Leila was 17 when she realised that she was in love with a female friend.
Leila thought about her all the time. She fantasised about her. It could only be love.
“At first I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m in love with a woman. What is happening?’”
Leila had grown up in a loving, supportive middle-class family in Bujumbura city. She was popular. She had a boyfriend.
And now here she was, in love with a friend.
After months of thinking about her continuously, she needed to share her feelings. Leila texted the friend.
“Hey, I think I’m in love with you.”
There was silence for hours. Then the friend replied.
“I’m sorry Leila. But no. I don’t like girls.”
Leila was mortified.
“What have I done?” she asked herself.
But she needn’t have worried. Leila didn’t lose her friendship. The two agreed to draw a line under the embarrassing episode.
Relieved, Leila put her months of infatuation down to a phase. It had been a one-off crush, with one woman.
“I thought, ‘When I get over her, I’ll be ‘normal’ again,’” she says.
Then something happened that she didn’t anticipate. Leila’s brother went through her phone and found the text she had sent to her friend.
He showed their mother and an emotional showdown followed.
“Mum cried. I cried. We convinced ourselves it was a phase. She asked me to make an effort to be be ‘normal’. I said I would.”
Leila started dating a man. But something was wrong.
“I wasn’t into it,” she says, “I thought maybe it was because the guy wasn’t cute. So I dumped him and started dating a cute guy.”
It still didn’t work.
Then a male friend asked her if she didn’t prefer women.
Leila reluctantly replied, “I’m sure”.
But when he looked at her quizzically, she says the full realisation of who she is hit her. I am a lesbian, Leila told herself.
But she still hoped there would be a way out of it. She prayed. She meditated. She became angry with herself.
But slowly, she began to come to terms with the truth.
When she was 21, she finally came out to herself.
“Every gay person comes out twice,” says Leila. “You first come out to yourself. You have the moment when you realise that there is no going back. This is you. You are gay. Your plans and expectations for what you thought life would be need to adjust. Then there is the second coming out, the public coming out, to the people around you.”
When she came out to herself, Leila began to look for other gay people. She doubted there would be women like her in Burundi, but she searched videos on Facebook and YouTube seeking lesbians in other countries.
“I thought, I might be alone in Bujumbura but I’m not alone in the world.”
Her next step was to explain to her mother that it wasn’t a phase – a hetrosexual life was not for her.
Initially her mother took it badly. But as the days passed she began to ask more questions. Leila’s father was more supportive than she expected.
The family agreed that as a lesbian woman in Burundi, Leila was already in a vulnerable position.
They could protect her while she was in the family home, but they could not guarantee her safety outside if the wrong people found out.
She knew she had to find the community to which she felt she belonged.
from Viral News Show http://bit.ly/2UQa7bz
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