Among the words associated with family are love, support, solidarity, and much more. Of course, not everyone’s experience of family is the same and for some, family can also mean disappointment, abandonment, and rejection. In this conversation, activist Zaina Kashega opens up about her unwavering commitment to the LGBTQ+ community in whom she has found an “unconditional” family. With Q-zine, she also talks about her different experiences and aspirations of family.

Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?

My name is Zaina Kashega. I am an activist and I fight against stigmatization, discrimination, violence and everything related to human rights violations. I am a member of two associations: Jeunialissime and House of Rainbow. House of Rainbow is an organization that helps LGBTQ+ folks reconcile their faith and their sexuality. We collaborate with religious leaders because we have come to understand that they can be the source of a lot of rejection of LGBTQ+ people from their families. Religious leaders like pastors and imams are held in high esteem by their followers, so when they preach hatred towards LGBTQ+ people, it impacts how families treat their LGBTQ+ children once they discover their sexual orientation or gender identity. Children are rejected and cast out of families. So, we decided to directly engage with the root causes of this issue: the very people who preach these harmful messages and propagate intolerance.

At Jeunialissime, I work as a project manager and run a project called Talents Pluriels (Multi-faceted Talents) that aims at empowering LGBTQ+ youth in entrepreneurship and in their job search. We work with local businesses and organizations to raise awareness on inclusion and sexual diversity. Jeunialissime also works to raise awareness and educate LGBTQ+ youth, and society in general, on issues of inclusion, diversity, respect for human rights, and strive to improve the quality of life of LGBTQ+ people.

How did you end up at Jeunialissime?

When I was in school, I had the privilege of coming out, if I can put it that way. My family thought it was a phase so they continued to pay for my education and I was able to graduate. It’s only later that they realized that I was serious. Since they wanted me to further my education, they sent me to Kampala in Uganda so that I could develop my English and eventually go study in Canada. However, they changed their mind because they thought that sending me to Canada would make me worse sexuality-wise. So they made me return to Congo, and that’s when my nightmare started. The looks from my siblings, the rejection, the slander, it all became a lot harder for me to handle. So I made the decision to not bother them anymore and took off for a city where I didn’t know anyone.

Since I studied law, I used the move as an opportunity to sit for the law exam but I never got the results. I had to look for something else to keep me busy and that’s how a friend referred me to an association called Oasis. These were my first steps in activism. Later, I was invited to join Jeunialissime. At that time, the organization was almost entirely composed of gay men and they needed a lesbian for some of their projects.

Three years have passed since I took the law exam, and I still do not know the results. They’ve recently announced that another round of applications will be open soon so I’ll try to retake the exam then. Who knows, I might become the first openly lesbian judge in Congo! (laughs)

Having come this far, what would you say you’ve learned about yourself since joining Jeunialissime?

I would say that I didn’t know how intensely the activist fire was burning in me. I knew that I abhorred injustice but I did not know to what extent. It is through this work that I got to meet people who had suffered violence and grave injustice and discovered my own deep hatred for injustice.

Working for my community also made me realize how little of my needs my biological family was able to meet. Being in an environment with people that I can call family, people who are like me, has been wonderful. Working in a place where I’m fulfilled, where no one cares what I wear or whom I associate with, where the only thing that matters is the work I contribute to the community, has had such a positive impact on me. And I can even say that LGBTQ+ organizations are the first entities to have ever given me a real job. Before that, I tried to make ends meet through small entrepreneurial projects but despite my degrees, I couldn’t get a job. Oasis, House of Rainbow and Jeunialissime opened their doors to me and gave me a chance to prove myself, and for that, I am grateful.

Could you tell us a bit more about how your work in the LGBTQ+ community has shaped your view of family?

