“When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,” says Simon, a human rights activist based in Kampala. Following the February passage of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, Simon says he was working overtime to help LGBT people whose lives were destabilized by the anti-gay fervor surrounding the short-lived bill. Simon says queer people in the East African country are often the victims of larger internal and external forces.
Simon, 36, is never far from one of his mobile phones. The community-level activist says he must to be ready at a moments notice to respond to crisis situations. In the months following the initial passage of the bill, a majority of his calls where to help queer youth who had been kicked out by their parents or expelled from school. He says that teachers feared breaking the law by simply having gay youth sitting in their classrooms.
Ugandan human rights activist Simon plans to stay in the country for as long as he can. “I have decided to fight from within,” he says. Despite the atmosphere for queers, he says his countrymen are a good people. “I am proud to be Ugandan, my roots are here.”
“When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,” says Simon, a human rights activist based in Kampala. Following the February passage of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, Simon says he was working overtime to help LGBT people whose lives were destabilized by the anti-gay fervor surrounding the short-lived bill. Simon says queer people in the East African country are often the victims of larger internal and external forces.
Queer Kampala
Editorial Photo Essay
Uganda 2014
There are two ways to get by as queer in Uganda: live “loud and proud” or in the closet. This series of images was created to offer a peek into the lives of that second group, people for whom being open with their identity is not an option.
It is not easy to be queer in Uganda, nor was it last spring when this series was created. Just months before the now-defunct Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 had been pushed through the African nation's parliament by the administration of 30-year president Yoweri Museveni. Many local and international observers still believe the bill was simply a convenient distraction from several brewing political scandals; a half-hearted attempt to divert the stresses of ineffective development paired with rapid globalization towards something other than the government. The act brought international headlines, plenty of scorn from the West, and even sanctions on some aid moneys.
Lost in the debate: the faces and voices of Uganda's vibrant queer community. With help from local, national, and international human rights organizations this series was created to capture the stress and fear of living underground as a queer Ugandan. It was created in a sort of safe house in the outskirts of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The house is managed by a human rights activist named Simon who is portrayed twice in this series draped in a Ugandan flag and peering over his desk into the camera. Summing up the situations of those he helped he said, “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”