IGF CultureWatch

Rain had snarled Nairobi's traffic, so after waiting at a standstill for almost two hours, our driver Daniel roared over the divider, faced the oncoming traffic for a harrowing few seconds, and pulled into a side road.

It was really more path than road, alternating between muddy ditches and dust. But we weren't the only ones to take it. So many of us did that we were only prowling around at about three miles an hour, giving us plenty of time to look at the locals - and for the locals to look at us.

This could have been one of the Nairobi slums where post-election violence ripped lives apart a few months ago. A ditch between houses colleted waste; children were without shoes. The buildings huddled close to the road, so close to us it seemed we could touch them if we stuck our arms out wide enough.

The locals lined up to watch the parade of cars go through, and it felt like a parade, like a festival, with people smiling and waving at us and all of us waving back.

One woman caught my attention. She had a butch energy about her, and was wearing a rugby shirt, a long, patterned skirt, a bald head and a vivid smile. She was in her mid-twenties, I thought, or perhaps five years younger.

When the van stopped, waiting for traffic ahead to move forward, she sauntered around to the front of the van, stopping at the open window of a pretty, dark-haired woman I'll call Ann.

"Hello," the Kenyan purred, sliding her elbows onto the window. "How are you?"

I almost laughed in shock and recognition. If she had said, "How YOU doin'" in a dark lesbian bar, it would have sounded exactly the same - as a come on.

"Fine," Ann said briskly. She's straight - I'm not sure she saw it as anything but a friendly gesture. "How are you?"

"I'm gooood. And what's your name?" The van moved forward with a jerk. The Kenyan stayed alongside it for a while, fingertips resting on the van, but then fell behind.

A few minutes later, the van stopped again, and the Kenyan, unhurried, took her place again at the window.

"What's your name?" she asked again, in an intimate voice, and then said, "My name is Caroline." The two of them could have been alone. Ann, flustered perhaps, reached into her bag and handed Caroline a rose. We had vases of them in our hotel rooms.

Caroline pressed it to her chest and turned in a circle. Her face glowed. "I'm in love!" she said. "Marry me!" She called out to a friend, "She gave me a rose!"

Sex between men is illegal in Kenya and punishable by jail time. Sex between women is completely invisible and simply doesn't officially happen.

Homosexuality is considered to be un-African, either a curse bestowed by an angry enemy or a Western disease. Former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi once said, "Kenya has no room for homosexuals and lesbians."

This attitude is not only wrong - it is dangerous.

An American I met while in Kenya does HIV research in Nairobi - he said that a startling number of "men who have sex with men" weren't aware that HIV/AIDS was transmitted through sex, and could be partly prevented through condoms. And, he said, it's difficult to target a community for education, awareness and treatment when you don't know who exactly they are.

Africa's commitment to fighting AIDS doesn't extend to allowing gays and lesbians civil rights in order to help educate them. There is strong hostility to gay organizing in Kenya, as there is in much of Africa, even for health reasons. So most gays and lesbians go to cruising spots, or to places known for their gay clientele, and then home to their wives and husbands.

They are invisible, or try to be. But they still exist.

Caroline exists.

The rose was still clasped to Caroline's chest when the van started moving again. She reached out with the rose to touch it, and ran forward a few steps when it started to pull away.

"What an intense young man," the only male in our group said.

"She was a woman," all the women replied at once.

The van started moving faster, having reached a portion of clear road. Caroline was left behind, a single hand in the air, waving goodbye.