It had been about two years since I’d last engaged in formal education when I joined the bar course. Initially, I had decided against studying the bar, and detoured instead towards a career in film and writing, content with my law degree. However, my mom begged and badgered me to apply for it, probably because she felt that ‘writer’ did not have the same ring to it as ‘lawyer.’  To her credit, the latter is considerably more certain and secure than the former, especially in Uganda. Everyone knows the ‘starving artist’ caricature.

Her peers convinced her that if I didn’t go to LDC, my law degree would be useless, I disagreed because I didn’t plan on doing litigation. There was a lot of back and forth between us about it, but ultimately, I gave in because I felt I owed her this one thing. She has always been so graceful in handling me as a queer child, and even if she doesn’t fully understand what it is to be non-binary, she has never wavered in her love and support for me. Given the fact that she is a devout Christian, and we live in a deeply homophobic country, I feel that I have been very lucky in this aspect.

So I said, “what the hell, let’s do this and get it over with,” but to be completely honest, I was dreading the course. It is famously difficult, and everyone swore I would come out of it with an alcohol habit or something worse, so I spent the better part of the year mentally preparing myself for it. I gave myself so many pep talks that by the time September rolled around, I was a mental fortress. I was ready to immerse myself for the 9 months the course was going to take, and come out a winner. I arrived at the Mbarara campus with the biggest ‘can do’ attitude; I knew it was going to be difficult, and I was prepared to roll with the punches.

As soon as the course started, I was hit with a curve ball. Things were about to get hot, but not for the reasons I had anticipated. The biggest of my problems was not going to be the coursework, no. It was not going to be the new location, or the fact that I barely knew anyone there. These would at least have been bearable. My biggest problem would turn out to be the administration’s issue with my gender presentation.

I don’t know why I was so surprised by that; Uganda is a homophobic country after all. I stuck out like a sore thumb and it definitely didn’t help that the Anti-Homosexuality Act had just been passed into law earlier that year. But the thing is, in the years before my return to formal education, I had started meeting other queer people.

Any LGBTQ+ person will tell you that finding community after years of not having any is like stumbling onto an oasis while wandering the desert.  I curated a very tight bubble of queer friends and allies. Around them, I was no longer a weird, introverted loner. I found myself blossoming into a social butterfly; someone my teenage self would hardly recognise. I even came to the realization that I did not, in fact, have crippling social anxiety, I had just been trying to socialise with a crowd that wasn’t mine. Around the fags, I didn’t have to explain myself or justify why I did certain things the way I did, I could just be. This definitely skewed my perception of how people would respond to me. Now here I was, in an institution famous for its rigidity and allegiance to colonial standards of propriety, with no memory of how to adjust myself to its liking. The closet door was glass, and I had forgotten how sensitive some straight people could be to any deviations from the norm.

In the very first week of class, the Assistant Director (AD) called me into her office and asked that I grow out the shaved sides of my hair. This was not surprising; my hair was braided in the middle with a fade on the sides. I won’t bother getting into the mental slavery behind the idea that a hairstyle can be considered ‘unprofessional’, as if one’s appearance has anything to do with their intellectual capacity, I’m sure you know all that.  In any case, I had anticipated that the style would be too risqué for that institution, but I figured I would wear it that way until they asked me to stop. The AD suggested that in the meantime, I tie my hair low enough to hide the shaved sides. I went home that day, tried out the style and hated it. I looked like someone’s conservative Auntie Maria, no shade. I held my hair that way for about two days, but the look did not grow on me as I hoped. It leaned too feminine and made me feel very dysphoric. So when the weekend rolled around, I un-braided the hair and shaved my afro. I left the saloon with a low-cut and a fade on the sides. I looked stunning, handsome if you will, but I would soon discover that that too, was going to be a problem.

Not long after, I was pulled aside by a professional adviser (PA) who asked me if I was okay.  Not out of concern for my well-being, of course, but with the implication that something was wrong with me. If you’re Ugandan, you know that tone, “Are you really okay (in the head)?” In this conversation he interrogated me about my haircut, my shoes (black oxford wing-tips with laces), the shirt I was wearing (a crisp white button-down) and my suit jacket. Apparently, it was a men’s jacket because it had pockets. Last I checked, it is not a crime to prefer a jacket with pockets and pants with a straight leg. Sue me for liking the cut of men’s suits better. Additionally, I was in full compliance with the uniform requirements.  The rules said we had to wear a black suit with a white shirt or blouse, and black or brown leather shoes. They made no mention of the gender categorisations of the clothing. I should emphasise that these stipulations did not seem to apply to the other female students. Many of them wore button-down shirts, and there were plenty of girls with the same haircut as I mine. The difference was that I looked masculine and they did not. My fault, I guess for inheriting my father’s smooth dark skin and dangerous jaw line.

