iGay, iLesbian, iBisexual: The Xhosalisation of English

The 11 official languages of South Africa seen on a wall of the Constitutional Court. (Pic: Flickr / AfricanGoals2010)

A few months ago I received an e-mail asking my advice about IsiXhosa equivalents of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender. IsiXhosa equivalents of these words do not exist, and I am not talking about derogatory terms. Growing up I had no language to talk about sexual identity; even the concept of having a “sexual identity” was a revelation in my late teens. Although visibly gay while growing up, there was no concrete articulation of my gayness as a sexual identity. I have often struggled with articulating sexual identity terms like gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) in my mother tongue.

I have had an ongoing conversation with my close friends about the issue of not having a “language” to talk about LGBTI issues. The language we use to talk about LGBTI issues and the terms we use to classify sexual identity are English language words. When people use the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) in the vernacular people just add an “i” or “u” in front of the English word. So gay is then iGay (a gay) or uGay (he is gay), or iLesbian (a lesbian) or uyiLesbian (she is a lesbian). The same is done with all the other letters in L-G-B-T-I.

Now, although there are no specific terms, all of the terms in the L-G-B-T-I acronym can be described in the vernacular. Which is something people do when they talk about LGBTI people – they describe what gay people “do”. So if I am to answer the question – what is a gay man? – in the vernacular, I would describe a gay man in the vernacular as “umntu oyindoda othandana namanye amadoda” which translates to “someone who likes or falls in love with other men”, which means gay. There are multiple ways in the vernacular in which people say “gay” by describing what the term means – or what the person who is gay “does”. This is more or less the same process or application to the other letters in the L-G-B-T-I acronym.

~~Homophobes~~ People have often raised the issue that because there are no equivalent specific terms in indigenous languages for L-G-B-T-I terms, homosexuality must be a Western import. This is a complicated point and needs to be addressed carefully. While it is true that the terms gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transgender are all from the English language, what these terms name and describe is a phenomena that takes place in many cultures around the world. So although there are no equivalent words in the vernacular for gay, lesbian, or transgender, that doesn’t mean that there are no gay, lesbian, or transgender individuals amongst Xhosa people. So saying that because we don’t have a specific word for “transgender” in the vernacular therefore transgender people do not exist is lazy logic that won’t move us forward in making sense of the world.

Equally important is keeping in mind that the words gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual are also “new” words in the English language. The word “gay” and the word “lesbian” only become a reference for homosexuality in the late 19^th century and increasingly in the 20^th century. These words are less than 200 years old. The word “transgender” is even more “new” as a word because it comes to life in late 20^thcentury and increasingly becoming part of our daily vocabulary.

New words are introduced into a language as new human phenomenon is discovered. New words are introduced as cultures find ways to explain people’s behaviours. Life is constantly evolving. The problem with IsiXhosa and other indigenous languages is that there are not enough people who are writing and producing knowledge in the vernacular, which is one of the ways new words are coined. The irony is not lost on me that I am writing this piece in English discussing IsiXhosa language issues. It pains me to admit that as awesome as my Xhosa is – I can read, write, and speak – it’s not as good as my English. It takes me twice as much time (if not more) to write a Xhosa piece than it does an English piece. Glancing over at my bookshelf I can’t spot a single Xhosa book. I used to read more Xhosa books when I was younger, but that changed as I grew older and went to mixed school and was required to read English books.

Xhosalisation
The language issue is a national issue, or at least it should be treated as such. IsiXhosa like all other indigenous languages of South Africa is not evolving by additional words being added in the language. Instead we see what my friends and I call the Xhosalisation of English words (which is a phenomenon that needs dissecting). Xhosalisation takes place in different ways, one of the ways it happens is the placing of the prefix “i” or “u” on English words. There is also the creation of “new” words by amalgamating English words with IsiXhosa words like the word “Xhosalisation”. Xhosalisation of English is useful for immediate everyday conversation but I wonder about its sustainability.

It is impossible to talk about language in this country without talking about the effects of colonisation and apartheid on indigenous languages. These systems of oppression have negatively affected the organic development of indigenous languages in epic proportions. Unlike English and Afrikaans, there are no structures in this country to ensure that indigenous languages continue to evolve. Universities like Stellenbosch are the bastion of the Afrikaans language and ensure that the language is moving with the times. There are no equivalent indigenous language institutions.

