This weblog was first printed in The Washington Blade.
Dumi Gatsha is a GFAN Speaker, UHC 2030 steering committee alternate member and founding father of Success Capital Organisation, a sub-sub recipient of the World Fund offering group well being and justice referral companies, whereas working within the nexus of human rights and sustainable improvement at grassroots, regional and world ranges.
Expensive Dumi,
I write to you as a testomony to endurance and resilience.
I do know you’re reeling with confusion and grief with little understanding of what occurred to you throughout adolescence. Residing in a world that defines you as a sufferer with a lot ‘want’ and little to dream for, as a result of who’s allowed to dream when criminalized and denied consent to their bodily autonomy and dignity?
You’re one among many whose resilience will probably be celebrated with little regard of what really defines you as a result of you could have ‘survived’. Survived socioeconomic complexity, sexual assault, stigma and the silence that comes with normalized violence.
Though the journey via your teenage years could also be lonely, you aren’t alone.
Activists that got here earlier than you endured to bridge science and group, governance and humanity. As you develop into activism, your friends, colleagues and actions will revitalize the Pan African dream. Younger feminists alike, dreaming and carving out a extra queer, inexperienced and simply future.
Whether or not in social media, on the streets, via group well being, or in areas the place individuals convene – you can find group amongst those that set up, protest and create.
They’ll nourish your individual journey, strengthening the therapeutic that activism has afforded you regardless of the complexities of shrinking civic house and well being insecurity.
You’re a gentle of many others, that redefine what it means to be African and in solidarity. The constellation of sunshine that brightens the room within the glory of African Queer excellence, hope and pleasure.
You’ll carve out new beginnings for individuals who, simply as you, might need not had the phrases or language when beginning out. You’ll form conversations and weave within the love, aspirations of these most left behind in regional and world agendas. As we begin to create our personal tables, the place we’re not the themes however the place we form the trajectory of what and the way our humanity will be restored with out situation or ableism.
You can see pleasure in resistance and asserting the universality and indivisibility of your rights. You’ll navigate public participation in group and solidarity, because the backyard of pleasure blooms amidst geopolitical chaos and anti-rights actions.
Worldwide Youth Day will probably be one of many many commemorations if you look again on the beneficial properties made in human rights-based strategy to HIV, while advancing the gaps in sexual and reproductive well being rights, psychological well being and common well being care.
You’ll acknowledge that these can’t be fulfilled with out guaranteeing our planet can be wholesome sufficient to accommodate all of us in our range. These are the talents of our future; the place we will dream and be inventive, the place intersectionality in thought management and advocacy can carve out alternate options for participatory actions.
You’re an African youngster, born of the African soil. This sheer acknowledgement, is an intergenerational legacy constantly redefined in music, pleasure and therapeutic. You’ll look again with glee as one among many who’ve outlined their potential and created the pockets of solidarity and creativity that nourish us in Ubuntu.
I want you, your friends and group, a generously sustained and enabling liberation that ensures our particular person and collective wellbeing.
Yours in activism and pleasure,
Dumi
