Just out., January 07, 2000, Page 23, Image 23

January 7*2000»
by
O riana G reen
I
magine that you live in a society so
repressive that you are unable to live
.. ...............
openly as a sexual minority. What
would you be willing to relinquish for
that freedom? Your family? Your cul­
tural identity? Your religion? Your
country? Your citizenship?
Meet Kahunya Wario, who has sacrificed it
all in a lifelong struggle to live openly as a gay
man. For that liberty he has surrendered every­
thing that he once held dear, everything that
once defined him, everything that ever mat­
tered to him.
Except the truth of who he is.
A t 35, Wario is a model citizen. He is high­
ly educated, well-spoken and articulate, shy
yet charming, and one of the most sincere,
well-grounded human beings one could ever
be privileged to meet. He is tall and slim, just
the kind of handsome man any guy would be
proud to take home to his family.
Yet Kahunya Wario is no longer welcome
in his country of birth, Kenya. After his stu­
dent visas expired, and after years of dodging
the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Ser­
vice, in June of 1999 Wario became one of the
first Kenyans to be granted political asylum in
the United States simply because he is gay.
If he were to return to Kenya, he
would face the possibility of public
flogging and 14 years in prison
doing hard labor.
So Wario has chosen Portland as
his adopted home and is gradually
rebuilding a life for himself here. But
what a price he has paid, and what a
journey he has made.
In his Portland apartment, Kahunya Wario wears a shirt given to him by his mother
television program with his family
about a male couple and their union
ceremony.
“The adults were all saying such
decadent behavior was a sign of the
end times,” he says.
Wario laughs now thinking
about it, but at the time it was
ingrained into his psyche that those
two men had already fallen into
the abyss, “lost souls forever in a
place of weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth.”
A
s much as W arios story is about
his sexuality, it is also about his
spirituality, the quest to discover his
truth about both and, ultimately, how to
integrate these two aspects of his life.
\>CTien W arios father was bom in 1925,
Kenya was still a land of many chiefdoms
with no central African government,
though the British had long since sent the
missionaries and plenipotentiaries who
began the colonization process. In fact, his
father was bom at a missionary station to par­
ents who had already been converted to
Christianity. O f Warios extended family, only
his mothers grandmother resisted conversion.
“When I was a kid, up until puberty, I
believed what I was told,” Wario explains,
adding, “Growing up in a religious family you
always know how far you can go before falling
into the spiritual abyss.”
Then a small miracle happened. When
Wario was 5 years old, his family moved to the
United States for six years so his father could
attend a seminary and intern as a minister,
The family moved around a lot, which helped
Wario become very adaptable, used to being
not just the
new kid, but also the one
He remembers when he was 7 watching a
from Africa. The exposure to Western culture
during those impressionable years made its
mark on him
•he family returned to
Kijabe, Kenya, on Warios
11th birthday, his father an
ordained evangelical minister
of the African Inland Church.
“More Billy Graham, not
quite a Falwell fundie,” Wario
says, though it’s clear he believes the Chris­
tianizing of Africa is a great calamity.
He says that throughout Africa the people
were “sold a very different brand of Christian­
ity— unintellectual— all about emotions and
preying on poverty. The allure is technology
first; the Christianity came later.”
Wario explains how his people were
seduced with education in mission schools,
then electricity and antibiotics, and how they
viewed the foreigners: “These people must
have very powerful gods."
After he returned to Africa, some class­
mates mistook him for a girl, Wario remembers.
Additionally, he was one of the few students
with English as their primary language.
“I felt very odd, and I began cultivating an
African accent to fit in,” he says.
Wario also feared he was odd for another
reason.
“I absolutely knew at age 9 I was different,”
he says emphatically. “I was attracted to boys,
and I knew it wasn’t OK."
During puberty he heard the word faggot
flung at him, and he became very anxious,
believing his body was betraying him. “Does it
show? Is it something I’m doing?” he wondered.
For his secondary education Wario was sent
to a remote missionary-run boarding school,
and from then on he saw his family only spo­
radically. In that strict school environment he
was able to avoid pressures to be sexual with
girls.
Continued on Page 25
PHOTO BY MARGO GIRARD
A gay man’s journey from Kenya to the United States, from prejudice and fear to acceptance and pride
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