NAIROBI, KENYA – Mary Nyambura, 29, was walking home from work late one evening in 2001 when a group of eight men gang-raped her for being a lesbian.
Nyambura says they told her they wanted her to know how it felt to be with a man. They carried the 19-year-old to a secluded place in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
They tore off her clothes and raped her in turns. They then beat her up and left.
“I felt so hopeless that I couldn’t gather enough strength to walk home,” she says. “I stayed there the entire night.”
Nyambura had just moved to Nairobi from her village in Rift Valley province. With the help of her brother, she had started a small business digging up stones in a nearby quarry to sell to construction companies. She says she used to join the men she hired in loading the heavy stones onto lorries, which sparked questions about her sexuality.
“The men at the quarry would ask me if I was really a woman since I was always dressed in roomy pants and shorts,” says Nyambura, whose dreadlocks fall to her shoulders. “I also used to turn down their sexual advances. One day, they told me they’d try to find out if I’m really a woman, but I didn’t take them seriously. I wish I did because I suspect they are the ones who attacked me that night.”
She didn’t report the case to the police, so no investigation or arrests were made.
Nyambura also didn’t go to hospital, even after she started having nausea two months later. She says she was depressed.
One day, she accompanied her sister to the hospital for an immunization for her baby. There, she saw a voluntary counseling and testing center.
“I saw a VCT and decided to find out my HIV status,” she says. “The nurse advised me to get a pregnancy test as well.”
Her face shows little emotion as she recalls the test results.
“They both came out positive,” she says.
She gave birth a few months later to a boy, who was HIV-negative. She says the joy of raising her son, who is now 10 years old, has transformed her life.
“When I held him in my hands, I cried, not out of pain but because of joy,” she says. “He gave me a reason to live and move on with life.”
Nyambura now works as a volunteer with Minority Women in Action, a community-based organization that advocates for the rights of women in Kenya who identify as lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex.
But life took another dive in August 2011 when Nyambura was gang-raped again.
She and a friend were waiting to take a bus home in Westlands, a neighborhood in Nairobi, at about 8 p.m. when thugs emerged. The women tried to run away, but the men caught Nyambura’s friend and she decided not to leave her behind.
Nyambura was wearing a T-shirt from her organization that said, “Proudly lesbian” and “Africa stand up against homophobia.” She says the thugs taunted them about her sexuality then took them to a forest, where they raped them repeatedly.
“I pitied my friend since the men were moving from me to her without using protection,” says Nyambura, who is HIV-positive. “Luckily, we were able to get emergency treatment at a hospital the next morning, so she was not infected.”
She says her attackers’ misunderstanding of homosexuality baffles her.
“I wonder what makes men think they can change my sexuality by raping me?” she asks. “If it was something I could change, I would have done so a long time ago. I’ve been through so many problems in life. Why would I choose to be something that puts me in so much trouble?”
After this incident, she says she decided to come out to her family about her sexuality. She now lives openly with a female partner. She also started speaking about her sexuality at events such as human rights conferences.
A documentary about Nyambura aired at a recent gay film festival this month in Nairobi.
The OUT Film Festival aimed to promote awareness and acceptance of homosexuality in Kenya, where homophobia is rife. The festival drew a mixed response from the community, with some thanking organizers, others refusing to attend and the government limiting one film to homosexual audiences only. Members of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community ask fellow citizens for increased acceptance.
Many Kenyans consider homosexuality an abomination and illegal, says Jane Wothami, the communications officer of Gay Kenya Trust, the human rights and media advocacy organization that organized the film festival. But she says the Kenyan Penal Code deems only homosexual acts illegal – not being gay, bisexual or lesbian in general.
She says the number of Kenyans who identify as such is uncertain.
“We can’t tell for sure because there are people who still keep their sexuality secret,” she says. “But a study by the University of Nairobi estimated that the gay community are 10 percent of the entire population in Kenya.”
The OUT Film Festival, which ran from Nov. 15 through Nov. 17, aimed to give a voice to the lesbian, gay and bisexual community to highlight the challenges they face in a generally intolerant society. It also strived to show them that they are neither abnormal nor alone.
Kevin, an openly gay journalist and festival organizer from Gay Kenya Trust, requested his second name be withheld because his brother is running for governor in the coming elections in the Coast province. With homophobia widespread, he fears competitors could use his sexuality to persuade people not to vote for his brother.
“Most of the films featured Kenyan, African and black people in general to challenge the notion that homosexuality is a Western thing,” Kevin says. “We also wanted to create a situation where a gay person would watch the film and say, ‘That’s me.’”
Goethe Institut, an institution funded by the German government to promote foreign cultural and educational policy, hosted the festival in support of Gay Kenya Trust.
Barbara Reich, the film program officer and press officer at Goethe Institut, says the institute received the following email from one attendee: “Please receive a lot of appreciation for hosting the show; for once i had that awesome feeling of being content and being at home away from any judgement and discrimination. I cant wait for next time .”
Attendance this year and at the inaugural festival in September 2011 has been strong, Reich says.
But before showing the films, the organizers had to seek approval from the Kenya Film Classification Board, a statutory body that vets all films before they are shown to the public.
The board classified most films at the festival as “adults only” and one as “special audience only.” Only people in the gay community were allowed to view this film because of excessive homosexual content, says Farida Masai, a film classification examination officer at the board.
“We only authorized that it be shown to that group only,” she says. “We did not want it shown to the general public because we have a duty to protect our culture.”
The Goethe Institut hired extra security guards in the event of violence, but Reich says the event was peaceful.
“During this event, as last year, people who found the films offensive just walked out,” she says. “There was no violence.”
Others in the community refused to attend.
Joseph Kuria, a newspaper vendor who operates near the Goethe Institut, says he knew about the festival but did not attend because he did not want to be involved in anything related to homosexuality.
“These are people who have abandoned our culture and taken up Western culture, which is a big shame,” he says.
Kevin, of Gay Kenya Trust, says Kenyans’ intolerance of issues and opinions they disagree with is not only limited to homosexuality. There is also tension based on tribe, religion and even football teams.
“I call upon all Kenyans to be more open-minded and accept people who are different,” he says. “They need to embrace diversity.”