I was advised to wear pumps. As in, ballerina style pumps. What a joke! Aside from the fact that I despise them (on myself), they are also flimsy, and when it rains (which it often did), water seeps into them. This experience turned me into some sort of shoe superintendent and brought me to the realization that there were plenty of girls who wore ‘men’s shoes.’ Every time I saw one, I would start by complimenting her shoes, and then I would ask if any of the PA’s had said anything about them, or asked her to change – and to no one’s surprise, they hadn’t.

This man also had the temerity to question me about the size of my breasts. Apparently, I looked like I didn’t have any. Okay, tea! Come through, binder. Jokes aside though, what the actual fuck? In what world is that an appropriate question to ask a student? He proceeded to tell me that as a parent, he would advise me to just change the way I dress because I was giving some of the other PA’s the wrong impression. He suggested that it could jeopardise my academic progress

What was that supposed to mean??

Wasn’t the only determinant for my academic progress supposed to be my grades and my attendance? He told me that prior to his class with us, he had been “warned about me” by the other PA’s and instructed to ask me to leave the classroom and mark me absent that day. When I pointed out that I had not missed a single class and was one of the most active participants, he acquiesced and said he would not be marking me absent. An absence was a big deal in this institution, because one needed to have not less than 90% attendance per week to qualify to sit the exams at the end of the term. So these people were basically just playing with my marks for shits and giggles.

After that interaction, I found an empty classroom to cry in because I just couldn’t believe what I was experiencing. In any other circumstances, that wouldn’t have rattled me because the opinions of strangers mean absolutely nothing to me. The difference here, was that these strangers had power over me. One day, a candidate for guild approached me and told me that I had been discussed in the staffroom, and they were considering discontinuing me from the course. I wanted to do the bar and finish it in one go, and they could stop that from happening. They had the power to make an already difficult experience unbearable, and they were not shy about exercising it. I later found out that the AD had instructed my class representative and God knows who else, to ensure that I felt uncomfortable.

All that for little old me?

Experiencing those things took the wind out of my sails. What was the point? Already, LDC is a rigorous academic programme that fills most people with dread. Now, it felt like it didn’t matter how hard I studied or how good my grades were, my academic progress would be determined by their perception of me. I don’t expect everyone to like me and my queer presentation; in fact, I always assume that someone is homophobic until proven otherwise. A sneer and a disdainful look I can take, a snide comment will just roll off my back. But the power to harm me materially? That is a little too scary.

A well-meaning friend advised that I just tone down my queerness and present as feminine until the course was over.  “It’s just 9 months, give them what they want and leave.” I saw the logic in that suggestion, it simply made the most sense. It is also the advice I would give someone in a similar position, but I just couldn’t do it.

Now, it’s not that I can’t perform femininity. In fact, I occasionally do. I call it a ‘femme era,’ and I always eat down. I am quite fond of my femme eras, and I get excited when I feel one on the horizon. Unfortunately, they tend to be very fleeting, but they’re fun while they last, like a summer fling. I’m usually over it quicker than I hoped, a few weeks pass and I start feeling like I physically cannot breathe. Have you ever tried to take off a cloth and gotten trapped? Your arms get caught and you can’t take it off or put it back on, you also can’t see anything? That claustrophobic panic? That’s usually how I know the femme era is ending.

Femininity works weirdly for me in that I mentally and psychologically cannot do it when I don’t want to, and still function properly. The urge has to come from within me, the femme era cannot be forced. Presenting femme when I’m not in the mood feels like being on stage performing a dance routine which you have not adequately practiced. As everyone else is effortlessly moving their body to the beat, you are busy thinking about what move comes next.

Up – no, it was supposed to be down. Everyone is facing left, why are you facing right?  And now the crowd is booing you.

