Thank you for this important story! Since I began a public writing career in 2018, I have communicated almost daily with rainbow refugees at the UNHCR refugee camp at Kakuma in Kenya.
The camp is filled with transgender and gay people from East Africa and from further away in Africa. Many Kakuma refugees fled violence and death threats. One young man I know made his way to Kakuma after his family discovered he was gay, tied him with rope, and threw him in a river to die. He managed to float until he was out of sight, then dog paddle to the shore where he eventually struggled out of the ropes.
He walked hundreds of miles to Kakuma, developing severe sores on his feet that eventually became badly infected.
At Kakuma, he received antibiotics, but that was the last good thing that happened for him there. He doesn't get enough to eat unless he trades sexual favors for food. Like other rainbow refugees, he is sometimes beaten by other (non-LGBTQ) refugees and by the UN staff who run the camp.
He lives without hope.
He says he cannot return to his home country, because if his family got word he was back, he fears they would finish the job they started when they threw him in that river to drown.
He is unwelcome in Kenya. He left the camp for a while to try to establish a life in Nairobi, but he says Kenyan police and Nairobi residents beat and tortured him until he gave up and returned to the UN camp — where he still faces physical violence and inadequate food.
He used to be filled with hope by the possibility of applying for asylum in the West, but he now realizes that hope is not realistic. Very few nations accept rainbow refugees in significant numbers, especially not the United States, which could easily afford to do so but chooses not to.
Tiny nations like Canada and Sweden do far more than their fair share, but they don't have enough resources to make much of a dent in the population of rainbow refugees at Kakuma let alone in other nations where the need is desperate, such as Afghanistan, Iran, Chechnya, etc.
I suppose that one day I will stop hearing from my refugee friend because he will have given up hope, will have laid himself down and given into despair, will have chosen to stop fighting to stay alive. But my inboxes will remain full with other dispairing voices.
I despair because Christians around the world choose not to face the consequences of the hate and violence their colonizing has caused.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is a particularly evil example. He will not condemn the vicious homophobic bigots who lead Anglican churches in Africa and elsewhere in the global South. Instead, he kowtows to them, affirming their vile belief systems, and the hatred that leads to my refugee friends' despair, suffering, and deaths.
You'd think Christians around the world would be at the forefront of spreading love and ending the suffering. After all, is Christianity not supposed to be about love?
But like Justin Welby, most Christians seemingly just don't care. They love their homophobic theology, they love judging and condemning queer people, and for the most part they just don't give a fuck about what happens to people like my refugee friends.
This is just one of the reasons I remain at all times deeply suspicious of Christians.
I think the religion is mostly evil, though I know a minority of Christians are trying really hard to reform the faith.
But for the moment, most Christian leaders are as thoroughly evil and disgusting as Justin Welby.
I doubt I'll live long enough to see that change, though I hope it does.
