‘My father chased me away’: From Uganda to Canada as a refugee
This week, we start in Sudan, where a paramilitary group is accused of stealing from a camp suffering from hunger. Then, we head to the DRC, where armed men are committing sexual violence against children. Finally, we arrive to Uganda, where Lailah shares how her father kicked her out after she came out as queer.
But first, in Nigeria, atheists are finding ways to connect and support each other through secret Discord Bible studies and podcast communities while keeping a low profile in a strongly religious society.
Read an excerpt here👇🏽:
When faith is expected, “it is best to keep [unbelief] a secret”
For most of his life, Tolu, a hospital lab technician in his 20s, was a devout Christian. In 2019, he joined a campus fellowship at the University of Lagos, hoping to deepen his faith and live a more meaningful Christian life. By 2020, however, his commitment took an unexpected turn—he began scrutinising his beliefs more rigorously, wanting to understand the core truth among the many doctrines and denominations.
“[I started asking], how can I get to the bottom of what Christianity is or what the true doctrine is? How could I further my relationship with the Holy Spirit?” he told Minority Africa. “So I kept asking myself all these questions and reading the Bible more, [but] I was seeing contradictions. I was delving into apologetics. I was doing several things to strengthen my faith, and the more I strengthened my faith the more I opened up another set of questions.”
Questioning things made it difficult for Tolu to reconcile Christianity with reality, as the things he knew were clashing. So he stopped.
“I sort of chickened out,” he said. “I stopped trying to understand. I stopped trying to read the Bible. I stopped trying to deconstruct. I stopped trying to ask questions.”
Continue reading here
Don’t Miss These Stories
BBC
Sudan fighters accused of storming famine-hit camp
Washington Blade
South Africa groups offer muted response to president’s pledge to protect LGBTQ rights
Top Picks This Week
The Struggle for Visibility: How Zimbabwean Journalists are Tackling LGBTQ+ Issues
In Zimbabwe, a highly conservative country that has been under a repressive regime for years, LGBTQ+ issues have remained highly polarised – a legacy of the hard-line stance of the late Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s former president.
A legacy that can be summed up in “worse than pigs and dogs,” a statement he once shockingly made about homosexuals, that still lingers among many people in the country, including journalists who have conveniently skirted around LGBTQ+ issues like a plague. So when a representative of the LGBTQ+ community, Agatha Marekera, recently told a public media workshop in Zimbabwe’s eastern border city of Mutare that the gay and lesbian population in the country is far higher than many people think, some journalists were both shocked and perplexed.
“There are so many people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, but many people in the country don’t understand LGBTQ+ issues,” Marekera revealed to incredulous gasps.
“Tag the trees”: The disappearing Kenyan Language being saved with afforestation
A stroll through Mukogodo Forest in Laikipia County, Kenya’s largest national and dry forest reserve covering landmass of over 30,000 hectares, reveals a sight: metallic tags adorning the trees, each bearing two words. One word is in English, while the other is its translation into Yaakuntee, the indigenous language of the Yiaku people.
The tags, with the English word ‘Elephant,’ and its counterpart in Yaakunte ‘Sogomei,’ are an initiative of Ann Naibini and Juliana Kageni, sisters working hard to revive their dying Yaakuntee language and traditions. They are the grandchildren of one of the three remaining elders of the Yaakunte tribe.
“The words are in English and their translations are in the Yaakunte language to make it easier for the young learners to understand,” says Kageni.
In the year 2020, Yaakunte was declared among the critically endangered languages in Kenya by UNESCO.
What’s Happening Around the World
BBC
India anger as judge frees man accused of raping wife who then died
CNN
South Africa does have a history of racist land inequality. Just not in the way Trump and Musk are portraying
Aljazeera
Scores of children raped by armed men in eastern DRC, UNICEF says
Scores of children caught up in the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been subjected to sexual violence including rape by armed men, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
A Quick Read Before You Go
Context
‘My father chased me away’: From Uganda to Canada as a refugee
I came out as a queer person in 2007. My father chased me away. He said he never wanted to see me again. I was nine days away from turning 17.
I started living on the streets of Kampala in October 2007 until my auntie took me in. A few months later in January 2008, friends of hers, a Muslim family, were looking for a wife for their son. I was a beautiful young girl, and I was just given to them. That’s how I got married — rejected by my family and just given away.
But the good thing was that the person whom I was given to, the person who became the father of my children, had a good job in Abu Dhabi. He would just come for one month each year, but he was supportive financially. I gave birth to my firstborn in 2008, after I had just turned 18.