Ignorance is Bliss

Once again, I am back in my hometown, Ethiopia. This time, after five years of being away. Although my memory of most things is still fresh in my mind, some things never cease to amaze me. Walking is part of the culture here, either due to necessity or for leisure. After 5 p.m. the streets are full of people walking home, to restaurants, coffee shops, to the nearest taxi/bus stops or people just walking for the heck of it.

The walking is not what has me in awe, because that was one of the main things I was looking forward to while in the US. What has me in awe is the number of guys walking the streets holding hands and hugging. When I say holding hands, I am talking about fingers interlocked with one another and sometimes swinging their hands together while they are locked together. Despite the westernalization (yes, I just made up a word) of many countries due to globalization, I was amazed to see guys being so close with each other specially in the capital city, Addis Abeba. In the US, some guys are even scared of sitting next to each other in the movies, without leaving a gap in between seats or even hug each other for the fear of being labeled gay. And that notion always angers me, I mean if you know who you are, why do you care what others think of you?

So I was so touched and proud to see guys being so free and loving towards each other without the fear of being labeled. I was happy to see the innocence in these grown men walking down the streets, and their untainted mind regardless of what the media feeds them.

But when I started to deconstruct what I was seeing, there wasn’t really much to it than what meets the eye. Initially I thought “wow it is beautiful how they can do this without any fear of being judged, which means they are not insecure or homophobic. Or they are so liberated.” Unfortunately, that is far from the truth. Like I said the reason why they are doing this does not require an in-depth look at the psyche, it is simply because they can. The society as a whole is actually very homophobic, so homophobic that they have chosen to deny the pure existence of homosexuals as whole and has discarded it as something of a western epidemic. This concept, has allowed men to express their affection openly in public without fear of judgment. Which in a way, this same concept might have given gay men SOME freedom in expressing their affection in public as well (because no one would assume they are gay). Hence, to some extent, ignorance is bliss.

(pictures coming soon)