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Growing Up Queer in Nigeria
To the Adams and Steves, the Avas and Eves, and everyone else— a toast for resilience!
Surely soon, you also will begin to complain about my sexuality attribution in all my writings. Truthfully, I wasn’t always this accepting. I only just recently came to this point.
Growing up queer in Nigeria, it’s hard not to hold the infallible belief that it is meant to be “Adam and Eve,” not any other way around.
First, there was denial. Ava cannot be Adam. Even I saw it this way while kissing Eve. You know I met a lot of “Eve’s” in my time playing the field that were of similar opinion. Homosexuality was mostly for fun, to be with a person who got it. Even we knew when the time came, we would wed the opposite sex and carry on with our lives like this was just a phase.
Could you blame us? A world we’d be free to exist and love seemed farfetched, even now still. It was easier carrying that internal homophobia. It would remind us not to get sucked in. Fortunately for me, I fell in love with the craft. The realization that there would be no traditional white wedding for me dawned, tripling my homophobia, and I panicked.