Today, my conception of family is far from the one I held on for a long time. I used to think that my family consisted of the people I was related to by blood. With time, I understand that family is much more than that. Today, I think of family as the people who accept you as you are, whom you share values with, who support you in the things that are important to you. I’ve come to understand that family does not judge you. Many think of family as people to whom we are similar, people who look like us. But I have come to understand that family is about accepting the other person unconditionally. There shouldn’t be requirements for me to accept them. Family strives to understand, no matter what.

The LGBTQ+ community is the family I wish I had when I was 10, 11, or even 18. It would have saved me from making a lot of mistakes and helped me be more focused, which would have been much more beneficial to me and my community. Growing up not really understanding who I was confused me. Sometimes, I feel like I discovered my family a little “late”, but I am making up for it now. In fact, I would describe my commitment to the LGBTQ+ community as being at the point where I would be willing to die for the community. I’ve been arrested before, not because of my activist work, but because my gender expression bothered some people.

Today, who would you say is your family?

First and foremost, my blood family. They are the ones you don’t choose and I am deeply grateful to them, especially my older sister who has been very supportive and has helped me to get rid of my insecurities.

Then there is my partner. She started in activism long before I did without even realizing it. Then she stopped. Since being with me, she’s been more active in the community and really wants to learn more. Now, she attends community events and supports me in the way I’ve always dreamed of being supported by a partner. There is also my boss whomI consider family. I think of him as the dad I never had, although he’s not that old. He is a boss, a friend, a brother, a father figure, and so much more. Lastly, other members of the community. They are like siblings to me. We get on each other’s nerves, we fight, but we always work things out in the end. But my number one family is my partner.

How do you envision building a family of your own, with children perhaps, keeping in mind that medically-assisted procreation is not really accessible to LGBTQ+ people in Congo?

To me, my family is first and foremost my wife and I. I love children, but not to the point of having any of my own. I can’t imagine myself being pregnant, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I am a lesbian. I just can’t imagine my body having to go through all these changes just so I can have a child. But if my wife wants to, I’m open to her carrying our child. I won’t force her. If she wants to have a child and wants to carry it or if she’s open to adoption, those are options we can explore together.

It is important to understand that there are very few lesbians here who are 100% out. Even when they are financially independent, many are convinced that to have a child, they must sleep with a man. And there are others who are so afraid of their family that they always have a guy on the side, what we call in Lingala “mufiniko”, which is a sort of social cover. So many lesbians choose to sleep with men to start their family.

If I were to start my family, we would do it with a gay man, but I wouldn’t want someone sleeping with my girl. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term “syringe babies” but basically, it refers to artificial insemination. If we don’t have the money to go abroad and conceive our child, we’ll make our little “syringe babies.” And of course, if the gay man in question wants to be part of the child’s life, that’s fine. He can be there as an uncle, or even as a father if he wants, but it will be our child, my wife and I. We won’t ask him for anything in return. But these are conversations that will take place beforehand.

If you could choose four people to be part of your family in your next life, who would you choose and why?

The first person I’d choose is my dad because he passed away when I was very young, and I’ve always been convinced that if he were still alive, he would have understood me and perhaps would have been able to guide me. I think he would have accepted me and would have made it easier for me to get accepted into the family.

The second person is my mom because she’s an amazing human being. She didn’t reject me when she found out I was gay. I’m from a Swahili tribe, and in our culture, saying “mom, I like women” is just unthinkable. It’s like wishing death upon yourself. Yet, I did it. I’ve always been known to have a strong personality in the family, and when I came out, my mom said “yes, I knew. I was afraid for you because I know things won’t be easy out there.” This was so powerful coming from a woman who didn’t have any formal education.

The third person would be…hmmm… Although I was rejected by my family, there are still people I like and would like to see again in my next life (laughs). Let’s just say the third person would be an ex. She was an ex that really helped me discover the beauty of being with a woman.

And lastly, the fourth person I would choose is my wife!

Advocating for the rights of LBTQ people, especially in Africa, is a daunting task. Yet, activism can also open the door to a larger community that can become a source of acceptance, safety, comfort and support. For this issue, Q-zine met with Julia Makwala, a dedicated LBTQ activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo who shared with us her activist journey and her thoughts on family.

