she dies, in the July Kenyatta Hospital cold.

It is my birthday today. 18 January 2013. Two years ago, on 11 July 2011, my father had a massive stroke and was brain dead in minutes. Exactly eleven years to the day my mother died. His heart beat for four days, but there was nothing to tell him.

I am five years old.

He stood there, in overalls, awkward, his chest a railway track of sweaty bumps, and little hard beads of hair. Everything about him is smooth-slow. Bits of brown on a cracked tooth, that endless long smile. A good thing for me the slow way he moves, because I am transparent to people’s patterns, and can trip so easily and fall into snarls and fear with jerky people. A long easy smile, he lifts me in the air and swings. He smells of diesel, and the world of all other people’s movements has disappeared. I am away from everybody for the first time in my life, and it is glorious, and then it is a tunnel of fear. There are no creaks in him, like a tractor he will climb any hill, steadily. If he walks away, now, with me, I will go with him forever. I know if he puts me down my legs will not move again. I am so ashamed, I stop myself from clinging. I jump away from him and avoid him forever. For twentysomething years, I even hug men awkwardly.

There will be this feeling again. Stronger, firmer now. Aged maybe seven. Once with another slow easy golfer at Nakuru Golf Club, and I am shaking because he shook my hand. Then I am crying alone in the toilet because the repeat of this feeling has made me suddenly ripped apart and lonely. The feeling is not sexual. It is certain. It is overwhelming. It wants to make a home. It comes every few months like a bout of malaria and leaves me shaken for days, and confused for months. I do nothing about it.

I am five when I close my self into a vague happiness that asks for nothing much from anybody. Absent-minded. Sweet. I am grateful for all love. I give it more than I receive it, often. I can be selfish. I masturbate a lot, and never allow myself to crack and grow my heart. I touch no men. I read books. I love my dad so much, my heart is learning to stretch.

I am a homosexual.

CREDIT: Binyavanga Wainaina

The Doomed Genitals!!!

Most of my life, I have been the perfect spectator, watching things from the sideline. I admit of my complacency, my failure to voice my opinion, and my reluctance to point out what’s being done in a wrong way. I have silently been watching the debate rage on; allowed people of mediocre thinking carry the day. Sometimes I wish I were not born in this beautiful country. The hatred being exhibited by my fellow countrymen, the mediocre, blind allegiance to a lost cause sometimes makes me nauseated. I cannot understand why people take sadistic pleasure in mocking, in playing God and in portraying an image of a mortal without blemish.

That being said, I know a majority of us have been brainwashed to believe that “being tribal” is okay. They have been fallaciously taught to draw lines, look at people from a tribal spectrum rather than their abilities. Today, I'm going to look at a rather emotive issue; the issue of circumcision. I know there are those who would rather nip it in the bud and discuss it in undertones. We have fallaciously been led to believe that somehow the removal of the foreskin makes someone wise, mature and better placed to make better decisions. Being a “Kihii” has been seen as a mortal sin, a crime befitting ridicule with the strongest of terms.

Those with a foreskin are looked upon as lesser men, outcasts in a society where tribalism is a way of life. From an early stage, the seeds of tribalism are sown in us. Our homes become our first encounter with tribalism. You introduce a friend to your parents as Isaac or Dionisia and your parents go ahead to ask you what their second names are. When you give in and say that they are Kerubo or Omondi, the ton of advice that follows is the stuff that movies are made of. All of a sudden you are told why it’s not good to hang out with Luos. You get tribal 101 lessons on why Luos are uncircumcised and never think beyond their penis. They are the rightful holders of the doomed genitals.

You are lectured on why you should avoid the kisiis like a leach. Apparently they are witches, they have a bad eye, and they practice witchcraft and so on and so forth. We live in a nation whereby the sound of your surname can get you a job, can bring upon you unprintable abuses and even get you discriminated. Having been raised up by parents who were from different tribes, I simply do not agree with the whole hullabaloo about circumcision. Yes, one of my parents comes from a community that has largely been associated with not being circumcised. The other comes from a community that believes circumcision is the only rite of passage to manhood.

Yes, even now as an adult, the sound of my name is enough for someone to judge me whether I'm circumcised or not. The very fact that I have a certain surname means that my genitals are doomed, that I am lesser of a person. My great grandfather was uncircumcised and married many wives. That did not hinder him from becoming a chief and wisely leading his subjects for many years. The fact that he was uncircumcised did not deter him from siring bright and intelligent children. I know some are now raging deep inside wondering how I could justify a man with a foreskin. The truth is we are all products of the environment. We react to our environment. Do you think it’s by default that majority of the Luos are not circumcised? Do you think it’s by default that Pokots and even the Kisiis circumcised there women? Of course not!

Sometimes, the environment you are born in plays a major role in who become. That being said, the whole debate about circumcision is farfetched. Yeah! It makes sense to be circumcised! It’s both healthy and hygiene and is therefore a good thing. However, what I disagree with is the culture of looking down upon those people who are uncircumcised. The despicable things we say, the disrespect we show to such people is simply out of context. There is no such thing as the doomed genitals. It’s a fallacy! This is the same kind of herd mentality that almost saw our country burning; the very belief that our tribes should come first and our country second. I have dated Kikuyus almost all my life. I never saw them as chicken fuckers, wife batterers or high tempered as the stereotypes put it.

