Tag: East Africa

Not your average bikini wax

When talking about Africa, many people still wax lyrical about vast, empty savannahs, The Lion King, flies, drums and naked women. And then they share their fears of violence, disease and crime.

By far, my greatest fear in Kenya is Njeri.

She’s the mobile “beauty therapist” who makes sure my lady bits – and those of many other expats and foreigners – are under control. Call her anytime you need her and she’ll take a matatu (taxi) and come to wherever you are, with her equipment.

When she arrives at my house she immediately sets to work. She puts her pot of wax – which she’s made with sugar, water and lemon juice – on the stove, and takes off her top. The heat along the Kenyan coast is brutal and standing over a hot stove with no fan or air-conditioning is hard work.

The process is the same every time: Njeri tells me to place an old sheet on the bed and to drop my pants and lie down on it. Then she politely asks me to spread my legs.

She moves the boiling hot pot from the stove to the bed, places it between my legs, and tells me not to move. She dips an old rusted butter knife into the pot and blows on it in a feeble attempt to cool the wax slightly. Then she spreads hot wax, like butter on toast, onto my lady bits. I can’t move or scream without knocking over the pot between my legs. I have to stay deadly still and scream on the inside.

Njeri then takes a scrap of material that she cut up the night before. Her wax strips are cuts of fabric from old bed sheets, clothes, jeans, whatever she can get her hands on. She spreads it over the hot wax, rubs up and down, and starts making clicking, clucking noises and shaking her head.

It’s her way of preparing her client for the pain to come.

She rips the fabric and wax off my bits, and immediately pats my skin and shushes me, like a mommy placating a crying baby.

“Oh, shhhhh, shhh, shhhhhh.”

And she does it all over again.  Once she has used up a strip of fabric she throws it on the bedroom floor, for me to walk around collecting afterwards.

beauty
(Graphic: Kenny Leung)

When she is done, it’s time for my legs. Half an hour later she showers my body with baby powder and tells me what a good girl I’ve been. She puts her hand out for her 400 Ksh (about R40) and heads out, leaving me on my bed, still sticky with remnants of wax, surrounded by strips of dirty fabric, and covered in powder.

Fast forward to the evening.

When my husband gets back from work, I tease him a little and tell him about my bikini wax.  He doesn’t need much teasing and follows me into the room. Just as things are getting hot and heavy, Disco, our psycho cat (named such because she fell out of the thatched roof of the local bar and landed head-first on the dance floor), attacks me.

Turns out there is a stand of string from Njeri’s fabric strips still stuck to my butt. At first I didn’t realise that it was Disco who was clawing at me to get to it … so I scream.

I’m on my husband, the cat is on me, and in an epic climax (not quite the one I had in mind), in runs the security officer with his rungu (wooden baton) because he’d heard the commotion and thought something was wrong.

So much for a romantic night with my man.

Bash, from South Africa, is a freelance project development analyst based in Kenya. She spends most of her time snorkelling, is obsessed with giraffes, has too many tattoos and loves travelling. 

Transvestite on the town

Erica (aka Eric) is one of Nairobi’s very few transvestites, a “trannie”, “a woman born in a man’s body” –  and the ultimate party animal. A nocturnal creature, she sleeps during the day and goes out at night. On any week night Erica will be club-hopping around the city, seeing most nights through to daybreak and beyond. She is something of an institution, much celebrated in Nairobi’s night-time scene and warmly greeted by ‘security’ everywhere.

Erica earns a little cash by doing women’s make-up for special events but she is otherwise supported by friends and admirers. Her dad has a little money and some property at the coast. She manages to survive in Nairobi.

While we were out together the other night, a guy in a golf shirt and safari boots watched us as we talked. “She is quite beautiful,” he said to me when she left, in acknowledgement, not attraction. I agreed.

