Carine, age 37

“I can’t change... They’ll have to put me in prison like the others.”

I grew up in a small town. When I was 16, a neighbor – a man who was 10 years older than me – left his bike at my house. I borrowed his bike without telling him, and came back too late. He found me in the path – in the bush – and he took me by force. I didn’t know before that a man could take you by force. That was my first sexual encounter with a man.

I felt it was my fault since I had taken his bike. I didn’t tell my parents, because I thought they would punish me. I never talked about this with anyone – not until years later. I’ve thought sometimes that maybe it’s because of that that I’m a lesbian. But actually, even before, I wasn’t attracted by men. I was attracted to women, I just didn’t know what this was.

I was around 19 or 20, in boarding school, when I first had a relationship with a girl. My family realized I was a lesbian, though I never openly declared it. They told me I should change my life, and I tried to change, and that didn’t work.

When I was 27 or 28, my family kicked me out of the house for a year. They told me I should marry, and said that if I didn’t change, I should go. Men used to come by my house and ask my mother and brother for permission to marry me. These men knew that I was a lesbian, but they thought I could be forced.

Before my mother’s death, she wanted to know if there had been a change in my body – if I still had female parts. She wanted to look at me in the shower, I said, “No mother, it’s not my body that has changed. I have female parts; it’s my head that’s different.” She never pardoned me before her death.

I live with my brother now. He understands me, but we can’t talk openly about this. He has to love me, because he knows that I am what I am.

I am the only known lesbian in my town. I had a job as a teaching assistant at a Catholic school, but the nuns started to suspect me, to follow me, to follow all my steps, and eventually fired me.

At another former job, there was a girl that I liked. A driver lived in the same compound with us and also liked the girl. One day he came to my room and said he had something to tell me. He pushed me into the room, took the key and locked me in. He was shouting, “Where is my girlfriend? Where is my girlfriend?” He showed me a rope in his pocket and said, “I’m going to kill you. Where is the girl?” He shut me in my room for 30 minutes.

I went to the tribunal [court] to file a complaint, and they said, “Yes, that man is at fault.” Then I started to worry that the man could talk about the relationship I had with the girl, and I let it go.

I joined the gay association in Bujumbura after I met a member who was a friend of the family. He told me, “In the association we talk about our lives, the lives lived by homosexuals, and we try to see if there can be change.”

I would like this law [against homosexuality] to be changed, because it’s important for me, and also for my friends. I can’t change my life. They’ll have to put me in prison like the others.