Ainigmas, age 18

“I thought to myself, ‘Even if it’s not possible, this is what I want.’”

I’ve been gay since I was little. When I was three, I already liked to try on my sister’s skirts and my mother’s high heels. When I was seven, I realized I liked boys. I thought to myself, “Even if it’s not possible, this is what I want.” As I got older, around ten, I tried to camouflage by playing football with the boys. But in spite of that, I never managed to change my way of being, my walk, and my tastes.

Since I was very young, I made jewelry. I used to make simple bracelets, then more complicated ones. Then I started making rings and beaded bags. Sometimes I sell these things – my friends come and order them. I wear jewelry, too, and people are now used to it, because since I was very young, I wore this. I would like to become a designer, for fashion and for hair.

My being gay has always annoyed people who don’t understand me. People threatened to kill me, to beat me, and they went and gossiped about me to anyone who was willing to listen. Once a friend in the US sent me money and I bought an expensive telephone. There was a guy in the neighborhood who was a drunk and a member of a gang. Each time I passed, he and his friends would say bad things about me. They would say that I prostituted myself for money, even though I have never done this. One day he slapped me and took my telephone. He did it because I was gay; he thought I had prostituted myself for the telephone.

I can’t talk about these problems with my family. I don’t talk with my big brother, who beat me up all the time when I was little. He was a member of Sans Echec [a Tutsi youth militia that carried out violence against Hutus in the 1990s during Burundi’s civil war] and has always hung out with people who are brutal. I was closest to my older sister, but she died in a car accident five years ago. We had a sort of complicity between us. When she went out secretly, it was me who opened the door for her at three in the morning. My big sister knew I was gay – she could see this, although I didn’t talk about it.

But if I told my mother, she would die. Even when I put in an earring, she almost had a heart attack.