The post-1994 government has also failed to prioritise education and indigenous languages continue to be neglected. I think we need to think of ways in which we can articulate the struggles with gender inequality, sexual identity, and the changing culture in this country in indigenous languages. We need to be able to articulate the complexity of human sexuality in indigenous languages and maybe this will lead us in a direction where people gain a better understanding of sexual diversity.

It is a big problem that no academic work takes place in indigenous languages, as this is where ideas and new ways of being are articulated. This is not to say that people in the streets are not contributing towards the evolution of language, but it is knowledge producing centres that coin terms for human phenomenon and in the process helps us understand that human phenomenon. A few years ago, for the first time, a PhD thesis was written and submitted in IsiXhosa at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The sad reality is that even if you wanted to write a sociological PhD thesis in IsiXhosa you will struggle to find supervisors who would be able to read it. Not to mention the struggle you would encounter with trying to explain “deconstruction”, “queer theory” or “intersectional analysis.”

Universities and indigenous languages
There are ways in which we could try and improve the language situation in this country but that demands political will and that is sorely lacking. Universities in this country are in a good position to create language/cultural centres for indigenous languages. This could start a project of taking indigenous languages seriously and slowly introduce knowledge production in indigenous languages. Universities could collaborate with people who speak indigenous languages to learn more about the languages and the cultures behind them. At times it seems to me that the nine indigenous languages of the 11 official languages in this country are only decorative. Imagine if all nine of the indigenous languages had a language institute.

Also as people who speak indigenous languages, we should really seek ways in which we maintain indigenous languages in our everyday lives. Imagine a South Africa with IsiXhosa book clubs and IsiXhosa reading rooms at universities in the Western and Eastern Cape. Imagine a South Africa where students can study sociology in the vernacular. Having IsiXhosa centres could also serve as great instruments in diffusing the alienating white supremacist culture of former whites only universities in this country because black people will then feel part of institutions and not just needing to adapt to a white world. What we need is a vision of the kind of South Africa we want to live in and work towards that vision. Creating language institutes will probably not be easy, but creating a healthy South Africa that is content with itself requires hard word and an ongoing conversation about our difficult past and where we want to go. We also need to make peace with the fact that the great South Africa we want to create will be enjoyed by future generations. Just like we are enjoying a democratic South Africa that was created in part by many people who died in the process of creating it and never had a chance to experience it.

Lwando Scott is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Cape Town. He blogs at http://queerconsciousness.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @lwandoscott

9 years ago

Families left haunted by Liberia’s Ebola crematorium

Bystanders watch as a suspected Ebola victim waits to be transported from Devils Hole North, west of Freetown. (Pic: Reuters)

Brian Lomax (26) sleeps on a pile of bones – the remains of cremated Ebola victims whose relatives may never get the chance to collect.

He was hounded out of his community by neighbours who feared his work at the Margibi crematorium in Boys Town, Lower Margibi county, was helping to spread the disease rather than contain it. This is the only place he has left to go.

Lomax is just one of many Liberians whose lives have been altered by the cremations at Margibi, which came to an end in December after a burial site was found for new victims.

For authorities and health workers, who believe they are now beating back the virus, the cremations – an alien and unwelcome practice in Liberia – were a successful measure that helped contain the disease.

“Cremation is not our culture. It was due to necessity that we had to cremate people, but it worked very well,” said Tolbert Nyensuwah, head of the government’s Ebola task force.

However, over the past four months, waves of protests have taken place against it. Those who worked at the facility are left facing stigma, and the relatives of those who were cremated have no graves for their loved ones.

Liberia was the country hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak, which has now claimed over 8 500 lives. In the midst of the crisis, disposing of the bodies of victims quickly and safely had been, and remains, paramount, as the bodily fluids from the corpses can still transmit the virus.

By August last year, Liberia’s government was struggling to keep up with the rising death toll. Underpaid, under-equipped and overworked burial workers couldn’t cope. When teams clad in space-man like protective suits came to collect victims, terrified residents often chased them out.

‘Nights of terror’
When members of Margibi county’s Indian community, which ran the Margibi crematorium 50 miles from the capital, offered to help, it seemed like an obvious solution. A group of Liberians were quickly taught how to carry out the Indian cremation method to dispose of the bodies.

Sometimes up to a hundred bodies were burned at once. Members of the community living nearby reported huge explosions as it burned with smoke rising through the air. Disturbed by the process, they called it ‘nights of terror’.