Can you introduce yourself to our readers?

My name is Julia Makwala, I am an Afro-feminist activist and I serve as the national Executive Secretary of Oasis DRC, a feminist LBTQ association based in Kinshasa, with branches in other provinces.

How did you start at Oasis?

It all started from questions I had about the situation of LBTQ women. Specifically, I wanted to understand why we were not taken into account in our country, why we were unable to benefit from certain health services, especially in terms of sexual and reproductive health, including HIV/AIDS. In DRC, the issue of HIV is a gateway for discourse on homosexuality. In HIV policies, there is a general call for no one to be left out, but the reality is that sexual minority women are. There are sexual and reproductive health programmes in which lesbians are not specifically included. For instance, in order to access certain HIV services, sexual minority women are forced to pose as sex workers because sex workers are recognised as a key population in the fight against HIV/AIDS, alongside men who have sex with men, drug users, and more recently, after years of advocacy and lobbying, transgender women.

But when it comes to lesbians, bisexual women and trans men, there is still a certain lack of diligence. Initially, this neglect was explained by the misperception that sex between women was not a transmission channel for sexually transmitted diseases. Simply put, our sexual orientation was not taken seriously, and the health risks were overlooked. Of course, we know that patriarchy plays a very important role in the invisibilisation of LBQ women, even within the queer community. In DRC, when we talk about homosexuality, we think more of men who have sex with men than of women. So, it’s all these questions that led me, alongside some friends, to set up an association for sexual minority women and feminists. And that’s how Oasis RD Congo was born as a feminist LBTQ association.

How would you describe your work and what have you learned about yourself through your involvement with Oasis or the wider LGBTQ community?

I would describe my work as striving for the emergence of recreational spaces, spaces for free speech, for socialization, free from religious and cultural restrictions. I also work to deconstruct prejudice and combat the exclusion, discrimination and stigmatization of women in general, and sexual minority women in particular. Through my activism, I have learned that despite our different perspectives and unique experiences as women, we all share the same vision: to defend and promote the rights that are most legitimate to us so that we can live in dignity.

As you know, this Q-zine issue is about family, so we are curious to know what this theme means to you.

For me, a family is a safe space that guarantees that one will be accepted with their differences. This acceptance is the foundation of social cohesion and is the starting point of this relationship. When I think of my family, I think of my father, my mother, my siblings, and the community I was born into. Because of my open-mindedness and my involvement in the LGBTQ community, I would extend this notion of family to any community of individuals who love and support each other. I strongly believe that family should be based on principles of care, kindness, solidarity, and comfort. These, I believe, is what makes a family, because one can be born to individuals who do not embody these principles.

It’s interesting that you started defining your family as the people you were born to. You alluded to it a little bit, but besides your biological family, who do you consider family?

The people I consider family are people with whom I share similar values, people who strive for peaceful co-existence and are open to difference and diversity. It’s true that the concept of family has evolved over time, but for me, family is a safe, reassuring, socializing space that also provides support. I believe that family is first and foremost about values, bonds, unity, and principles for which one is ready to fight.

For a long time, the concept of family has wrongly been limited to the portrait of the father, mother, children, etc. How do you think we can change this perception of family, especially for those of us who live in societies that do not show examples of families outside the “norms”?

Well, when you are outside the norms, you build a family outside the norms! (laughs) We only give what we have, right? Luckily, things are changing. We are no longer in the Stone Age (laughs). I often say that we need to ensure the dissemination of legal instruments, as well as historical and social knowledge. Take DRC for instance! The country has ratified several legal agreements, yet the population does not always know about the provisions of these agreements.

