Hello everyone, my name is ricky. I am a queer refugee in South sudan, I'm in deep fear, and I don't know if I tell you this, you will feel ok about it. But anyway I would like to tell you because it's a bit traumatizing.
I'm a ugandan by nationality, and I fled my country because of persecution from both my family and the community members who wanted to kill me after finding me with my partner James. It's a very long story to tell. When I try to remember about the incident that happened to me in 2020, I feel depressed and traumatized. Oh no, my partner didn't escape, and she was killed 😓.
When I managed to escape from them I ran to Kenya where I went to the UNHCR offices in Nairobi and they took me to their refugee camp called kakuma refugee camp, with alot of excitement hoping that there would be safe. Sadly, it was more horrible than ever experienced. In kakuma were I found 500 lgbtq fellow people who had experienced the situations I passed in different countries. We used to be attacked by the homophobic every day and then.
In kakuma, we lost 8 fellow queers in attacks, and the organization, the government in concern, didn't take any responsibility to protect us. So, as we, we decided to request for the dialog between we, UNHCR, and the government of Kenya, which was in 2023, December. Disappointingly, the government of Kenya they told us that they didn't have any room for we lgbtq in their country.
This left us heartbroken, and we started to be divided. Many went to unknown places, and me I decided to go to another nearby country, and that was south Sudan.
Right now, I'm living in South Sudan in Gorom refugee settlement camp, where I found many other queer from kakuma and other places I don't know.
This place is also not safe for us because we are daily living starvation life, brutal attacks and discriminations, etc. Even recently me and my community and I were attacked, and my shelter and others were destroyed, and also, the little food was stolen when we ran to save our lives. This is me and my community lives we are passing through, so I'm here requesting your support to survive this situation 🙏
