I have just successfully started the upload to the new look website.

Gay Uganda. The site does have a history, and it is partly my own personal history.

I would like to tell it. It should be interesting, isn’t it? Of course to me it is. It is my personal history, and I have not written it down anywhere else.

I started the website in the last quarter of 2000. It may have been the third quarter. I have just deleted the files at the site which would tell me exactly when. (And of course lost a bit of my personal history.)

Anyway, back then, I first came out to myself.

Revision. I knew I was gay or a homosexual when I was at least 14. I mean I knew that I was what I am way back then but I was a well socialised person. I had imbibed in me so much of society’s hate of homosexuality that I just could not accept it. So, for the next few years I lived my own piece of self deception. (Sigh, seems like it was years!)

Anyway, around the beginning of 2000, something happened which tore the veil off my face. Not only did I know that I am gay, a homosexual, a Kuchu, but I also knew then that I could not hide from it.

I must confess there was a feeling of euphoria. I did have fun, discovering myself, discovering others, exploring what I could of this facet of me that had been hidden for such a long time.

I made use of the internet to find other gay Ugandans, kuchus. It was interesting that I could not see any one. I just did not have the guts or the ability to pick up a person out of the crowd. And I was feeling very, very lonely.

Anyway, I had a bash, and afterwards I was caught up in something.

I was between jobs, and had a computer at home. I did have enough money to get a dial up connection, which of course brought the internet to me at my leisure. I was still learning the computing application. And one of the things which struck me was the fact that I could make a webpage. I tried it, and it was fun.

So, besides surfing most of my meagre income and spending much on the telephone bills, I also started playing around making a website. I made Gay Uganda. I wanted a place where another Kuchu could get the information that I had failed to get in time.

I wanted to show the world that I was gay, a Ugandan, and proud of both facts.

Oh yes, that was years and years ago. The site which I made was the most amateurish that I could have ever done. And I did not have enough time at first, and later the money to continue working on it.

But I did it.

I fell in love with one cyber friend, with whom we tickled the site. The relationship fizzled out without us having ever met physically, but all the same the site remained, a memory of something that was only real in the depths of cyber.

Surprisingly, or not, other gay Ugandans liked it, and went into over drive using the guestbook as a connection means. I was surprised. But I continued it, and it is now more than 6 years, and well, the connecting is still going on.

I have kept the authorship a mystery to most kuchus. It is just not safe enough, having it in the public domain. And at the same time, though I loved the pic of M7 looking on as the police chased guys, I was not ready to beard the king!

So, will people like the new look website? I do not know.

I have an inkling that they will. Especially if it does come out as a I am dreaming it to be. If I do finish it, it will be great. I have grown more in perception and experience and of course my html authoring. Though I must say that I am having to learn the tricks as I go on.

Way to go. But at least some of the steps have been taken.

See you at the site

http://www.geocities.com/gayuganda/

gug