The burial process and honouring deceased relatives is an important tradition in Liberia, and often involves touching the body of the deceased. On decoration days, crowds visit cemeteries to clean and decorate the graves of relatives. The cremations, which were often rushed and en masse, left many relatives alienated, and often unable to locate and identify the remains of their loved ones.

Lomax, a student who had never worked in a crematorium before, was one of those who volunteered to work at the crematorium. “[We] opted for it because we had to do a service to the country because no one wanted to do such a work,” Lomax said.

“When they [the government] got here, they put us together and told us that this issue was an emergency issue, so we did not discuss anything with them,” he said. “All of a sudden they started the method that the Indian people taught them. They started training us on the method to carry out the cremation.”

The process of cremation burns corpses, but the bones then have to be ground to a powder afterwards – a stage that was neglected in the Margibi crematorium.

“All these containers are filled with human bones and because we have nowhere to go, we sleep with the bones [inside this] fence,” Lomax said, pointing to a row of steel drums which he and his colleagues were placing wooden planks over to form makeshift beds every night.

In August 2014 President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf decreed that the bodies of Ebola victims be cremated: “this measure is intended to avoid tampering with the dead and contaminating water sources”, she said.

But promises that the ashes of Ebola victims would be handled respectfully and returned to family members quickly unraveled. The overwhelmed workers at Margibi didn’t know what to do. Some days, dozens of corpses arrived. Hundreds are thought to have been cremated at the site between August and December.

“This is the largest altar where we burned 145 bodies. The ashes were too much, and we had nowhere to put them. [Back] then we had no knowledge of bringing in drums,” Lomax explained, referring to the steel drums brought in by the government when they decided to preserve the ashes.

“So we just wasted [dumped] it in these holes. Later they decided that we use the drums,” he said. For those whose bones and ashes could not make it into the zinc containers, their bones are all dumped in a pit resembling a mass grave.

“This is how people who died from this deadly disease were treated here,” said Lomax.

Bones lie waiting to be claimed
The Boys Town community called for all cremations to stop, and eventually a new burial ground was found on Disco Hill, also in Margibi County, where Ebola victims will be interred from now on.

Bone fragments are seen in a barrel of the cremated remains of Ebola virus victims in Boys Town on January 9 2015. (Pic: Reuters)

The bones now sit in silent rows, unmarked for any relatives who might want to claim them back. The only clue to the identity of those who remains are stored inside are the dates scrawled on the side of each container.

Lomax has been outcast for his work at Margibi, believed to be the country’s only crematorium for Ebola victims.

“My father has his house right behind here but he told the children I shouldn’t go there because I am working here and burning Ebola bodies. He said he does not want me to carry the virus to his house,” he said quietly.

Just over a month ago, their bosses stopped coming to work and he worries about money. He and his colleagues fear they may never reintegrate into society.

“For the past three weeks we have not seen our bosses. After all that we have done, at least we should have been settled [paid].”

Tibelrosa Tarponweh, a local resident, called for counselling services to “ be provided to members of the community, including a select few that were hired without proper guidance to perform such an abnormal task.” He said the lack of training for Lomax and his colleagues had led to a “sloppy and harmful” process.

He called for the government “to secure and preserve the now-defunct crematorium for use as a shrine in memory of our fallen compatriots.”

Wade Williams and Monica Mark for the Guardian Africa Network

9 years ago

Homeless of Nairobi: Facebook project gives rough sleepers a voice

“So what do you do daily?” “I just walk around looking for food… I’m 72.” “And you’re still strong ey?” “Yes, and if someone would hire me, I can still work.” (Pic: Homeless of Nairobi)

“I’ve lived two lives in this life.”

“How?”

“I had things, now I have nothing.”

“What are you afraid of most?”

“El Niño is coming.”

“And what makes you laugh?”

“Life.”

This was a conversation with Daniel, a destitute man in Nairobi, Kenya, posted on the internet last August. That night, thanks to a stranger, he received a cooked meal of ugali and stew. Then came more donations of food, money, clothes, a bed and a shack for him to live in.

Here lies the power of Homeless of Nairobi, a Facebook page pricking the conscience of those who take such things for granted.

It is “a virtual home” for the homeless people of the Kenyan capital and one of the few places where they are seen, heard and dignified.

