Continuing with our silent theme for our womxncrushwednesdays, the wedding theme for good luck; something old, someone thing new, something borrowed or something blue. This week we feature something borrowed. As KTMG, our goal is to report the lives realities of LGBT+ persons in Uganda, tell our truths ourselves. Over the period of our existence we have reported stories out of the city areas but we found that these do not have real time reporting because we get to the story late, we also struggled with follow up.
We came to the realization that we cannot be everywhere and trained willing participants in the different regions of Uganda in media skills to become part of us as correspondents. We have built a network of correspondents in the different regions of Uganda who have enabled real time reporting of news and built a follow up system.
Our #WCW for this week is Aisha-Ashe our correspondent from Kasese and she works with Twilight Support Initiative. Ashe shared bits of her life with us below.
My name is Aisha- Ashe working with Twilight Support Initiative-Kasese and Kuchu Times Media Group Kasese Correspondent. Being queer in Uganda is not an easy ride. Being a queer activist or feminist in Uganda is even harder than anyone can ever imagine especially because Uganda as a country is still a very homophobic country.
My journey as a queer feminist started 4 years back when I had started associating more with queer, lesbian and bisexual women and getting to know our journeys, our stories and our struggles. My motivation was to be a voice for Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer (LBQ) women. I was determined to make sure that we retain our dignity, access justice and strengthen our confidence and self esteem and the fact that I already had experience working as a feminist fighting for rights or adolescent girls and young women helped me to easily navigate to advocating for the rights of LBQ women in Uganda.
There are a couple of situations that have made me hold my head up high as a queer feminist but the one that made me most proud is when one of my fellow queer feminists was outed for being a lesbian woman and was suspended from work because of her sexuality. She got so frustrated and depressed because she had lost her job and was at the verge of losing her marriage and family ties because she was a closeted bisexual married woman with two children.
She tried so hard to avoid everyone by stigmatising herself and crying out her eyes. She always confided in me so I worked hard to engage different stake holders like lawyers and counsellors and other activists to see that she is reinstated at her job and her name is cleared.
After one month of struggling and pulling strings with her employers, she went back to work and her family was rebounded in peace. To this date, this being the first time I was standing up for an LBQ woman, will forever be my proudest moment as a queer feminist.
