It is wonderful that you are able to live with your partner in relative privacy. This in itself is something to be celebrated. The various elements that you mentioned in your post...the lover, the tenure of the relationship, the apparent independence that you both enjoy, the declared determination to live your lives as the gay men that you are, in a manner that makes you as happy as your circumstances in society permit you to be...all of these are worthy of rejoicing. It is too often that our comments about gay life in our country and on our continent go no further than sheer lamentation. It is true that in Uganda we are surrounded by an apparently impenetrable wall of homophobia, but we are gay, and we have to be what we are. I believe that the burden is on us to demonstrate to the wider society that we are just as normal as our heterosexual brothers and sisters. It becomes impossible for us to do this when we remain locked away inside a firmly locked closet. In saying this I am not unaware of the terrible dangers that await the one who "comes out". But my experience is that in sub-saharan Africa, barring South Africa, Uganda is a leader in the struggle for equal rights for sexual minorities. As this is not my blog, I will refrain from telling of my own personal experience. But it seems to me that widespread public debate of gay issues in Uganda over the last few years, has undeniably caused greater numbers of people to begin to see things differently. I believe that there is the genesis of a softening of public opinion, however imperceptible this may be. It is for us to take the initiative.

On crossdressers, I will quote an American anthropologist "The Lango were a people of Uganda. Among the Lango, the penalty for homosexuality was death. But there was a footnote. Here it is:

An exception is made in the case of a small class of men known as Jo Apele, referred to also as Jo Aboich, or the impotents. These men, being impotent from birth, are considered as the afflicted of god (jok obalog, god ruins them). They acknowledge a mortal father, but believe a divine agency operated at their fertilization (jok manywala, it was god who begat me). Being impotent, they have all the instincts and nature of women, and as such are recognized by men and women alike. They accordingly become women (dano mulokere, mudoko dako, a man who has become a woman). They wear the characteristic facial and bodily ornaments of a woman, the chip, the del, the lau; they wear their hair long, dressing it in ringlets like women's hair, and take women's names; they do all the women's work, observe women's clan tabus, and like women are debarred form owning property or from following men's pursuits such as hunting; they even simulate menstruation and wear the leaves prescribed for women in their courses. They appear in all respects to be mentally sound and are most industrious. Being women, therefore, in all except the physical characteristics, they are treated as such, and live with a man as his wife without offending against Lango law. Sometimes, but rarely, property passes on the 'marriage,' and their co-wives welcome him as a woman. The total number of such persons does not amount to fifty, but among the Iteso and certain Karamojan tribes such people of hermaphroditic instincts are very numerous."

Now, who were these girls? There were no more than 50 in a population of 17,000. That's far too few to jibe with modern estimates of the occurrence of homosexuality, even if we count their husbands---which of course the colonial administrator who wrote the report did not. And the number seems far too high to represent the occurrence of transsexualism as we know it. What can we make of "impotent form birth'? Do you suppose the Lango went around checking out infant hard-ons? Talk about your chicken inspectors!

Did you notice the gay consciousness? The other Lango call them the ones god ruined. But she calls herself jok manywala, god begat me."


--Bunjo

There is more to that article by Lars Eigner, but I ran out of characters in the last post, as I am allowed only 4000 characters per post.
--Bunjo

Wow, that is great info. And hear I was thinking that in Uganda we only had the case of Kabaka Mwanga and the martyrs to quote from about how African gay relationships are! Where can one find this article by Lars Eigner?

Homosexuality was present amongst our ancestors. It was not thought of as being out of the ordinary, and was not considered a 'big deal' until the arrival of Europeans.

The history of the lie in scholarship is what I am now studying. It can be said to be based upon two false assumptions in anthropology: the false assumption that savage or primitive people know nothing about homosexuality and the false assumption that Africans were savage or primitive.

Where there was clear and indisputable evidence of African homosexuality, anthropologists had to invent excuses in order to save these false assumptions, and that is what they did.

The first excuse was that Africans learned homosexuality from the Arabs. Then the excuse was that Africans learned homosexuality by hustling Europeans. Anthropologists said homosexuality was only a corruption practiced by the overly rich chiefs. Then they said that poor people practiced homosexuality because the overly rich chiefs had monopolized all of the women in harems. They said it was only youthful high spirits, the African was not really homosexual; he was just real drunk last night! Every excuse you are likely to hear from a deep closet case was used by Euro-American academics in the attempt to explain away the facts.

The facts were, homosexuality was found in almost every major African ethnic group that we know of, through all of the history we know of. Few of the societies of Africa could be called savage or primitive, but all over the world, those people who might fairly be called savage or primitive were and are perfectly familiar with homosexuality. Homosexuality is not the white man's way. It is the way of gay people of all colors and nations, of all places and times.



--Bunjo