The page features photos, conversations and updates on volunteer projects, such as a group effort on Christmas day that fed about 600 people with 600 loaves of bread, 500 packets of milk, 500 bananas and about 50 bottles of soda.

Not every story has a happy ending. “Today is a heartbreaking day for the Homeless Of Nairobi project,” read a post in November. “Over the past two months, we found a home for a wonderful man called Daniel… It has now come to our attention that Daniel has now left the house in favour of the streets once again. It is hard to understand why but we had told him that there is no pressure on him to stay.”

Building a movement
The page was launched last year by Sham Patel (29), who was born and raised in Nairobi but spent three years as a student in Liverpool in the UK. Like many other residents, he gave little thought to people without a home until a chance encounter gave him a flash of empathy and changed his perspective.

“Ever since I was young, I’ve seen homeless people on the streets of Nairobi,” he recalled this week. “They have become part of the wallpaper of this city. For a long time, I didn’t see them as people but as pests who bother people for money. We’re conditioned to think like that by an apathetic society from when we’re young. We’re pre-programmed.”

But then one rainy day, on his way to the gym, he saw some homeless people huddled under a plastic sheet. “It made me think about how I’d feel if that was me or my parents out in the rain without shelter and food. I decided then that it was time to try to make a small difference where possible so the next day I took them bread and milk and started a conversation with them and it was incredible how much they knew about life and their philosophies and belief in God was astounding.”

Patel added: “They shared the bread with me. In fact, they offered it to me first before they ate. Since then, I’ve decided to talk to and spread the stories of as many homeless people as possible with the hope that we can build a movement that will lead to finding ways to help these men, women and children that much of society and our government has discarded.”

One of his major inspirations for the format was Humans of New York, a popular website cataloguing photos, snippets and stories from the US city’s inhabitants. Patel met its founder briefly and was advised: “Just go for it.”

Since then he has gone out day and night, gathering dozens of photos and stories, and the page has gained more than 3 000 likes on Facebook. It offers a rare insight into the pitiless conditions of the homeless in a major African city who have little social support or sympathy from the police. Some turn to drugs for escapism from hunger, pain or misery. A poignant entry on Thursday with a picture of children read:

“How much is the bottle of glue you’re sniffing?”

“We get it for about 30 shillings.”

“So why don’t you buy a small meal with that 30 shillings?”

“Because that meal will not even be enough to fill my stomach. That food will not help me when it is cold at night or when I am hungry again. The glue lasts longer and helps me forget where I am.”

(Pic: Homeless of Nairobi)

According to the charity Kenya Children of Hope, in 2007 it was estimated that there were 250 000 – 300 000 children living and working on the streets across the country with, with more than 60 000 of them in Nairobi.

Mixed responses
Patel said he gets a varied response from those he asks to take part. “Most of the time, the homeless people are really happy just to talk to someone and we can talk for a pretty long time. Other homeless people aren’t so friendly because of their lack of trust or because they’re high on something or the other.

“But it’s been pretty mixed. There was the time I was almost robbed by three homeless people and there was another time we were chased down the street by a homeless guy who, it turns out, is a little psychotic or just really angry. But for the better part, most homeless people are very accommodating even though they do not trust the colour of my skin.”

Patel, who also runs Myrobi, a company that deals in T-shirts and marketing materials with a business partner, says he hopes to achieve “big things” with the Homeless of Nairobi project, including crowd funded projects and a homeless shelter where people can learn skills such as pottery, farming, mechanics and stitching.

“We want to have a psychiatry unit at the shelter because a lot of these homeless people have seen and endured things that human beings should not see. For example, the homeless girls being raped in town constantly.

“These people need psychiatrists to help them deal with the problems they’ve faced. We don’t just want to create a place where we dump homeless people and feed them. We want to bring them back from the brink they stand on. And their resilience proves that it is possible to do exactly that.”

David Smith for the Guardian Africa Network

9 years ago

Inside Boko Haram’s ‘Islamic state’: Hunger, killings, economic collapse

Nigerians displaced as a result of Boko Haram attacks are seen near their tents at a faith-based camp for internally displaced people in Yola, Adamawa State. (Pic: Reuters)

Boko Haram says it is building an Islamic state that will revive the glory days of northern Nigeria’s medieval Muslim empires, but for those in its territory life is a litany of killings, kidnappings, hunger and economic collapse.

The Islamist group’s five-year-old campaign has become one of the deadliest in the world, with around 10 000 people killed last year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Hundreds, mostly women and children, have been kidnapped.