She does her own make-up with taste and discretion. Her hair is shortish without any extensions, weaves or wigs. She doesn’t wear jewellery at all. Most often she’s out with a sling bag, wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Until you see her made-up face, you’re seeing a man despite the slight swing of her hips when she walks. Her look is androgynous, seldom camp, and she rarely wears those long fake lashes with curls extending two inches out.

Erica.
Erica (Pic: Brian Rath)

Law
Under Kenyan law, homosexual acts are punishable by up to 14 years in jail. It’s seldom enforced: Police would have to catch someone en flagrante to prosecute. But the threat is there, so gay status isn’t openly advertised.

David Kuria, an openly gay political candidate, was forced to bow out of the senator race for Kiambu country last December due to a lack of funds and threatening SMSes. Despite this, “the narrative of Kenya being a homophobic society is taken out of context,” he told The Guardian.

“I was getting invitations by many young families for their children’s birthday parties, or first masses for newly ordained priests in Kiambu. Far too many people would show up even when we only wanted to hold small meetings – that really does not look to me like a homophobic society.”

It may be different within Kenyan families. According to a 2011 survey by Kenya’s human rights commission, 18% of LGBT Kenyans revealed their sexual orientation to their parents. Of those who did, 89% were then disowned.

Lindsay, who defines herself as transgender/transsexual, documents life as an LGBT in Kenya on her blog. “In general, if you are discovered to be transgender, the likelihood of you being stigmatised, harassed, discriminated against, beaten up, ridiculed, publicly undressed to see what you have between your legs and, worst of all, corrective raped is high,” she said in an interview with Global Voices.

In a country where an earring is still considered an overt sign of being gay, that Kenya’s new Chief Justice Willy Mutunga wears a sparkling stud is telling. He knows what some Kenyans and his critics think an earring means – and he doesn’t care. He continues to wear it, he says, to connect with his ancestors.

Holding her own
In the time we’ve spent together over the past four years, I have seen Erica face only two ‘incidents’ and the very occasional snide comment. It’s only when a guy at the next table gets drunk that I have heard strong verbal exchanges. Erica is then likely to shout the guy down with something remarkably accurate: “Does your wife know that you’re really attracted to men?” she might scream, in English or Swahili, so that everyone can hear.

Erica hit on me once, a long time ago. “Forget about it sweetie, it’ll never happen,” I told her. And that was that. But when some Nairobi folk see Erica and me together, there are questions. Erica will usually have to explain that there’s nothing between us, there never has been, and we’re just friends. The quizzical looks turn to me then, to confirm, and I usually just shrug. It’s unusual here for a straight guy to have a gay friend, let alone a transgender friend, and I can only act as natural as I feel about it. Those who ask don’t understand it but they can live with it.

Until quite recently Erica hung out in the same spots where Nairobi gangsters and hoodlums do. She was forever being robbed of her phone or having her money ‘picked’, but she’s never been hurt. She is accorded respect simply for being who she is in this harsh city, and she handles herself with aplomb.

Her lifestyle is changing slightly. She has found a new hangout spot, not downtown, but in a Nairobi suburb. It’s called The Solar Garden, presumably because it’s a place to go when the sun is out. Last weekend, I was out unusually late and joined Erica there. It’s a converted house, 1960s architecture, big and plain, with a huge slate patio and a wide lawn up front, replete with a large movie screen. A large group gathered at the bar inside while we sat outside.

There was a celebrity congregation on the patio, mostly guys in dreadlocks, T-shirts, baseball caps and sneakers, with a Kenyan rap artist at the centre. They were slouching on the balcony railing, taking photographs.

After a few hours of socialising, Erica hooked up with a guy. They got affectionate but no one took the slightest notice of their arms around each other.

The long but eventful wait for a P3 form

Human traffic flows into Nairobi’s traffic department every morning from 4am, well before the sun is out. The compound is vast. It has cells, a restaurant, a police station, the police doctor’s office and a huge parking lot.

I stood in the freezing weather with my friend Mike behind a queue of people who seemed to be in different stages of pain and healing. We were here for the all-important P3 form, a medical examination report. The police doctor has to complete and sign this form before victims of crime can report to the local police station and press charges. It is produced in court as evidence.

