African queer women will reclaim their 'hood in Nairobi

This posting is dedicated to F, K and all the other queer men and women of the African diaspora who are claiming their dignity and space in a time of intense homophobic and misogynist attacks and threats of violence against them.

Last weekend, I received a message from a friend K, who lives in Nairobi. She related a horrible incident whereby some friends, 2 women (F & M), were leaving a club, Florida 2000. This club is frequented by everyone...queer and straight...mostly Africans. As the women walked out beyond the entrance, they were verbally assaulted with homophobic slurs by another woman--unknown to them.

Then this woman, brandishing a broken bottle, attacked F---cutting up her face.

The two male security guards, instead of trying to protect F and restrain the attacker, held on to F, prevented her friend M from assisting her, and joined in the assault against F. Eventually this melee was broken up when enough onlookers became involved and M prevented the attacker from leaving. F was taken to the emergency room at Nairobi Hospital and police reports have been filed. Human rights and feminist organizations in Nairobi have been contacted.

Two men held a woman who was attacked by another woman. No words.

F's face was severely cut up. She's had at least one round of surgery and was discharged from the hospital a few days ago. But she was readmitted to the hospital today because she's been losing consciousness at home.

F is surrounded by a lot of love and comfort from her sisters. The scars will be a testament to her survival, as well as a reminder of how precarious our lives still are as women and as queer people when we choose to live and love openly--without shame and fear.

A community that thought it had a safe place to just BE was severely traumatized. For some time.

But as K wrote me today, this despair, fear and disbelief is now starting to morph into reclamation and organized resistance amidst the women of her found family.

I feel hopeful and anxious about the news of what the women will do next.

So here are the words of Essex Hemphill for solidarity for F, her Nairobi peeps, and queer people in and from the motherland just trying to live their lives:

Everything different
tests my faith.
I have stood in places
where the absence of light
allowed me to live longer,
while at the same time
it rendered me blind.

I struggle against
plagues, plots,
pressure,
paranoia.
Everyone wants a price
for my living.

When I die
my angels,
immaculate
Black diva
drag queens,
all of them
sequined
and seductive,
some of them
will come back
to haunt you,
I promise,
honey chil'.

(excerpt from 'The Tomb of Sorrow')

When the bike lanes appear, there goes the neighborhood...

Welcome to 'Bad Neighborhood'.

A reclaiming of the term 'bad', a reclaiming of 'denigration'.

Yes, this site is intentionally "blackened", "darkened".

As is the majority of people on this blue planet---various shades of brown and black and red and yellow. As for those of you reading this who are not in the melanin-gifted department, better load up on the strongest SPF you can find with the ozone layer going going gone....

I employ no reverse-'paperbag test' here. All are welcome---as long as you have compelling 'bad neighborhood' stories to tell and have a deep abiding love, solidarity with and respect for the bad neighborhoods of the world. Some of my best friends are white folks.

This is not a 'poverty pimping' place. No glamorization of suffering and neglect and violence and environmental poisoning.

Because some neighborhoods truly have had the life beaten out of them and left for dead. These neighborhood are the unkempt toddlers standing wailing in the street left to fend for themselves. These neighborhoods are the aged left by themselves alone in dilapidated structures ---who are so dehydrated and disoriented that they don't know where or who they are.

This 'bad neighborhood' is harkening to James Brown's "I'm Superbad" kind of 'bad'.

A place where those of us who love/hate 'bad' neighborhoods, grew up in 'bad' neighborhoods, survived 'bad' neighborhoods, went to school in 'bad neighborhoods', received and gave love in 'bad' neighborhoods---can share our complex stories and experiences of these times and places.

These are the 'bad neighborhoods' that WMWFs---Well Meaning White Folks (no, not weapons of mass destruction, altho some would beg to differ...) refer to in polite conversation when I, often the lone person of color in the mix, am rendered either invisible or draped in honorary 'whiteness' (ie, 'goodness').

I have to thank the members of the Food Justice Group for whoever made that off-the-wall but oh-so-true comment and about white folks and bike lanes. We were having a discussion about neighborhoods we grew up in, live in now, what kinds of foods were available, etc.

Someone made a comment about the appearance of bike lanes as an indicator of neighborhood whiteness.

Forget about the absence of fried chicken joints, protestant churches on every block, brown and black folks hanging out on the corner and on porches, trash in the streets, hip hop blaring over speakers, run-down schools, dollar stores, taco trucks....no that's not how you tell whether you're in a 'bad' or 'good' neighborhood.

Look for the presence of bike lanes.

That's how you know that you're in a a 'good' neighborhood. With 'good' mostly white people. With 'good' brown people who care for their children and keep their lawns and pick their organic produce. With 'good' schools for the 'good' children who will grow up to make a lot of 'good' money. With just a sprinkling of black and brown folks, who receive the title of 'honorary good' just so that their presence can add to the urbane urban-ness, edgy potentially-but-not-quite 'bad-ness' of the neighborhood.

And of course, there are many many neighborhoods that flip this race and class divide cockroach on its back, with all six legs and antennae just scrambling!

So let's here about your bad neighborhood...with or without the bike lanes.