I have been friends with Kisiis, been best friends with the Kambas but never have I experienced what is fallaciously propagated by people who have nothing better to do. And by the way, what business does a man have with a fellow man who is not circumcised? I thought it’s the women who should be shouting the loudest! I mean, if his wife or girlfriend is okay with it, where do you come in? Let’s strive to exorcise the demons of tribalism, embrace harmonious living and realize that we are worth more than our physical appearance. With or without a foreskin we both have a role to play in the society. And for those who are wondering whether I am circumcised or not, please feel free to ask my woman! I rest my case.

How I became a single mother

Dear diary,

I can never forget how I could feel my heart sinking deep on to the deepest pits of darkness as I listened carefully to what my husband was trying to explain to me. He repeated each and every sentence over and over again hoping it would make me feel better. He kept saying it was not my fault, that it was not because of something I did or what I had become, he said he loved me and he would never stop loving me or our dear children, he will always be there for us but he was going to marry a second wife because he loved her too.

I remember every detail of that evening, he was wearing the shirt that I gave him on his birthday, the trouser that he bought for himself when we were on vacation a year before; his girlfriend (who was to be the second wife) was wearing a nicely fitting read dress that flattered her figure. Her braids falling perfectly around her shoulders, she was younger and more beautiful than I was. She seemed happy; they both did seem happy completely unaware of the immense pain they were instilling in me with every passing second.

For years I had suspected my husband was having an affair but chose to ignore my intuition even when there were so many red flags. I convinced my self that he was different. I wanted to respect his freedom, I learned to trust him as he had asked me to even when there was no reason to trust him. It has been just five years since we got married and he was already introducing me to a woman who would be his second wife. Our Children Ayana and Aria were still so young to go through what I had gone through when my father married the second, the third, the forth until the eleventh wife who were even jealous of me and my sibling spending time with our father.

It is difficult to understand how polygamy can affect a woman especially a woman who has been trying to run from the ghost of polygamy. My father married eleven wives in his life. My mother was his first wife and just like me she fought against polygamy even on her death bed. My mother was a hard working, beautiful and a strong woman but even her tears and her rage were not enough to make my father monogamous. He kept falling in love with a new woman every day forgetting the one he had met the day before. When my mother passed away we were still so young and had to spend the rest of our childhood lives in the hands of  step mothers who would abuse us with no one to fight for us. This went on until when I got my first job and took in all my siblings thinking I had put that horrible life style behind me for good.

The night James announced that he was going to marry a second wife I was no just hurt that this whole situation had brought the kind of life I was trying to forget but I was also annoyed for believing men could be different. It was as if he had hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending to be the opposite of my father, do what pleased me yet he was everything that I ever hated in my father.

I cried for days, I was confused, I didn't know what was worse, to know that you were never enough for your husband and stay married or to become what you have always wanted to be (independent) and feel alone? I kept visiting my mother’s grave everyday hoping she would somehow tell me how she managed to live in a polygamous marriage, hopping she would wake up and help me make a decision if I should continue with my marriage or if it was time for me to walk away but  she didn't.

Dear diary, the life of a plural wife was a life under constant comparison, comparison that hurts, it is a life spent wondering about the questions that where inescapable like was he going to add the third and the fourth wife? Between the two of us, who was the most happy? Which of us was his one true love, who does he desire most? Does he love my children like the way he will love hers.......? This went on until the day I got tired of all this, I told James I could not do it anymore and that I wanted a divorce.

Six months later we were divorced, I moved in with my two beautiful babies and life has been good since then. It is now seven years since all this happened, I am a single mother and I have never regretted my decision to divorce my husband. All I want to tell everyone who is going though difficult time is; don’t be afraid to take a chance, take a chance at every opportunity you get. You might feel secure in the pond that you are in but if you never get out of it you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean or a sea. Holding on to something that is good for you may be the very reason why you don’t have something better..... Take chance... live... be happy.

Love: The Mystery!

The more I think about it, the more I fail to understand the hold that love has on our lives. Since time immemorial, love has been a universal pre-occupation. Its hold has grown in leaps and bounds over the years and has in its wake whipped into submission even the most powerful of men. More often than not, am tempted to wonder why love has this strong hold on humanity. Why it renders even the strongest of warriors helpless. Is it an unexplainable force? Or is it simply a fabrication of the mind? What makes love such an ever present feeling? 

These unanswered questions set me into the world of reflection, a world where I had to critically examine myself. My sojourn in this world did not bear any meaningful fruits as all I got were more questions than answers. What I had initially hoped would provide me with the necessary answers, only left me begging for more questions.  

Love, as I came to understand, is a strange feeling. Its genesis confounds even the learned of minds. Great men and women have become victims of this wonderful, but equally, potentially life ending indulgence. Its anonymity knows no bounds. It aint a respecter of any particular individual neither is it a slave of status. The feeling that love evokes in us is phenomenal, a wonderful experience. It has served to bring the best in us as well as bring out the worst in us. 