I used to be able to do it in the past. I was accustomed to slipping on a mask of femininity, and I was good at performing it. Okay, that’s debateable, but I was certainly better at it than I am now.

And then COVID-19 happened and some of the lockdowns found me in the village by myself. I spent weeks not really interacting with anyone except for phone calls and texts. I was alone and I didn’t have to perform for anyone. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. The first lockdown was 42 days, more than enough time. By the time the final lockdown lifted, those intellectual muscles had atrophied, and it felt a lot harder to perform the femininity that was expected of me. I suppose I could have re-learnt how to perform. But in that time I had also encountered queer theory, and I felt reaffirmed in my identity. I didn’t want to do it anymore.

This made it extremely hard for me to rely on that trusty safety mechanism which has protected queer people for centuries; Code-switching. I tried to flip the switch and the fuse blew, fixing it required calling the electrician, and he had travelled out of the country. I could not do it for the life of me.

I tried to explain to my friend that if I were to force myself to present feminine, it would cripple me. It would require too much mental energy to maintain, energy I was supposed to be directing towards my studies. Keep in mind, this institution had had a 39% pass rate in the year preceding mine. I could not exert the effort it would take to pretend to be feminine, and simultaneously give all I had within me to my studies. I would fail, plain and simple.

They felt I was being dramatic, which is unsurprising. Mine is not a common experience, and I wouldn’t expect the average person to relate to it. 

So I was stuck. Either focus my energy on being the kind of ‘girl’ they wanted me to be, or focus it on my studies. I choose the studies and I paid for it. There was always something each day. I would hear that a PA had made shady comments about me in another class, ‘You know some of you people dress like the opposite sex, we have to be careful these days.’

The student body wasn’t that much better. That city was boring, there was nothing else to do except gossip. And boy, did they gossip. Almost every week there was a new story about me. On two separate occasions, I made friends with a girl and within a week there were dating rumours. I know lesbians move fast but a week is crazy. I was also literally in a very serious relationship at the time. I suppose according to straight logic, if you are masculine, you can’t be friends with a girl without wanting to have sex with her.  

I could feel the energy shift when I entered a room, I could see people staring at me out of the corner of my eye. I started dissociating my way through the school day without even realising it.

I heard that there were people who wanted to be friends, but were wary of the heat that being associated with me would bring, and I didn’t blame them. Many Ugandans believe homosexuality is a social contagion. Either they were told that I would make them gay, or that I would ‘eat’ them, or they were accused of being gay themselves. I don’t care to fight gay allegations. Guilty as charged and proudly so, but that can’t be everyone.

I did eventually make a few friends, and they were lovely, but for the most part I was wary of people. I would often hear that someone who had been going out of their way to act friendly with me at school was saying all types of crazy things behind my back. So it didn’t seem worth the effort. 

Not having many friends at school was fine by me, I am no stranger to loner hood, it is my default mode of existence. I was a loner for most of my teen years and I was good at it. It’s easier for me to retreat into myself than to open myself up to people, and that is exactly what I did. What I didn’t understand was why these people were so bothered by me. I used to mind my business like I was being paid to do it. I would attend class, maybe listen in on a discussion or two and then go home. In and out. I always felt like I was falling behind, where did they find the time to ride my dick like that?

Towards the end of the first semester, I received news from home that my grandmother, the matriarch, and the glue that held the extended family had passed on. I had aunties and cousins who flew in from abroad, and I couldn’t even travel to attend the funeral. I wish I was joking when I tell you that a PA told us in orientation week that funerals were not a valid excuse to miss attendance. I couldn’t afford to be absent for the days it would require me to make the 10- hour journey across the country, attend the funeral and repeat the journey all over again. I didn’t even have the time to grieve her properly because exams were starting in a few days.  I had to lock in and just get shit done, I still don’t know how I did that.

The second semester started about four days after my relationship of two and a half years had ended. Guise, the breakfast I chopped was too violent, I literally watched her accept a marriage proposal two days after the breakup. I was so sad, it wasn’t even funny. That had been the most intense relationship I had ever been involved in, and my support system was a 6- hour bus-ride away. I was crumbling and my usual coping mechanism, cannabis, was not ideal. I couldn’t study as efficiently if I was high all the time, and I couldn’t afford to fall behind on my school work.

