Dickens and Martin are two 20-year-old boys from Mombasa, the large Kenyan city overlooking the Indian Ocean. One day they know on Facebook George, a teacher in a secondary school in Kajiado, a small town of 8,000 inhabitants 500 kilometres away. The professor promises them 10,000 shillings (almost 90 euros) if they have sex with him. The two young people go up to Kajiado and have sex with George, but the latter at the time of paying them wants to give them only half of what they agreed. The man has not behaved well, but the two young people, who made the long journey especially for him, have no better idea than going to report him to the police. Crazy choice, since Kenya punishes anal intercourses with imprisonment up to 14 years: the police arrest all three protagonists of this absurd story.
Many people comment online that the fault lies with non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which are now the boogeyman of intolerant people around the world: they accuse NGOs of importing homosexuality in the African country. Someone else blames colonialism but forgets that the British empire did not introduce relations “against the order of nature;” on the contrary, it imposed the criminalisation of homosexuality. Another man writes: “Anal sex originates HIV. And this is why (after some men in Sodom and Gomorrah demanded to sleep with a male angel) God wiped off the 3 cities.”
Dickens and Martin were incredibly naïve, but the race of absurdity was swept up by so many compatriots, who grew up in a society in which correct information about sexuality does not circulate. The quality of information about different sexual orientations is even worse. And yet, before colonialism, Kenyan societies were rather open towards sexual diversity. For example, the Mugawe priests were born into a “male” body, dressed in women’s clothes and often married men. The story of Dickens and Martin may seem funny to someone, but it is heartbreaking to think of their future and the intolerance that conquered Kenya.
Pier Cesare Notaro
©2019 Il Grande Colibrì
picture: elaboration from Mwabonje (CC0)
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