For a long time, the norm was a father, a mother, etc. This is true, but things are changing, people are beginning to see things differently. We used to say “this is our culture”. But I often wonder what our culture is. When you ask people to explain the culture in question, they are unable to do so. And when you explore that very culture in more depth, you realize that all of this existed [in reference to homosexual practices]. If you do some research, you can learn about the Bitesha, in the Kasai. There is also another tribe in the Central Kongo province, known as the Woyos, where when a girl reached puberty, she was interned with the older women of the tribe to learn how to live with a man in all respects, sex included. These women were in charge of the girls’ sexual education and had to show them how to do it. So, they had to have sex with each other to show the girls. Of course, sexual intercourse does not equate sexual orientation.

But what would you call what they were doing? Homosexual intercourse? Maybe? I don’t know. All of this to say that it’s often ignorance that makes people say certain things. I am convinced that to change mentalities, it is important to conduct research, to produce knowledge on our experiences, because if we don’t, no one will do it for us.

Any final remarks for our readers?

I would like to take this opportunity to pay a heartfelt tribute to Nancy Bitsoki who was an LBTQ Afro-feminist activist and my partner. She passed away recently but I will always consider her a member of my family. And to the readers, I would simply remind them that a family should be a safe space where people are accepted with their differences.

Blood isn’t always thicker than water and for many of us, the family experience is complex and dynamic. Q-zine had a candid conversation with Tanzanian multidisciplinary artist Arafa Hamadi in which we delved into the intricacies of family. For Arafa, family is a choice rather than a state of being and extends well beyond blood relations. In this conversation, the artist also opened up about how their practice aims to use their personhood, talents, resources and privilege to build a safe community with and for queer people in Dar es Salam.

What should our readers know about Arafa Hamadi?

My name is Arafa, I am non-binary (they/them pronouns) and I’m a multidisciplinary artist. My work is not confined to a specific medium and typically touches on themes of queerness and how we occupy our bodies, how we occupy space. It’s an attempt at showing the experience of being othered in a society that mostly wants to be violent towards us. Most recently, I have been exploring how we can choose joy and how we can intentionally create spaces of joy through architecture, vibes, set designs, and various other ways. My background is in architecture so I also do structures and installations, but the love of my life is stage design. I love festival designs and right now, I’m delving more into 3D and digital art designs.

How did you make the move from architecture to the art world? Even though it may not seem like a move per se since you’re still creating and building…

I studied architecture because my mom wanted me to study it. As an “African child”, I had to get a serious degree and art didn’t fall under that umbrella. The agreement was that if I studied a workable subject, I could do whatever I wanted afterwards. So, I went to university in the UK, at the University of Edinburgh. My experience there was great, but architecture is an extremely competitive field, and to be honest, I was just not built for criticism, or success in that sector for that matter. I also didn’t like the way it was so structured. I wanted to build, but I wanted to build for recreation. So, in my third and fourth year, I started exploring small festival spaces in Scotland. It was a great adventure for me to go into these spaces where artists transformed landscapes into dreams; these spaces where you would go in one day, and come out three days later having had no thoughts about the outside world. And that’s what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I graduated, came back to Dar es Salaam, and I tried to give the interview process a go to get a job in architecture. I went to about three interviews, but I didn’t like the way everyone was trying to check how smart I was…, which I guess is what is supposed to happen in an interview (laughs). It just wasn’t for me. Once my mom realized how negative I was being, she made me go volunteer at an art space like I had always wanted. From there, I met someone who was building a festival, the Ongala Music Festival in Dar es Salam, and they gave me the great opportunity to design the main stage. Since then, I’ve just been chasing after festivals and recreational spaces. I also started doing residencies where I started creating my own conceptual ideas, designs, and installations. Today, I’m at a place where I can design whatever I want, and I love it.

What would you say you learned about yourself through your art?

Through the process of practicing and owning my art, I’ve learned that I am not a 9 to 5 person and that my working hours could come at any point in the 24-hour day (laughs). I like not being constricted by time and I love working at festivals because they give you about a month to get your work done. And while technically the spaces are only opened during certain times, I can decide when I want to create.