I went through those early weeks like a zombie, trying to stay on top of school, trying not to call her (and succeeding by the way), and trying to keep going until enough time had passed so that she wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes. And the time did pass, soon she shifted to being the second thing I thought about. I was far from fully healed, but I was on the way there. It was taking it one day at a time and the days were slowly adding up.

One Sunday evening, roughly three months after the break up, my ex posted pictures and videos of her traditional wedding in a group chat we were both members of. She wrote how much she loved him and how he was a blessing to her because he had money, had bought her a car, opened her a business and was helping her family. She barely even spoke in that group, but I had her blocked everywhere, and she knew I would see if she posted them there. I saw them while I was in the market, and watched our mutual friends congratulate her on the ceremony.

With shaking hands, I finished my shopping and went home. And then I took a walk on the by-pass. That day’s was one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life, it was like the universe knew I needed it. I thought I would cry, but for some reason I didn’t, even if it felt like a barely formed scab had been ripped off and the wound was bleeding again.

The next day, as I entered class, my heart, a gaping wound in my chest, a PA pulled me aside and asked me to go home and change my shoes, because they were men’s shoes. I must emphasise that per the letter of the rules – ‘black or brown leather shoes’– I was not doing anything wrong. On any other day, I would have walked home, changed, and come straight back, maybe a little irritated, but fine for the most part. But that Monday, I walked out of that room and all the tears I hadn’t cried the day before gathered behind my eyes. The thought of being seen crying in public was mortifying, so instead of walking, I hopped on a boda back home.

As soon as I entered my room, the dam broke and the tears came rushing out. I cried and I couldn’t stop crying. This was one of those cry sessions you save for the end of the day when you have the whole night ahead of you. And yet, I didn’t have the luxury of time, if I didn’t get back to class before it ended, I would have been marked absent. I gathered myself as best as I could and went back to class hoping my face wasn’t puffy and my eyes weren’t red.  And then the worst possible thing that could happen at that moment happened; someone asked me if I was okay. The tears resumed, right there, in the middle of the class while someone was explaining the law on Succession. I contemplated getting up and leaving, but then I would have been marked absent, and everyone would see my snotty, teary face. So I put my head down and cried as quietly as I could, but it was obvious what was happening. Guise, when I say it was horrible?!

Yoh!

I’m shaking writing this, but that could also be the shot of espresso I took. I wanted the ground to swallow me. I was angry with the PA, with my ex, with myself, I was embarrassed that I was crying in public, but more than anything, I was just so sad.

Amidst all this, the rumours did not stop. Someone even claimed they had seen me kissing a girl through a window, as if I would be that stupid. Meanwhile, I was at that stage of heartbreak where I had promised myself to leave women alone for a while and see what the boys had to offer.

I know who started the rumour, I saw him every day. I didn’t see the point in confronting him; he clearly wanted my attention, and I wasn’t going to give it to him. I just… don’t understand why? Like, what was there to gain? Attention, Clout, what? And when he got it, what was he going to do with it?

The whole situation was very weird. I’m not above a good piece of hot gossip myself, but it’s a bit crass to just make things up. Where’s the journalistic integrity?

He and his friends had the nerve to complain that I didn’t speak to them at school. They said I was too haughty, that I felt I was better than everyone, that’s why I wasn’t making friends with them. I have to laugh, because what? Look at the material and tell me you would weave a friendship out of it? I am very particular about who I call a friend, and they did not even make the cut for acquaintances.  

I was worried that these stories would reach the administration and that it would lead to an expulsion. Ugandan schools looove expelling the gays, and it seemed I was already on thin ice. My parents are aware of my queerness, but I just wasn’t sure how I would tell them I had been expelled from the bar course because of allegedly kissing a girl. All the money they had spent to send me there, down the drain.

The rumours got so ridiculous that they escalated to them saying they saw me and this girl through a window having sex. One boy even claimed that we had approached him for a threesome, before going on to narrate what was clearly a porn plotline.

The silliest thing about all this was that when the third term finally rolled around, the femme era did in fact locate me. I arrived at school with waist length, buss down braids and all of a sudden, the tone shifted.

It became “Omg, I can’t believe I judged ‘her’, I was wrong, I feel so bad.” People were apologetic for their ‘assumptions’ about me because I now looked more feminine.  All it took was some braids and me occasionally painting my nails for people’s perception to shift. I wish I’d had it in me to look feminine from the start, but then I guess this essay wouldn’t have been such a fun read. The most ironic thing about this is that it was around that time when I actually started dating the girl the rumours had been about.  

