Out Of School And Into Motherhood (Glimpse)

My feature story about Modester has gone up on Glimpse. Read it here.

14 Years

It's no death sentence (see proposed legislation in Uganda), but yesterday a magistrate in Malawi meted out the maximum punishment for a gay couple: 14 years in prison, with hard labor. The men were convicted on Tuesday of unnatural acts and gross indecency ("buggery," according to language held over from the colonial era), and they received their sentence Thursday. The couple have been held, without bail, since the end of December, when they threw a chinkhoswe, or traditional engagement ceremony.

The verdict didn't surprise me, but it was still disappointing. I had hoped, at least, that the judge might refrain from the maximum sentence. After a lifetime in liberal bubbles, I walked by the courthouse yesterday ­­feeling very separate from the scene. I observed the pre-trial hubbub, a strange blend of well-heeled reporters with voice recorders, passers-by with babies on their backs and baskets of groundnuts on their heads, and barefooted street children holding out grubby hands and weaving through the throng. I thought back to high school, when my county briefly allowed gay marriage (though the state later voted to revoke the licenses), and my daily commute passed a long queue of couples waiting to be wed. Yesterday I mostly avoided the crowd, having heard enough homophobic comments since this fiasco began. The standard lines accuse the couple of being "strange," "unnatural," and defying what it means to be a proper, God-fearing Malawian. But I heard my share of comments later that evening on the BBC, along with recordings of the celebratory cheers outside the courthouse. I'm not so disappointed I missed them.

Numerous news outlets, including the New York Times and the BBC, have published articles on the sentence. While reading coverage, though, I would keep in mind a comment I overheard outside the courthouse yesterday – in an interview, a British man praised the international condemnation of Malawi, but he also maligned the Western press for presenting the country as backwards. Indeed, articles about Malawi seem to recycle the same few lines: insular, landlocked, desperately poor, very conservative, deeply religious. These descriptors may be accurate, but they also convey a one-dimensional Malawi.

The couple's lawyer said they're likely to appeal. Perhaps there's hope yet.

SLIDESHOW: Images of Malawi (Glimpse)

Click here to view a Glimpse slideshow of my top Malawi shots.