Out of Africa, out in America: with the help of a group called Uhuru-Wazobia, gay men and lesbians from Africa have built new lives in New York City after leaving their native countries
Frankie Edozien
On a balmy Saturday night in New York City last spring, some 200 partygoers were drinking, dancing, and flirting in a dim Harlem ballroom. Every so often the pulsating rhythms were interrupted and the gyrating bodies would turn their attention to a lip-synching diva-female impersonator decked out in head-to-toe African regalia.
At first glance it looked like any other party, but what was extraordinary was that half of the revelers were gay men and lesbians from Africa. They hailed from Kenya, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Mali, and many now lived in the New York City area. Others had driven in from as far away as Washington, D.C. All had paid $10 each to Uhuru-Wazobia, the organization that put together the bash.
In many African countries being gay is not just seen as taboo but is illegal. Denounced as un-African by politicians–including the leaders of Kenya, Namibia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe–it can bring more jail time than heterosexual rape or murder. In Uganda engaging in same-sex sexual relations carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment, in Somalia armed gangs brutally harass gays, and Islamic Sharia courts in Nigeria can punish gay sexual activity by sentencing participants to death by stoning.
Africans on the continent often live dangerously closeted lives and those in relationships seldom identify as gay. While these folks at the party had escaped that, many didn’t jump into a full-fledged queer life upon arriving in the United States. “I think we still have issues with labels,” says Lawrence Abayomi Harding, Uhuru-Wazobia’s backbone and founding member.
Harding, 42, is a Sierra Leonean physiotherapy professor. He says that LGBT Africans are trying to determine what to call themselves but that many times the right word isn’t available.
“There are terms that are ethnically specific for a particular group, and if we dug deep enough we’d find one for each member. What works and what is describable in one context cannot translate to another context,” Harding says. For example, he cites the Senegalese expression goorjigen, which is from the Wolof language and translates as “man-woman.” “It doesn’t translate into ‘gay,’ and it can’t; it doesn’t translate into any other term.”
But at least one alleged Malian goorjigen was dancing the night away that evening. His name is Boukari, and he grew up in Ivory Coast, where he loved going to the markets with his stepmother and sisters. But his uncle, afraid he’d become an effeminate man, would drag him forcefully to the soccer fields. “I hated it,” the 39-year-old remembers. “I just wanted to be clean, play house, and cook, and I knew something was different. I always wanted to be around my sisters while my brothers were playing soccer.”
Boukari would have secret trysts and relationships with men in Lakota, a town considerably smaller than Abidjan, the country’s major city and seat of government. By age 25 he’d fled to the Big Apple. He mixed with New York City’s African population–first getting work in a car wash and later moving on to floor treatments–but kept his sexuality tucked away. It was a chance Times Square meeting with a boisterous Kenyan that awoke that side of him again. After chatting for a bit, he was invited to an Uhuru-Wazobia meeting. “I was so excited. I went there and I saw all those guys. I was so relieved,” says the soft-spoken Boukari. “That was such a boost for me to know I wasn’t alone.”
Uhuru-Wazobia began in 1994 with just a few gay Africans who had moved to New York City. It was first known as Wazobia. The words wa, zo, and bia translate as “come” respectively in Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa, three prominent West African languages. The first participants got together to bond. Defining who they were and what they were about almost split the group, and for a time Wazobia disbanded. But the members kept getting together and doing things informally, including raising money to help resettle persecuted gay Africans who’d fled Uganda in 1999, as well as simply gathering for holidays. The momentum to become organized again picked up, and the forceful word uhuru, Swahili for “freedom,” was added.
These days the group works to create a safe space for sexual-minority Africans. It appears to work. Uhuru-Wazobia’s members run the gamut socially and educationally and include all kinds of LGBT and questioning people.
“Uhuru validates me and my experience. I had never really felt validated as a gender-queer African person in any other city,” says Doyin Ola. Biologically female, the 29-year-old sports shoulder-length dreadlocks and lives as a gender-nonconforming individual. “I was always searching for my people. There are Africans and Nigerians everywhere, but I never felt comfortable among heterosexual Nigerians because it was always about, ‘Why do you look like a man? Why do you have your hair like that? Why aren’t you wearing a dress?’”
Growing up in a country where homophobia is spewed from the pulpit, Ola, who even attended an all-girls boarding school, never fit in. “I remember dealing with gender confusion. When I was younger my morn would always say, ‘No, she’s a girl,’ to people who thought I was a boy.”
The University of North Carolina alum says there have always been those who had different identities that didn’t necessarily correspond to their genitals. “I think the term people use now is ‘gender-queer.’ I see myself as more androgynous,” Ola says.
He remembers the tacit acceptance of lesbians in Nigeria’s Delta region: “It didn’t seem out of the ordinary. It just seemed that women were being sexual with other women, and I saw the same people married with husbands.”
Uhuru-Wazobia’s links and support of African queer groups are a priority for Nguru Karugu, a Kenyan activist and public health worker. “Sexual minorities are already doing amazing work in Africa, trying to organize and create space for themselves,” the 40-year-old says. An international AIDS program manager who works in the United States as well as in Africa, Karugu oozes confidence, but that wasn’t always so. The son of diplomats, he suffered for years dealing with his homosexuality. “My image of gay [in Kenya] was white men. I remember thinking this was something for the expatriates,” Karugu recalls, despite kissing boys in his adolescent years at a Nairobi prep school.
Even while at Montclair State University in New Jersey, it seemed his attraction for men was alien. Not until Karugu returned to Africa to work in health care in rural Kenya and ran into gay men in the now-shuttered tearooms did he have a eureka moment: He was meeting gay men who’d never left Africa.
“Oh, my God. There are others like me,” Karugu recalls realizing. “I used to say, ‘All I need is to find the right girl, and I’ll be OK’ But then I [changed] the conversation of ‘I’m crazy and bi’ and all that to ‘I’m gay, and I’m OK’”
“I felt so strong, and I could see my ancestors saying, ‘When are you going to get it? Now let’s move on; get away from your drama.’ There must have been a gay ancestor out there saying, ‘Let’s move on.’” Karugu returned to the United States and dove headfirst into his activism work.
It was Karugu who spotted Boukari in Times Square and started the conversation that brought Boukari to Uhuru-Wazobia. Boukari recalls telling his new pal, “‘I’m different, and I don’t know anybody, and I like boys.’ He said, ‘You should come to this meeting. There are African men who like men.’”
On its agenda Uhuru-Wazobia has plans to help with health information, which is not easily available to immigrants; assist with housing; and provide that ever-available ear. Its members established the Web site Voices Abroad to allow dialogue to flow freely and anonymously. All this has instilled in members a desire to take bold steps in the public domain. “We want people to acknowledge our existence,” Harding says.
During New York City’s gay pride parade in June, Uhuru members marched under their own banner as gay Africans–a first in the parade’s 30-plus-year history. With music blaring from a car decorated with African cloth, the men and women danced in the heat down Fifth Avenue, smiling and proud. “People would go by and say, ‘Oh, Africans. Really nice, cool.’ It was really good to be out there, not in a party situation and not in a conference,” Harding says.
But immigrating to the United States does not resolve the cultural complications many LGBT Africans face. For example, “There are people in the group who are having the pressure of being told, ‘We’ll ship you a wife,’” Karugu notes.
Boukari is one of those. “My family is working hard to get me a wife,” he says, adding, “I cannot go on the rest of my adult life without kids.” As for marrying a woman and loving other men, he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Uhuru passes no judgment on its members, whatever their personal choices. “All we do is create a safe space for everyone,” Karugu says.
Edozien is a New York City–based writer.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group