It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid, but it revealed a lot about the childlike simplicity with which some straight people view gender and sexuality. “I-If girly- then gay how?”

In my opinion, it is better if things stay that way, because that kind of ignorance keeps queer Ugandans safe. At least, those who are able to convincingly perform conventional masculinity and femininity. Sometimes I wish I was one of them, but I just am not.

I wish being visibly queer didn’t come with so much weirdness. As soon as people see a gender non-conforming person they get excited. But they don’t know what to do with it, or what it means for who they are, and society as they understand it, so it turns into nastiness. I could see that they were afraid of who I was and what I represented.  If they weren’t so afraid, they wouldn’t have gone out of their way to try to knock me down a peg, show me my place, so to speak. I saw their hate and fear and felt motivated to excel out of spite, and I did just that.

I thought I would feel uniquely victorious when I graduated. Overall best in resilience and what not. But more than anything, I felt tired, and they killed my love for the law. I didn’t deserve that experience. I shouldn’t have needed to be resilient, at least not beyond what was required to keep up with the academic load. 

I am human too and I’m tired of adversity. I just want to live without being alert all the time, it fries my nerves. Half the time I’m dealing with something; maybe I’m broke, sad, or stressing about a problem completely unrelated to my identity, but people cannot see my humanity enough to just let me be. They insist on laying their baggage on me to carry on top of my own. 

You don’t have to like me and we don’t have to be friends, I have enough of those. You can just leave me alone, I’ll keep my distance and you keep yours. I don’t need to deal with the emotions you feel when you encounter me in public, let that be your business.

The school administration felt comfortable enough to subject me to those petty, cowardly humiliations, even when I was objectively in compliance, because they had the power of the Anti- Homosexuality Act behind them. That is what happens when people’s bigotry has legal and institutional backing.  Because they were uncomfortable with how I showed up, they felt they could demand that I adjust myself to their liking.

I will NOT be doing that.

The ultimate aim of homophobia and transphobia is to erase queer and trans people from public view, we are not supposed to exist at all. I refuse to lend my hand to that policy by disappearing myself, I will remain visible. Yes, it is dangerous and will make my life more difficult, I am intimately aware of the hate that certain people have for people like me. But I will not be erased, I have as much a right to take up space and exist AS I AM, as anyone else does.

For one, I quite literally have no choice. This is who I am. But secondly, my queerness is political. It is a praxis that informs how I interact with the world on a day-to-day basis. After all, the personal is political and who, if not queer people, knows what it’s like to be a political tool, always up for debate?

In Bell Hooks’ words, “Queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” This quote is very pertinent to my experience, because I didn’t have to be actively having sex with a woman to spur on hostility; my mere existence in my skin was all it took.

I am proud of who I am and I refuse to carry the shame that is expected of me, I will NEVER shrink myself for anyone.

There is a global pushback in LGBTQ+ rights and a rise in conservative and fascist politics. Everywhere you turn, it genuinely feels like society is regressing, but I don’t think of it that way. This feels like the period where things get worse before they get better. We are witnessing a desperate grab to salvage traditional power structures that have harmed women, queer people and other marginalised groups for ages because their very foundations are crumbling and they can feel that.

The reason the backlash is so vicious is because they are afraid of the progress that is being made to challenge capitalism, sexism, homophobia and white supremacy. Woke is being used with derogatory connotations as if it could ever be shameful to be aware and conscious, and to use that consciousness to challenge injustice. We cannot cede ground and we cannot go back.  We are on the cusp of something; a tipping point, a crossroads if you will.  Globally and locally, we have the chance to decide what kind of world we want to live in, now is not the time to shrink away.

In the past, I have said that we shouldn’t despair, but quite frankly that feels impossible right now. So despair if you must, but let it drive you to do whatever is in your power to chip away at those systems. It doesn’t have to be grand, but it starts with being willing to put up a fight.

Why are things the way they are, who does it serve for them to remain this way, and who says they always have to be? Be willing to believe that building a better world is possible. In Nikos Kazantzakis’ words, “By believing passionately in that which does not exist, you create it.”

THE END