I’ve also learned that painting is a form of meditation for me. I am a painter and while I don’t consider painting as one of my strongest mediums, I do enjoy the meditative aspect of painting the same thing over and over again. When you look at some of my larger pieces, they usually look like repetitive patterns, and I like doing large paintings for that very reason.

Specifically with my work around queerness and safety – however we want to define this – and even with the word “safety” in itself, I’ve learned that I feel uncomfortable approaching something so important from just one angle. With my artwork, you’ll see that in the 5-year timeline that I’ve been dedicated to it, I have literally been approaching the same subject from several different angles just so I can give it the respect it deserves. I am aware that my perspective as a privileged city person is completely different from most people’s experience in Tanzania. So, while I think my art can, and hopefully does say something about the queer community, I don’t think I’m the best representative out there and I do my best to give the art and the subjects the respect they deserve.

You make an interesting point about safety, and you address this concept of safe spaces in some of your artwork. What can you tell us about what inspired this interest in safe space creation and where you want to take this in the future?

I think I came across the concept of safe space when it became a buzzword on the internet, and that was the first time I was hearing about it. At the time, I was in the UK finishing my degree. I was part of the campus LGBTQ Society and there, I learned about safety, about how to make people feel comfortable and how to enable young LGBTQ folks to thrive while also teaching them what they needed to learn about being adults in university. I also learned about how to be a support person, about being someone they could come to when in need. We were taught techniques on how to talk to people, how to answer questions, as well as how to provide facts about sex for instance. In a way, that period of my life was about learning to make myself a safe space for others, and that was truly a fascinating concept for me. 

When I came back, I couldn’t find any safe spaces in Dar es Salaam, but it was perhaps because I didn’t look hard enough. When I joined Twitter in 2018, I found this safety; I found queer people who were not able to be out in public but who were engaging with each other and living this life online that I was not able to perceive in the “real” world. This experience exposed me to another concept of safety, and it got me thinking about how safe spaces were not just physical. They could also transcend into the digital, into personhood. It got me thinking about how safety could transcend into any space where you could be your authentic self, without the threat of violence.

I’ve also experienced safe space through festivals in Kenya. Kenya has the same colonial laws [against homosexuality – editor’s note] that we have. Yet over there, it seems like queer people, from lawyers and advocates to young DJs and space makers, have been able to come together and create these femme and non-binary spaces. And I remember asking myself why that wasn’t happening in Tanzania. 

So in a way, my conception of safe spaces has essentially been informed by these small pockets of safety that I’ve experienced and now I’m thinking about ways to contribute to the creation of a safe space that would be molded by the community that I am part of here, without forcing western views onto it, without it necessarily taking the form of festivals, or anything that already exists out there.

The idea of personhood as a safe space is an interesting one. Where are you in this journey of contributing to build a safe space for the queer community in Dar es Salaam?  

I strongly believe that people with privilege need to extend their privilege, and this is something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately. As far as safe space creation is concerned, I try to contribute with what I have, with what I can give through my own skills and the things I love, as well as through my privilege and the spaces I occupy. One way I go about this is to recreate spaces that I could have made for someone else for a lot of money, and instead, do it for myself and for my people in my own space, in my home. I am privileged enough to live in a neighborhood where my neighbours are aware of my queerness and let me exist. My place also has security and can host a large number of people, so I take advantage of this to create safe spaces for my community. And this is not to say that this is the best way to go about it, but it is one of the ways I’ve tried approaching safety and the creation of safe space through my being.

People often think of events as for-profit opportunities, but I want to approach this with a different ethos. My main objective through creating these spaces is not solely about whether I’m having fun, but rather, about whether people are comfortable, and whether people would want to return.

For the future, I’m looking into ways to get funding for such events, and into different ways to make the events public without having to compromise on safety. Overall, I’d say that this has been less of an artistic endeavor and more of an event project through which I have been exploring the idea of safety as both a physical and a non-physical concept.

