Pauline Kimani is one of Kenya’s few openly lesbian women.
Interview by Arusha Topazzini
‘I want to live in a world that’s ideal for me, I believe everyone should have the right to live in a world ideal for themselves.’ Pauline Kimani is a 23-year-old gay rights activist, feminist and one of Kenya’s few lesbians to openly admit her sexuality. Pauline found she was lesbian early in life, after developing a schoolgirl crush on her sports teacher, but it was not until she was 16 that she came out to her middle-class family in Nairobi.
‘I felt afraid,’ says Pauline, ‘because I had heard stories, especially in school, that attraction between people of the same sex wasn’t normal, and it was considered evil and un-African.’
Homosexuality is illegal in 38 African countries. In Kenya, it is punishable by up to 14 years in jail. Although no one has ever been convicted, the existence of this law has kept most of Kenya’s lesbian, gay, bi and trans-sexual (LGBT) community in the closet. There are high incidences of suicide and drug abuse, and no legal recourse in the face of discrimination and hate crimes.