Many horrible and unimaginable atrocities have been committed in the name of love, marvelous and unseen manifestations of goodwill have been made possible all in the name of love. What makes love such a two edged sword? What makes it such an amazing and equally dangerous feeling? Love, in its own right, is a good thing. It brings out the best in us and serves to make us better people. It makes the world a better place to dwell in so far as peaceful and harmonious co-existence is concerned.

What can I say about love? Love is arguably the best feeling to have ever happened to me (at least once to everyone). When I look back, I can’t help but marvel at the very first time I fell in love. The feeling was simply out of this world. At that particular time, nothing else seemed to matter. It was as if the world came to a halt and all that mattered was your object of desire. You wake up every morning looking forward to seeing the awesome beautiful face, wishing that the feeling would last forever and that you will be resigned to an eternal life of happiness and bliss. 

The opposite, unfortunately, happens. Your dreams are rudely interrupted as u awakens from the world of sweet dreams to come face to face with the monster of disappointments. Life, without warning, takes that familiar path of emptiness and hollowness. You start questioning the unquestionable and find comfort in hatred. Your bubble is popped and with it comes crushing your dreams to the cold floor of reality. The writing is finally on the wall and the theater of dreams turns into an object of ridicule. It’s at this point that you become helpless; you lose hope and become disillusioned. The bitter and painful lesson becomes so clear in your mind. LOVE AINT A RESPECTER OF WISHES!

A Love Letter to My Mother

Dear Fridah

I know this will come as a surprise to you considering that I never was the kind of son to acknowledge anything worthwhile. I’m profusely apologetic that it has taken me a quarter a century to acknowledge the towering role you have played in my life. I look back with nostalgia and can’t help but marvel at the great sacrifices you made so that I could grow up an upright person. Am sorry that I detested the many canes you accorded my back when I veered off the good path. I am sincerely apologetic for sulking on end and cooking up some twisted thoughts that you hated me.

I do realize now that though I was the black sheep of the family, you never gave up on me. You stood by me even when my body was raging with hormones and all I wanted was to make my own decisions. It pains me that I have never really told you how much I adore you, how much an astute woman you are and what a pillar of strength you’ve been in my life. To even imagine that a string of women have had the pleasure of hearing me express my undying love to them firsthand pains to say the least. 

Dear mother, I still remember fondly when you bathed me, clothed me and ensured that I had enough to eat. I still remember you denying yourself so many things so that I could have enough. Back in the days, I had not learnt about economics, or inflation or the impact of the cost of living. I always wondered why I could eat chicken everyday like our next door neighbor. I couldn’t understand why you said you had no money. I just couldn’t grasp the concept of money, the elephant of unemployment or the fact that you didn’t earn enough to accord me the life that I conjured up in my mind. 

I am sorry that at some point in my teenage years I felt ashamed of you, I felt like you were old age, backward somehow and out of touch with reality. I am sorry that I couldn’t understand why we had to take githeri rather than go out for kuku and chips. I am sorry that I couldn’t understand when you bought me plastic shoes when the shop had a lot of good leather shoes. I am sorry that I didn’t appreciate the mornings you woke up early just to ensure that I had everything before going to school. Now that I look back, you were everything I would want the mother of my children to be. The sacrifices, the innate desire to see me succeed were simply an act of true love. I humbly say thank you dear mother.

Today, I woke up in the morning and realized that I have not been thankful for all the responsibilities, for all the debts you accrued in the name of making my life comfortable. I took out the family album and felt a tinge of sadness that I haven’t done enough to say thank you. Though you never had an education to write home about, you did everything to see me through school. You rejoiced with me every time I came top of my class. I still remember you buying me a bicycle as you had promised when I passed my K.C.P.E. In my stupidity back then, I wasn’t grateful for the sacrifices you had made to buy me that bicycle. I wasn’t grateful for the black mamba you bought me. In my mind I wondered why you couldn’t buy me a mountain bike yet it was the in-thing.

I thought you were unfashionable. I am sorry that I even harbored the thoughts that you had short changed me. This new year, and after all these years, I do realize what a great mother you have been to me. I do realize that I haven’t expressed my love for you enough. I do realize that I haven’t been unthankful, been wayward and been too hard on you most of my life. I love you for bringing me up right, I am grateful for the fact that you made sure I had everything even though you earned a meager salary. I am forever grateful that you worked long hours in your small business just to accord me the life you never had.

Dear mother, I know this is coming a bit too late but I believe you will appreciate my sincere apologies for acting as a child, for never knowing what you had to go through just to be what I am today. I just wanted to let you know that in spite of everything you went through, you can rest assured that I turned out just right. I know I might be difficult at times, I know I am not as religious as you are, I don’t go to church as often as you would love me to, I don’t visit often but one thing is for sure-I LOVE YOU DEAR MOTHER. To all dear friends, appreciate your mother while you still can! Don’t wait to write a colorful eulogy or tribute! Have a fabulous day!