THE LONG READthe ‘husband’ and the ‘wife’. I don’t
understand it. It’s not what I see on TV.
And, if you play the role of the wife (as
I do) in a relationship, your partner will
load you with the children she was forced
to give birth to. You are the mother; she
acts as the father.
Since they took my babies away in
2013-14, I can’t take them anywhere. My
mother says I have an evil spirit, that I
am a bad woman and a bad mother, that
I am like the women of the Spanish Co-
operation Agency, that I am forgetting
the natural duties of a good woman.
Many families like mine don’t accept
us, the lesbians in whom you don’t see
our homosexuality physically, we’re not
masculine. It hurts them; they’ve already
lost the chance to live off the men who
will sleep with us in exchange for money,
because a Guinean girl expects men to
bring money. And suddenly, you don’t
obey and you come out that you’re a
lesbian: forget about family love. They
make your life miserable and only shut
up if the lesbian who’s with you has
money. Then they kidnap your children.Through the children, they can humil-
iate you. For the children, you’ll have to
come back. They demand that you main-
tain them; if you don’t do it, then you’re a
bad mother.
I worked the street. I was good working
the street. Since I was 14, 13, I was already
in the street. I brought money home, lots
of money. My mother and grandmother
called me ‘our pretty girl’. Grandma was
quiet. I smoked and earned money. I had
sex and smoked a lot. I earned money by
the thousand, do you understand? My
family was happy.
My family and I are united by the
money of my partner and from working
the street, which I still do. I am like the
umbilical cord that joins them to my
vagina, from which they expect money
for the rest of my life. They call me for
everything: there isn’t enough food in the
refrigerator, there isn’t rice, there isn’t...
Everything is lacking. They pull money
out of me, out of my partner, out of my
clients. It’s a constant blackmail.
Three months ago, my mother came
to our house and told my partner that shehad given up on me, but that she should
at least give her money in exchange for
me: four million francs, six thousand
euros. I thought that then she’d leave us
the children. She said no.
No, because my children represented
the only healthy thing left of me; I, con-
taminated by lesbianism, should forget
that I was a mother. She wanted money
for some business plan or something, I
know.
Since we’ve been together, we’ve never
been happy, my partner and I. My family
doesn’t let us be, nor hers either. My
mother, every time she comes near us,
asks for money.
Since I was little, I was the whore of
the family. I am pretty, the investment.
I must spend my life being with men
who’ll maintain my family members. If
I am now with a lesbian, I must somehow
replace the men who should be maintain-
ing the family.
Four million, my life, my head. I am
a whore; that’s how we whores live. Ever
since I was a little girl. OH
omosexual girls here, if we want
to have kids, we get drunk. We
smoke banga, cocaine, weed,
whatever we have at hand. You’re not
going to go with a guy of your own voli-
tion. We don’t like penises. My case was
like this. My friends gave me advice. I
didn’t want to smoke; I drank a mix of
alcohol, and one time or various times...
I don’t even remember now... I prefer not
to remember... I slept with this boy who...
anyway.
My family told me they’d been under
pressure for a long time. During a family
gathering to which I was summoned,
without letting me have an opinion, my
family ordered me to have a baby to
replace myself, because they had lost me.
My grandmother literally said: ‘You are
no longer a daughter of this family.’ One
of my mother’s sisters told me: ‘You area delinquent. You’ve brought bad things
to the family.’ They insisted that, in order
not to lose me completely, I had to give
birth; that way they would again care for
me a little.
After I’d given them a child, they
assured me, they’d let me free; then I
could go and die, and they wouldn’t care.
This was a lie. The agreement was that
they would take care of the child after I’d
given birth; now, they’ve abandoned me.
The father of my child was my cover.
He paid my expenses. I thought that he
could be the right guy. Once I was preg-
nant, I told him. He abandoned me,
saying that he doesn’t get lesbians preg-
nant, and he’d been told that I sleep
with other girls. He found out that I’d
used him as my cover. The people who
took care of me were other homosexual
women.The guy, my ex, told his friends to
attack me in the street. They took away
my mobile phone that he’d bought for
me himself; later I saw him with that
same phone. To this day he hasn’t met the
child. My baby is two years old now.
I live with my family like an animal in
the jungle. Sometimes they buy the child
milk. They ignore me. I found out that
they thought that if I gave birth, it would
take away my lesbianism.
A few months ago, I decided to enter
a military academy. I want to work. I am
not going to die like this, being poor. Eve-
rything began well. When I collected my
things (a bag of clothes, among others)
to leave, my entire family voiced their
opposition. ‘You’re not going anywhere.
You’re a mother now, and mothers take
care of their children.’ So, I stood there
with the bag in my hand in the doorway.Searching for the hero
68 NEW INTERNATIONALIST