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My Mother’s Child, a monologue.
My name is Natalie.
I am an actress who uses her act to advocate for human rights – LGBTIQ rights. A thing about story telling is, to tell authentic stories you have to surrender yourself to the character you are about to play.
Throughout my acting career, I have given myself away to stories and experiences that have summoned me. These stories have not only shaped my reality but have also, liberated my mind, and freed my spirit. In most cases, I have used these stories to change the narrative and misguided perceptions about the LGBTIQ community.
I have been to spaces where being Queer is synonymous with all the offensive terms y’all can imagine.
“Homosexuality is a sin. Homosexuals are doomed to spend eternity in hell. If homosexuals wanted to change they could be healed of their evil ways. If they could turn away from temptations they could be normal again. If only they could try, and try harder.”
Enough is enough! Enough of this mediocrity of using ones sexuality as a target on their back.
I have existed in the cusp of isolation and battled with identity, where the bridges that have put me down are the societal expectations of who I should be. I have struggled with existence. I have sat in silence and watched hopelessness dangle right into my veins. I have stayed glued on my phone, and read feeds of high suicide rates from the feds.
Some of the poeple I know have sunk into depression while the society just watched. Apparently, this is what “homos” deserve. Instead, the society have initiated the penal code to repel us from the society we were born into.
Tell me, what is it about the society that we should always conform to its demands? That when it barks like a dog, like a slave we have to obey and please it? If the society has gone cold and rogue why then should we please it? We are born free with our natural rights, but why do the laws of the land seem one sided? Why is it that my Sexual identity is a threat to your African culture, when you still call yourself a Christian? The audacity.... The audacity to refer to my "act" as immoral, when your moral compass is as flawed as the electoral process of Kenya.
We are a democratic country, right? We have the freedom to live free, and choose whoever we want to fall in love with, right? But why am I being crucified three times on a cross that isn’t mine? Repel 162! Repel 163! Repel 165!
Unajivunia kuwa mkenya? (You are a proud Kenyan, right?)
Why should I be proud of my mother land when it has shoved my pride in the closet? Why should I be proud of my mother land when to practice my rights I have to flee to the SA or fly to the US? Why should I be proud of my mother land when my own mother, sought divine intervention to set me free from the devils craft?
A devils craft, (chuckles) such a fancy way to define my sexuality isn’t it?
When I came out to my loving mother, it was on a Good Friday.
And On the Third day, she had packed my clothes.
"sikutaki kwangu, hebu toka." / "I don’t want you in my house. Can you leave!"
I thought she was joking.
"Wewe ni shetani, sikutaki kwangu." / "You are Satanic. I don’t want to see you in my house."
I was like,
Mom, no, please don’t do this.
You ever stared in your mom’s eyes and wondered whether she birthed you? Because now she got my clothes packed in a carton box, it’s the Easter holidays, and I am about to be homeless.
"Toka!" She shouts, "Leave!"
Mom please, I am scared.
Wewe nenda!
And slam! The door shut. I’m desperate.
It is the Easter holidays, and as Jesus is rising from the dead, another "demon" is being cast out of their home.
Don’t you sometimes think that what this "demon" need is compassion and acceptance?
And no!
I’m not a demon, I’m my mother’s child.
Performed by Sharon Mwarinda
Written by Phill Ibsen, Master of Descriptions.
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