It remains the biggest threat to the stability of Africa’s biggest economy ahead of a vote on February 14 in which President Goodluck Jonathan will seek re-election.

But while it has matched Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in its brutality – it beheads its enemies on camera – it has seriously lagged in the more mundane business of state building.

“The Islamic state is a figment of their imagination. They are just going into your house and saying they have taken over,” said Phineas Elisha, government spokesperson for Adamawa state, one of three states under emergency rule to fight the insurgency.

Unlike its Middle East counterparts wooing locals with a semblance of administration, villagers trapped by Boko Haram face food shortages, slavery, killing and a lock down on economic activity, those who escaped say.

“(They) have no form of government,” Elisha, who saw the devastation caused by Boko Haram after government forces recaptured the town of Mubi in November.

Boko Haram, which never talks to media except to deliver jihadist videos to local journalists, could not be reached for comment.

‘Muslim territory’
Boko Haram’s leaders talk about reviving one of the West African Islamic empires that for centuries prospered off the Saharan trade in slaves, ivory and gold, but they demonstrate little evidence of state building.

In August a man saying he was Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau – the military says it killed Shekau – issued a video declaring a “Muslim territory” in Gwoza, by the Cameroon border.

There were echoes of Islamic State’s proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria two months earlier. Boko Haram controls an area just over 30000 square km of territory, about the size of Belgium, according to a Reuters calculation based on security sources and government data.

But while in Syria, after initially brutal takeovers, Islamic State has tried to win over communities, those who escaped Boko Haram say the rebels do little for them beyond forcing them to adopt their brand of Islam.

“They provide raw rice to cook, the rice that they stole from the shops. They provide a kettle and … scarves to cover up the women,” said Maryam Peter from Pambla village.

“People are going hungry. They are only feeding on corn and squash. No meat, nothing like that. The insurgents are not providing anything else,” she added.

Maryam said most daily interactions with the militants involved them questioning villagers on their movements and forbidding them from trying to escape – a rule she managed to flout when she fled a week ago.

A government-run camp in a former school is now her home, along with 1 000 others, where mothers cook on outdoor fires while children run around. Some 1.5 million people have been rendered homeless by the war,Oxfam says.

Bodies pile up
And those the militants kill, they often fail to bury. The first thing the Nigerian Red Cross has to do when a town falls back into government hands is clear the corpses, Aliyu Maikano, a Red Cross official, told Reuters.

After the army recaptured Mubi in November, Maikano had to cover his nose to avoid the stench of rotting corpses.

Those still alive “were starved for food, water, almost everything there. There’s no drinking water because (in) most of the wells there you’ll find dead bodies,” Maikano said.

Many residents looked tattered and malnourished, and some were unable to speak.

“They are heartless. ISIS (Islamic State) is a kind of organised group, it’s a business. These guys are not.”

A former resident of Mubi said the rebels had renamed the town “Madinatul Islam” or “City of Islam”.

But when government spokesperson Phineas Elisha walked into the Emir’s palace after its recapture, everything had been looted, even the windows and doors.

“Mubi was a ghost town … Virtually all the shops were looted.” he said. It took him hours to find a bottle of water.

Sometimes the rebels simply loot the unprotected villages and hide out in bush camps, security sources say.Murna Philip, who escaped the occupied town of Michika five months ago, said a few dozen fighters had occupied an abattoir, a school and a lodge, but little else.

To survive under their watch you have to pretend to support them, said Andrew Miyanda, who escaped the rebels last week, walking for days to the Benue river.

“They would write Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (Boko Haram’s full name) on their trouser legs in marker or the back of their shirts,” he said. “You had to turn up your trousers with the marker on to show that you are a member.”

Buildings were torched and boys were abducted for “training”, he said, a practice reminiscent of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

Slowly, with the help of traditional hunters armed with home made guns and a reputation for magic powers, government forces have pushed Boko Haram out of some of its southern possessions.

Morris Enoch, a leader of the hunters, says they found an arsenal of military weapons: rocket launchers, machine guns, dynamite, anti-aircraft guns and grenades.

The rebels rarely leave behind much else.

9 years ago

Why do we need big numbers for African deaths to matter?

‘2000 people killed.’

‘Actually it is 150 people.’

‘That makes it fine then. Thank you for the correction, we can continue to ignore the Boko Haram crisis.’

