Two Day Magazine

An Open Letter to Malawi:

Dear Malawi,

Not sure if you got the memo, but it is 2010. I just read on http://www.nytimes.com that a gay couple in Malawi was found guilty today of “unnatural acts and gross indecency”, AKA they are a gay couple that was celebrating their engagement in a country that would rather pretend that homosexuality doesn’t exist. Well, it does. They’re here, they’re queer, get used to it!

When the men were arrested, they both gave incriminating statements to the police. A doctor testified on the men’s behalf, however, stating that he could find no evidence that the two had committed sodomy. But, the magistrate decided to rely on the defendants’ words, instead, “that they used to caress each other and had anal sex for five months before going public into a chinkhoswe ceremony.”

Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiqonge Chimbalanga, 33, are not criminals, and yet they are facing up to 14 years in prison simply for daring to be honest about who they are as people. What they do in their bedroom is no one else’s business. They will be sentenced on Thursday. They have already been stuck in jail since Dec. 28, only two days after they threw themselves an engagement party, celebrating that silly emotion called love.

Mr. Chimbalanga worked as a housekeeper and a cook, referred to himself as “Auntie Tiwo,” and insisted he was a women. His uncle, who was their village headman, banished him in his teen years, but his 5 siblings stood by him, thinking him “bewitched.”

The celebration attracted a number of uninvited guests. Some were happy for the couple, others not so, and at least one phoned a local paper, which ran a story on the front-page about “gay lovebirds” involved in “the first recorded public activity for homosexuals in the country.”

Malawi would rather it be the last.

The prosector, Barbara Mchenga encouraged the magistrate to “consider the scar this offense would leave on our morality. The two showed no remorse and were somehow proud of what they did.”

No, Mchenga, they were proud of who they are. These men committed no crime. They just want to be free to express themselves as individuals and to love. The only scar being put on the nation’s morality now is the one created by you and yours, who see fit to punish those reaching out to one another in love and hope for a better future.

Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa delivered the ridiculous judgment in a court in Blantyre, the country’s commercial capital. He wasn’t too friendly about it, either. He found both men guilty of “carnal knowledge” that was “against the order of nature.”

Really? Have you looked around in nature lately? You may need to lock up some antelopes, then, while you’re at it! He went on to say that the men had been “living together as husband and wife,” which “transgresses the Malawian recognized standards of propriety.” Really? What about your child bride problem? That may be what you want to redirect your venom at. That would be an actual problem.

However, not all Malawians agreed with this verdict. Some were brave enough to speak against the absurdity for locking people based on others fear and ignorance. I’m talking to you, Magistrate!

“We can’t keep denying that we have gay people in Malawi and that they deserve to be treated with understanding and justice,” stated Undule Mwakasungula, who heads a human rights group.

“As much as I expected a guilty verdict, I still hoped for a miracle,” said Dunker Kamba, the administrator for the Center for the Development of People, a group that provides AIDS counseling.

The lawyer for the defendants, Mauya Msuku, said the couple suffered from “gender disorientation” and would benefit more from forgiveness and counseling than “placing them with hardcore criminals.”

I just don’t understand the point of all of this. Are you going to lock up everyone who has slept with the same gender? Then what? It will never end! This isn’t something you can sweep under the rug, ignore, or make go away through threats of violence and prison. Our world has gone upside down it seems and I don’t know where it is all leading. Do we really want to live in a world where our differences are met with disgust, fear, and violence? Do we really want to white-wash the world into a zombie-like state where originality and verging off the beaten path are seen as a danger to society and needs to be squashed out? There goes literature, there goes music, there goes art, theatre, and invention. For all of these things sprung out of the minds of those who dared to dream differently, act differently, and speak out against the grain. I know those men are sitting in jail right now, isolated, scared, and worn down.

But, if we all stand up for them, speak out against what their government is doing, maybe it won’t all be in vain. Maybe our energy can spark a change in people, by showing kindness and love for one another here. Which means we need to start working on ourselves at home, for actions speak louder than words. How can we expect to make an impact over there, if we still deny gays rights here? Until we can show that the United States leads the way once more for human rights, we are nothing but noise to those imprisoning, violating, and jailing innocent men and women who yearn for acceptance and love like anyone else.

Nolite te bastardes carborudorum!