A guy called Jontes stood behind Mike, twitching like a leaf in the cold weather in a faded T-shirt. The day before, Mike had arrived late – 7am. He was number 66 in line so he never made it into the office of Kenya’s only police doctor, Dr Zephaniah Mwangi Kamau.

Mike was assaulted by his ex-wife. She punched and scratched his face at a bus stand, and verbally tormented the poor guy until he left her and moved out with his kids. She continued to stalk him so Mike wanted an end to this. I was here to give him moral support.

At 6am, a woman selling tea, uji (porridge) and mandazis (fried buns) walked in. We bought some for ourselves and for Jontes, who had a bulging black paper bag filled with humongous cabbages. We turned down his offer to buy, but he did manage to sell some to a woman with a bandage around her head.

We rushed back to the waiting lines, where some guys in smart suits were lurking. They looked like police officers but they were brokers –  for a fee of R10 to R20, they would arrange for latecomers to cut in line ahead of those of us already waiting. Jontes advised us to ignore them; no one would be planted in front of us.

As we waited, rumour spread that Dr Kamau had gone to his father’s funeral but Jontes, a hustler who changes professions wherever opportunity knocks, told us to sit tight. He’d been here many times before and he knew the doctor might appear at any moment.

Today Jontes was here because he’d recently been beaten by five guys in a drunken bar brawl. His face and hands were scarred with numerous dents. Jontes could be described as … deliberately belligerent. Once someone had beaten him in a drunken brawl. When he got his hands on a P3 form, his assailant paid him R8 000 as an out-of-court settlement. In three previous incidents, Jontes was paid amounts of R3 000, R4 000 and R2 500 to drop assault charges against his attackers. This time Jontes was anticipating a big cheque: five guys, R3 000 each.

When news that the Dr Zephania was attending his father’s funeral spread, some people dispersed. One of the brokers who had been pocketing twenties ran away so he wouldn’t have to do refunds. Twenty minutes later he removed his coat and tie and came back to the lines, looking for new arrivals. A disgruntled ‘customer’ shouted, pointing  him out, and soon he was at the receiving end of some harsh slaps.

Meanwhile the crowds continued streaming in. The rich came in their Benzes and BMWs and the poor arrived on foot, some adults being held like babies. There were victims of road accidents, domestic violence, street fights, robberies, arson, sexual violence and other kinds of violent attacks that made my stomach queasy. Young children clad in school uniform were here too, but the majority of people were women.

There was a spirit of equality and justice at the station. This is one place where Kenyans, despite being politically divided, can share common troubles. The rich and the poor queued as equals as they shared their life stories. It was a form of while-we-wait therapy: a poor guy who’d survived a brutal assault would chat and laugh with a rich guy who had endured a harrowing robbery ordeal. Some people had travelled hundreds of kilometres  from the arid Turkana county near the border; Nakuru, famous for its flamingos; and the semi-arid Maasai land of Narok in the Rift Valley province.

The doctor finally arrived around 9am from his father’s burial. He asked who had been unattended to the previous day. Mike’s card showed he had been number 66, but after the brokers added more people to the lines, the prospect of waiting yet another day seemed very real. There were loud protests from the crowd. The good doc shushed us, smiled and asked if there was anyone among us who had ever lost someone close.

Mike raised his hand. Doctor Kamau asked him which ethnic community he came from. Then he asked how long it took for him to get back to work after grieving.

“A week,” Mike said.

“I have just buried my father two hours ago and I’m back at work,” the doctor said, still smiling.

He listened to us and recommended our names be written down for faster dispensation of our case. Eventually, Mike went into the old colonial office for his medical check-up. I waited for him outside. Five minutes later, he came out with the all-important P3 form. He told me that the doc had asked him, behind plumes of cigarette smoke, why he did not hit his ex-wife back. They had both laughed at the awkward question. Now Mike was ready to go to the local police station to file his case and have his attackers summoned for a date in court.