This is clearly how the Nigerian government thought the conversation would go when they sought to amend the ‘error’ that had been widely published about the recent attacks in Baga.

A man holds a placard reading “I am Nigerian, stop Boko Haram” during a gathering at the trocadero place in Paris on January 18 2015 to protest against Boko Haram Islamists after a large-scale attack in Baga. (Pic: AFP)

The question one needs to ask is why does it seem that reducing the numbers of deaths makes the situation any better? The fact that there are any people who have perished at all should be cause for the same amount of uproar.

Within Africa we enjoy playing the numbers game when it comes to how serious a tragedy is.

We treat death like a party; the higher the numbers the more serious the event.

Why make a fuss about having one girl missing when we could have 250? It is not a real event until the number hits the triple digits. Why be bothered with one person being shot dead in a police shootout when we could have police kill whole groups of miners?

What this seems to say is that there is a need to supplement the quality of an African life with quantity. In order to make a human life matter we need the numbers, but we never have the names and faces.

These are always irrelevant.

When we scope a news article for simply the digits and never the story we say that African lives are worth less.

Within the international realm we make good news when whole groups of us have died or disappeared. It cannot be three or four of us, we need to make it a party.

#BringBackOurGirls was an international phenomenon because the number of girls missing was truly mind-boggling. How in the age of Google Earth can we not find 200+ girls? The world had no choice but to get behind it because of the scale of it.

However, #JeSuisCharlie saw 12 deaths trump the amount of international attention that #BringBackOurGirls and has become one of the most-used hashtags in Twitter history.

The heinous acts that prompted the two hashtags are based on ideals of western values clashing with fundamentalist Islamic ideals. Both involved the lives of people. If we do the maths (because it is about the bottom line), if all lives matter equally should we not have had nearly ten times the uproar for the Nigerian girls as we did for the French deaths?

A mass solidarity march in the streets of Paris on January 11 2015. (Pic: Reuters)

Where is our international march featuring the ‘who’s who’ of political figures? Our own leaders were falling all over themselves in order to proclaim that they were Charlie but barely uttered a peep about bringing back our girls. The 2000 deaths have barely managed to cause a whisper as it is continuously drowned out by the roar of defiance coming from the #CharlieHebdo saga.

Furthermore the names of African victims are rarely released. They often fall into the oblivion of numbers, allowed to become another statistic. Only those who are prominent in some way (a relation of a politician, a foreign national of another country for example) are given names, faces and back stories.

So the killing of 28 bus passengers in November by al-Shabaab near the town of Mandera, on the border between Somali and Kenya, remains just that: the death of 28 nameless, faceless bus passengers.

And what of those in Niger who died protesting against Charlie Hebdo? Where are their names, their backgrounds, an in-depth exploration of their dreams and ideologies?

They have no identities in the media. They simply add to the numbers that are part of the story. Had this occurred in the West, we would have read about the lives of the victims, their families would have all been interviewed and we would have known everything about them, because in death they mattered.

In Africa, the dead mostly remain nameless. It would seem in death we do not matter outside of adding ‘meat’ to a story.

Maybe therein lies the problem. Terrorist attacks are happening so often on the continent that they no longer shock us to our core.Two killed in a bomb blast in a Nairobi market; 15 girls kidnapped here; a suicide bombing there. It is only if we can squeeze those many into one incident that there is enough potency to make it so that it actually matters.

We need to start valuing the lives of Africans.

A great deal of this lies in how we portray the loss of African lives in the media. It depends on the amount of depth and clout that is given to stories within local spheres. If one girl gets kidnapped it must be treated as if it is the end of the world because it is. And when something happens to one person or 50 people it matters just the same.

We need to name them and not wait for media outlets and information providers abroad to name them for us.

We need to name ourselves before others can give us names.

Once we give those names we need to care about them enough to cause an uproar, because they do matter.

If we fail to fix this, we shall get to a point where we are missing 500 girls, enduring massacres of 5000 people and having entire mining villages shot down but no one will bat an eyelid because ‘at least it isn’t 250 girls, 2000 people and a few miners.’ We will find these numbers rising because we seemed to not care when the numbers were smaller.

Kagure Mugo is a freelance writer and co-founder and curator of holaafrica.org, a Pan-Africanist queer women’s collective which engages in activism and awareness-building around issues of African women’s identity, experiences and sexuality. Connect with her on Twitter: @tiffmugo