As you know, the theme for this Q-zine issue is family. Who do you consider family and what has your experience of family been?

When I was in university, my friends were the people I essentially considered family, and this was because I had just come out to my mother, and she did not receive the news as well as she could have. I was raised by my mom, grandmother, and my aunts so, for a very good part of my life, I was surrounded by women – professional, hardworking, sometimes hypocritical, but mostly very strong, outspoken women that I love so much. And then I ventured out of the family unit and discovered new thoughts, “gayness”, arts, not working a 9-to-5, and all these concepts that I was never exposed to.

When I came out to my mom, it was the first time I was having a rift with these women who had been in my life and had always supported me. I came to the realization that their idea of family or of an end goal in life was always going to be me finding a husband, having children, settling down and all these things. And that didn’t sit well with me. I have never wanted children. But of course, when you say something like that before you are 18, no one takes you seriously. And after you are 18, they think you are trying to spit on the family name or something like that. So, things went quiet with my mom and the rest of the family for a while. When I moved back to Tanzania, I moved out of the family home very quickly because I didn’t feel comfortable being around them.

For a while, I didn’t consider my biological family as my family. I leaned more onto friends. I found friends and various groups of people who, though they didn’t not have my experiences, were willing to love and support me regardless. About a year ago, I moved back from Kenya to Tanzania and reconnected with old friends from when I was younger. Now that I was back and more settled, our relationships were developing into more adult friendships. We started participating in each other’s lives as adults, attending weddings, funerals, etc.

Around the same time, I started hanging out with my biological family more, mostly because the women in my life started becoming more open about their lived realities. I still haven’t gotten to a point where I can tell them about what is going on in my life, but I appreciate them choosing to share with me their realities, and what they are going through. This has helped me no longer see certain things as hypocrisy. Instead, I see them as expressions of their humanity. When you think about it, these are just humans failing in the same way I do and succeeding in the same way I do. And perhaps, I was judging them too harshly.

From what you just shared, it seems like you have quite an expansive conception of family. What else can you tell us about how you understand the notion of family?

I’m not attached to family in the traditional sense. I know I would sacrifice myself for many people but for me, family weaves in and out. There are best friends who have been the strongest relationships in my life and whom I don’t talk to anymore. This is not to say that they aren’t family anymore. I will always be there for them, and our relationship is something that I will always cherish, but they are no longer in my life. For me, family doesn’t mean an intense closeness; it doesn’t mean to have given birth to me or to be related by blood. I think an important aspect of family is how involved you are in a person’s life at any given moment.

Perhaps because I don’t deem family more important than other aspects of life, I don’t see family as being that different from friends. I don’t think family has more ownership of my time than other people or other parts of my life. The idea that I have to constantly go back to my family is not that prominent for me even though I love my family. And now that I think about it, another defining aspect of family for me is people who choose to understand you. There are people who see you and will never accept you beyond a certain point, and there are others who put in the effort to understand you. For instance, my mother, who did not accept me 6 or 7 years ago, is now trying to understand what non-binary means. Sometimes, she sends me videos of white lesbians building tiny houses in the forest and she says “this reminded me of you” (laughs) and I think to myself: you know what, we are getting there (laughs). But this shows that we are at a point where she has fully accepted me now.

A little silly question to close this off: thinking about the various materials you use in your daily artistic practice, if you could pick just one object to represent “family” –  in whatever sense you want to define it – what would it be and why ?

I have recently started using a paper which is a roll of about 80-meter recycled paper which allows me to tell a story as it continues and evolves. Sometimes, I’m tempted to cut out certain sections. I generally don’t like using sketchbooks because I like things to be perfect. But what using this paper has taught me is that it’s okay if your art changes from here to there. And metaphorically, it’s okay if loved ones come in and out of your life. It’s not necessary to hold onto a moment, because shit gets better, really. It always gets better, so just keep on going.