Carlos Toh Zwakhala Idibouo, Ivory Coast
I was born in the Ivory Coast but spent most of my childhood and teenage years in France. I always felt I was different from my friends and siblings, but I didn’t know how to put a word around it. I was attracted to people of all genders and knew that terms like “homosexual” or “gay” didn’t make sense to me. It took me years to start identifying myself as someone who was gender non conforming.
The Ivory Coast is generally considered to be the most open toward the LGBTQ community in West Africa, despite all of the homophobia. To me safety for the LGBTQ community is just a matter of geography: it depends on which neighbourhood you live in, who you interact with, your colleagues, and friends. This sense that the Ivory Coast was an oasis for the LGBTQ community hasn’t always been the case though and the LGBTQ movement has been growing steadily for the last twenty years since I co-founded Rainbow Plus, the first LGBTQ organization which advocated for the government to recognize LGBTQ people as people. At the time, homosexuals who were infected by HIV/AIDS couldn’t go to the hospital and receive services because homophobia was very high and Rainbow Plus was created to combat this and today there are 25+ LGBTQ organizations advocating for equality. Despite all of our advocacy over the last twenty years, the government has yet to legalize gay rights.
When I was 19, I had to leave France and go back to the Ivory Coast and that’s when my advocacy work began. At first, everything felt like it was successful but then the media attention came and everything started to change. One newspaper in particular outed a bunch of the organizers from our group and many of them disappeared and went into hiding to protect themselves. Despite this, the work still needed to be done, and even though everyone else around me was gone, I kept at it alone. I can’t explain how hard this was. I was being accused of being a pedophile and was called very terrible things. I couldn’t take it anymore and it eventually reached a point where it was affecting my mental health. I knew the time had come to leave.
I applied to go to Geneva and was eventually offered a scholarship to attend an AIDS conference in Toronto. Even after arriving in Canada, I never imagined that I’d stay here permanently, but I eventually applied for my refugee status and was approved in November 2008. LIfe for me now is much more open in Canada. In my 10+ years here, I’ve never been attacked and I feel safe. Perhaps I’m lucky, because I know that’s not the case for everyone here, especially with those identifying as trans and gender non conforming. We still have our struggles, our fights, and work still needs to be done.
PhotoGRAPHED by
Olivia is a Junior at Silverthorn Collegiate Institute who enjoys both street and portrait photography. She uses photography as a creative outlet and to document moments full of emotion and purpose.