Jontes was next to see the doc. He asked us to wait for him as he went in with his paper bag of vegetables. A little while later, he came out holding his P3 form like it was a lottery cheque. He had a spring in his step as he told us how he was going to make at least R10 000. He was certain he would win his case because there had been many witnesses , and his attackers – office workers – would have to pay him off to avoid losing their jobs.

Having got what we came for, it was time to head our separate ways. We gave Jontes 200 bob for transport. He jumped onto a moving bus, shouting promises of buying us more beer and nyama choma (braai meat) than we had ever seen in our lives – once he’d been paid out, that is.

Munene Kilongi is a freelance writer and videographer. He blogs at thepeculiarkenyan.wordpress.com

Pornography according to Simon Lokodo

I have just read the proposed anti-pornography Bill that is currently before the Ugandan Parliament. This Bill was brought soon after MPs stifled debate on the Marriage and Divorce Bill, which tackles the ambiguity of existing laws on women owning property.

Ethics and integrity minister Simon Lokodo’s anti-pornography Bill however doesn’t just threaten women; it attacks press freedom too. The media is portraying the Bill as a miniskirt law but if passed it will have far-reaching consequences on press freedom, freedom of expression, internet freedom, and the right to privacy and culture.

According to the Bill:

Pornography means any cultural practice, radio or television programme, writing, publication, advertisement, broadcast, upload on internet, display, entertainment, music, dance, picture, audio, video recording, show, exhibition or any combination of the preceeding that depicts [for now I concentrate on just this clause] sexual parts of a person such as breasts, thighs, buttocks and genitalia.

Read the full text of the Bill here.

I am also angered and saddened by the comments Lokodo made. He said:

Any attire which exposes intimate parts of the human body, especially areas that are of erotic function, are outlawed. Anything above the knee is outlawed. If a woman wears a miniskirt, we will arrest her.

And:

Men are normally not the object of attraction; they are the ones who are provoked. They can go bare-chested on the beach, but would you allow your daughter to go bare-chested?

His comments cannot be understood in any way other than being an outright attack on women and their sexuality, their freedom of expression and their right to live the way the wish. Lokodo permits attacks on women and blames sexual violence on women victims. His comments are part of wide efforts to politicise women’s dressing and add to the obsession with women’s sexuality.

According to the Bill, “Pornography fuels sexual crimes against women and children.”

I am moved to ask why do we have incidents of rape even in the most remote corners of our country? Did the Ugandan army watch porn before they raped several women and men during the northern Uganda war? Do all men that defile more than 600 children a year in Uganda watch pornography? Do all of the more than 500 women who report being raped to the police every year wear miniskirts? Do hundreds of uncles and fathers that molest young girls in their families watch pornography?  This is just insulting the dignity of victims of sexual violence.

We have more urgent, pressing needs: young Ugandans need jobs; 16 women die everyday in my country due to preventable pregnancy-related complications; Lokodo and his fellow ministers every day dig deeper into our pockets, stealing our hard-earned money. Thousands of girls do not complete primary education even with the faulty UPE system in place. But Lokodo and the regime he represents won’t tackle these challenges. What is more immoral than distracting our country from debating these issues?

It is ironic that this is a Bill proposed by a minister who hails from Karamoja, a region where people are free in their nakedness. The pastoralist communities are known to roam wearing as little clothing as possible. They are free in their culture. His proposed Bill would be an indictment to such ethnic groups.

If Lokodo gets his way in Parliament, photos like mine below could earn a person who publishes them imprisonment not exceeding 10 years or a fine of 10-million shillings, or both. This is pornography according to Lokodo:

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And if you viewed these “pornographic” photos, you too could be imprisoned.

Rosebell Kagumire is a Ugandan multimedia journalist working on media, women, peace and conflict issues. She is co-ordinator of Africans Act For Africa. Visit her blog and connect with her on Twitter.