Outed on TikTok in Ethiopia: ‘How a dance nearly cost me my life’ - Minority Africa
Toluwani Omotesho
March 12, 2024
But first, in Kenya, four women living with HIV have been awarded $20,000 each in damages for being sterilized without their consent.
The sterilization procedure is called a bilateral tubal ligation (BTL), where a woman’s fallopian tubes are sealed or blocked off by either cutting, burning, clipping, or being partly removed. This prevents fertilization of eggs from occurring, and it’s considered a permanent method of birth control.
One of the women, Penda*, narrated her experience. She explained that shortly after having her twins at Pumwani Maternity Hospital in Nairobi, she was advised not to breastfeed the children to avoid transmitting the virus through breast milk but to use formula milk instead exclusively. She was assured that she could get free food if she showed proof of using family planning and was referred to a clinic where personnel from Marie Stopes ran a family planning programme. At this clinic, she was given a form to fill out, which was unknown to her, as she could not read, was a consent form for a BTL.
The three other women also had a similar experience with Pumwani Maternity Hospital, with one of them, Furaha*, becoming a widow. When her husband found out she had been sterilized, he became a drunk and was eventually killed by a moving vehicle.
After nine years of legal battle, the High Court of Kenya ruled in their favor, primarily because of the lack of informed consent from the women. The damages awarded will be paid jointly by Marie Stopes International,  Pumwani Maternity Hospital, and the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
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Women continue to experience various forms of violence across Uganda. Can training men help to shatter cultural perceptions of gender and correspondingly work to prevent abuse?
Five years ago, Harriet Okello, 37, a resident of Kuru-Otit village, Omoro District in Northern Uganda, and a mother of five, left home and divorced her husband, Richard Okello, citing physical and alcoholism-related violence. It was the third time that she had returned to her parents in just a space of less than twelve months. The physical violence and psychological torture from her husband seemed not to end.
“He would come back in the middle of the night drunk and beat up everyone for no apparent reason. This would happen every day until I took a stand,” she recounts.
To reconcile and salvage their marriage, Richard Okello assembled a team of men from his family and clan. However, these efforts were futile. Harriet’s parents insisted on tangible proof of transformation before they could re release their daughter.
“Even my parents were tired of my repeated trips to their house. They were tired of my husband’s repeated apologies,” she adds.
At that point, they had sired three children who, according to her, were the reason she was enduring.
“We look out for one another”: Queer, Hausa, and Woman in Nigeria
For queer Hausa women, living authentically means challenging societal norms and risking rejection from their families and communities. Maryam remembers watching her girlfriend overdose.
It was 2018, and 24-year-old Maryam and her girlfriend of two years, Safiya, had agreed to come out to their Hausa families. The couple met in Zamfara State while both students at Federal University, Gusau. After school, they returned to the city and eventually moved in together. Coming out didn’t go well for either of them, but Safiya took a harder hit. Her family publicly disowned her and informed her homophobic employer, who terminated her contract. In the blink of an eye, she lost her job and her family. This triggered a depression that led her down a path of alcohol and drugs until Safiya overdosed one day, causing convulsions and prompting Maryam to take her to the hospital.
She was declared dead on arrival.
“Safi was very beautiful and cheerful; she was always full of life,” says Maryam. “I felt very guilty [because] I was the one who pressured her to come out; I didn’t know it would go this way. I try not to think about it so much or blame myself, but sometimes, it’s hard not to.”
For queer northern women like Maryam and Safiya, acceptance by family is often difficult. Found predominantly in northern Nigeria, the Hausa people are one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups. They have strong cultural and religious values that hinge on strict gender roles.
Period poverty: How air pollution in Kenya could make periods heavier, more painful, and more expensive
Every month, Alice Shikuku has to choose between buying enough food for her family and sanitary pads for her daughter. Her family moved to Korogocho, one of the poorest slums in Nairobi, Kenya, four years ago when the father of her children died. Not long after, she was forced to sell her sewing machine, her only source of income, so that she could get treatment for an infection in her leg.
“Life became extremely difficult,” Shikuku tells CNN while sitting outside her sheet-metal home alongside her children. “Today, I have nothing. There is a material I was given to sew, but I don’t have a machine to do so.”
On a good day, Shikuku can make around $1 (150 Kenyan shillings) washing clothes and cleaning houses, but the cheapest pads available in Korogocho cost 33 cents (50 Kenyan shillings). That means her 14-year-old daughter, Mercy, often must go without. Last month, Mercy was sent home from school after her period caught her by surprise. And she regularly stays home if she doesn’t have pads to avoid embarrassment.
Outed on TikTok in Ethiopia: ‘How a dance nearly cost me my life’
When a clip of two men dancing at a party in Ethiopia was posted to TikTok, it unleashed a torrent of homophobic hatred and eventually forced one of them to flee the country.
The pair were unaware they were being filmed. The videos were initially posted to Instagram, where someone took a screenshot of them to make a viral TikTok post.
“I didn’t want to come out [as gay], but social media pulled me out,” Arnold, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, tells the BBC. “Now everybody knows who I am and my sexual identity,” the 20-year-old Ethiopian student says.
Homosexuality is illegal in Ethiopia and punishable by penalties that range from 10 days to three years in prison, according to the UN. Arnold says opening up about identity or sexuality can be dangerous, with a culture of neighbors taking the law into their own hands.
Colombian Disability Rights Activist Honored
Mariana Lozano, a young activist from Colombia, is the 2023 recipient of the Human Rights Watch Marca Bristo Fellowship for Leadership in Disability Rights, Human Rights Watch announced today on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, celebrated on December 3.
Lozano has been an emerging advocate for the rights of young people with disabilities in Colombia. She has been a part of the organization Different Minds Multiactive Cooperative (Cooperativa Multiactiva Mentes Diferentes, Coopmente), which supports people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Her vision is to represent young people with disabilities and promote their autonomy, rights, and inclusion in society. As part of her university studies, Lozano has been learning about legal mechanisms crucial to protecting the rights of people with intellectual disabilities.
As a woman with an intellectual disability, Lozano has overcome stigma and exclusion and developed important life skills, such as financial literacy and personal safety, which have been central to her independence and autonomy
Need Therapy? In West Africa, Hairdressers Can Help.
An initiative to train hairdressers in mental health counseling is providing relief to hundreds of clients in a region with the world’s least access to therapy.
Joseline de Lima was wandering the dusty alleys of her working-class neighborhood in the capital of Togo one day last year when a disturbing thought crossed her mind: Who would take care of her two boys if her depression worsened and she was no longer around to look after them?
Ms. de Lima, a single mother who was grieving the recent death of her brother and had lost her job at a bakery, knew she needed help. But therapy was out of the question. “Too formal and expensive,” she recalled thinking.
Help came instead from an unexpected counselor: Ms. de Lima’s hairdresser, who had noticed her erratic walks in the neighborhood and provided a safe space to share her struggles amid the curly wigs hanging from colorful shelves and the bright neon lights of her small salon in Lomé, Togo’s capital.
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