Four Seasons

(Could it be our Four Seasons?)
Article contributed by, Hodeye
Moderator of EthioGLBT (North America Division)


When we browse Homosexuality in Ethiopia in the past, unlike our rich history, it is something of a blank. As most of us knew, tradition and culture is a key element for all habesha people in this world. I don't know why I start to write this but I felt we need something different and I want to bring up this for today.

By experience when we are aware of our homosexuality we felt that we are the only Ethiopian one that exists in this world until we meet someone. After that if we are lucky we might find others, though we will plan our future by formulating our own identity.

This identity is my topic for today. After I start meeting up with habesha gays I noticed they categorized themselves in several classes. Only for this posting, I want to categorize them in four classes and on top of that I will name them with easy things to remember. Just like seasons, I would say we have Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring kind of identity we have.

Lets start up with Summer boys. These hot guys just like the summer sunshine, they are rare and hard to find and they don't care about their sexuality at all. Some of them even work at open gay places as striper, promoter or whatever job there is out there. They live their life as destined by God. To live such a wonderful free life though, they have to pay heavy price. They are anti socialized with their fellow Ethiopians because of their outness. Unfortunately, though thanks to rigid tradition and culture, it is unthinkable for straight Habeshas to accept another homosexual habesha.

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When we go to the Fall seasons ones, I was trying to put here people who are very skeptical. These ones know they are gays but they want to do all their staff secretly. They don't look or act as gays, on top of that they rarely go out to the clubs. Only they want to do it when they feel the urge. If they are young, they pretend to have girlfriends to kid themselves or close friends. If they are older, mostly they have wife and kids to accompany their long journey in life. They really live two double life, one for themselves and the other one, for friends and family's, mostly though in this case for family. The funniest thing is how they try to separate the respective life styles. I bet you here, if they put their resume on line they can get nice careers out of it.

Lets move to Winter boys, my special ones, I don't know why but I have some soft spots in my hearts for this category boys. Mainly, I have been there not so long ago. Here and there, I hear some sort of stories about winter boys in one way or another I feel their pain. I want to associate wintry boys with the winter dark and cold. They are in deep closet and they never had any experience with another human beings. They never been in ghetto places, their only fantasies are limited on cute guys on the street and Hollywood hot actors. Basically, they are handicapped to live their life for so many hidden reasons. Some of them have complicated situation, some of them are not mentally ready to go to the next level. The next level would enlighten their life entirely. Other who passed in this route should help out this folk's life, left and right.

Last but not least, come Spring boys. These are the luckiest ones and they do all the gay activity clubbing, going out with their boys and don't care about their identity that much. The good thing about them is since they are in between summer and winter they can get the both benefit with out heavy price. Benefits like not being reject by their own community. I get a chance to meet guys in this category even though I would like to appreciate their effort to live life at the fullest, I must say though; I am a little disappointed in the lack of unity shown between them. Most of habeshas gays who are in this categories can do a lot things for others (by saying this for other I was trying to say for the distant gay) for instance, if someone from summer boys come out and want to share his problems, he wouldn't get that much response from others.

One of this group member, once, put his personal number here and when I asked him if he gets any response out of it, he told me he didn't get any. The fall and winter boys have some other problems to solve with, let alone to do some gathering. The reason I start up writing this, is at this point of in time, it is essential first to let know where did we stand. If we know our position, we can go forward with more opportunity. I also want to ask people are they happy with their life and life styles? If they don't, what do they want to change?

" Ability is of little account without opportunity"
- Napoleon Bonaparte