Edwin Chiloba, my first love
- On January 4, 2023, Edwin’s body was found stashed in a metal box along the Kipkenyo-Kaptinga road in Kenya. Maybe, as is alleged, the murder of Edwin was a case of intimate partner violence. However, the events that led to his death cannot be divorced from homophobia.
When I first met him, there would have been no way to know that years later, I – and the world – would lose him so tragically. Due to the long wait at the bus terminal at our initial meeting, I was already irritated when he stepped out of the bus.
He stood at 6’2”, wearing a shirt with fur-like imprints on the collar, straightened black trousers and heels a few inches tall. He was a breathtaking figure and a sight that easily made me forget the hours of waiting.
I had little time for pleasantries as I was meant to travel to the countryside on a night bus that same day so we took the first tuk-tuk to my place, a humble bedsitter with a bed, cooking gas and a few utensils, where I fixed us supper before heading out to get the bus to Nairobi then try to get another bus to the countryside.
We did not talk much in the house, then. We could not find words, I dare say, to what our bodies sang to each other. We kept looking at each other on the bus to Nairobi, his smile — that singular value that he would never lose for all the years I would come to know him — was the most welcoming gesture. And so, when we found the space, alone at the back of that bus heading from Thika to Nairobi, our tongues could hardly not meet. He pushed his tongue into my mouth and, being the novice I was, I moved my lips and tongue, closed my eyes and let myself breathe in the air that came out of his nostrils.
For a moment, the world only contained me and him. We found the action, but not the words, to express how we felt. That action was my first kiss and that young man was my first love.
That young man was Edwin Kiprotich Kiptoo.
That night, there was no way that I would have known I would lose him so tragically. That night, when I missed the bus traveling from Nairobi to the countryside, I was not sad that I missed it. I had no reason to be. Back in the house when we laid together, our bodies sang to the best of Essex Hemphill’s poetry: “I place my ring/on your cock/where it belongs/No horsemen/ bearing terror/no soldiers of doom/will swoop in/and sweep us apart.”
There would be no way on earth that we could have been separated. But years later, after so much love and friendship, after the relationship had become no longer tenable and only the rapport of people who had once been together remained, that was what happened.
On January 4, 2023, Edwin’s body was found stashed in a metal box along the Kipkenyo-Kaptinga road in Kapseret, Uasin Gishu County. So far, five people have been arrested and arraigned in court over the murder, among them was his year-long lover, Jackton Odhiambo.
The news of the arrest of the prominent suspect Jackton Odhiambo was received with anguish and disbelief within the queer community. Samuel Githaiga, a gay and HIV/AIDS activist, posted: “And like I always say…. Your very closest friends will one day kill you….. yes…your very closest.”
Of course, not many queer people thought another queer person would be capable of doing what had been done to Edwin and there was hardly a single incident so prominent and publicized in Kenya and around the world that had come close to that of Edwin.
The disbelief and horror at the main suspect being Edwin’s lover was quite understandable. Queer people, beaten and shunned by the outside world tend to take each other as safe havens and whatever spaces we create for each other, be it in organizations, clubs or our houses, we think of what the writer Kai Cheng Thom calls Queerlandia – a place where we are free from the oppression of the often violent and neglectful families and communities where we were raised.
However, that is not always the case. Sometimes, the realities of real life and the myths of Queerlandia clash. The attacks come from within the created Queerlandia hence breaking the myth surrounding it.
January 6, 2023, Citizen TV, a Kenya TV station reported that, in 2022, Chiloba survived an attack by unknown assailants who roughed him up in public, leaving him with serious injuries on the face. Later, the same station reported that it was not a homophobic attack but allegedly an issue of intimate partner violence. As reports further emerged from Edwin’s friends and as alleged by Denis Nzioka, a gay and sex workers rights activist, Edwin’s relationship with Jackton had been a toxic one, one that led to his death.
Amid this, many questioned why Edwin had not spoken up before and tried to distance the issue from homophobia, nevermind that they are closely connected. Yet like Edwin, I understood the repercussions of going public over incidents and cases of intimate partner violence (IPV), especially as a queer person.
In early 2021, I got involved with someone who abused me in public, in front of friends. A month later, when I gathered his history of violence, I ended the relationship. He responded with threats to cause chaos where I lived and even went ahead to send death threats.
Survivors of violence go silent out of fear of further violence from the perpetrators – be it their intimate partners or any other abuser. In a mental health research conducted among sexual and gender minorities individuals in western kenya, 42.5 % of participants reported that they had undergone Intimate partner violence. However, owing to the neglect of queer intimate issues, of this percentage, little is ever reported.
Victim blaming and fear of further violence create an environment in which survivors of domestic violence are gagged even before they can speak. Two years ago, when I tried to get help from organizations to whom I had reported the violence and death threats from my ex-partner, I was told I had to go to the police, get an OB (occurrence book) number then proceed to get help from the organizations before they could help me move out. The need for a police report, a condition these organizations gave me, put me off getting help. Reporting to the police, for most victims of intimate partner violence, means opening up to state homophobia, denigration, shunning and self-incrimination.
And so ultimately, intimate partner violence is compounded by homophobia both within the police structures and in communities.
While state-backed homophobia plays a big role in silencing survivors of intimate partner violence, it becomes more lethal when linked with societal and cultural norms of heterosexuality. Discriminatory laws force queer people into the closet, making their intimate dealings and arrangements private.
The act of making of the sexual and intimate lives of queer people a phenomenon that needs to be kept a secret makes it difficult for cases of abuse and violence to be brought forward since the relations are already invisible, unspoken and pushed into the closet, therefore non-existent even in the neighborhoods queer people live in.
Maybe, as is alleged, the murder of Edwin Kiprotich Kiptoo was a case of intimate partner violence. However, the events that led to his murder cannot be divorced from homophobia. What if Edwin did not have to fear law enforcement officers? What if the laws were different?
Currently, the Kenyan penal code criminalizes homosexual sex. If one is caught, one is liable for up to fourteen years of imprisonment. The Kenyan laws, part of state-sanctioned homophobia, creates an environment of silencing victims and survivors of intimate partner violence.
The last time I met Edwin, I was in a white T-shirt emblazoned with rainbow colors. Tired from class work after months of being away from physical classes due to Covid-19, I slowly made my way through the Thika Superhighway in November 2020. By then the flyover connecting Garden City Mall and Homeland Lounge was still under construction.
“I can’t see you, where are you?” I asked him over the phone.
“Come to the other side of the road, towards the Homeland Lounge”.
As I silently made my way to him, there was still the smile, bright in the lights on the highway and the lights outside of Homeland Lounge’s parking lot. A few seconds later, our bodies met in a hug, that long hug that we knew from meetups and hours of travel between Eldoret and Nairobi when we were together.
“I missed you so much,” he said.
Those words, said as our chests met in that long embrace, are ones I still remember. Edwin’s death was tragic – one that no one saw coming. His death is also evidence of things not spoken; about the myth of Queerlandia and how homophobia plays a part in intimate partner violence.
Süper Tekne, Göcek Tekne Kiralama,
Edited by: Caleb Okereke and Uzoma Ihejirika.
