8 - I just wanted an opportunity to express myself

Summary

Based on a life story interview with Doreen (21 September 2019)

I go by the name Doreen Andrews. My government name is a dead name, my before-name. I am now living my life as Doreen Andrews. Doreen is many things but to put it in a few words: I am a non-binary person, a calm person, a community person. I am recently a mother. I didn’t biologically give birth to these kids, but they look up to me and they like some of the attributes I have that motivate them to live their lives, to be happy with who they are. They look up to me for that. So, now they are like my daughters. It’s so hard, and it’s so fun; it’s a responsibility but it’s a loving responsibility: you get an opportunity to have someone who relies on you, and also, you rely on them. I worry about them and they tell me, ‘Oh, mummy, I need money to go somewhere! Mummy, I want to buy something!’ But it gives you that kind of acceptance of yourself, that I am no longer just living my own life, but having someone else who is looking up to me.

Right now, we are at The Nature Network: a resource centre, offices, a home, a safe house to so many refugees, the place where refugees are free to express themselves. Nature Network is a home, it’s a mother to me, I cannot ever repay Nature Network. But I wasn’t always so safe. You know, there are those events that happen in your life that you wish never happened, you wish didn’t exist in your life. You know? Sometimes I want to forget them. Some of this brings back traumatic moments. But I want to share; I want to tell the world; I want to show people that what happens now doesn’t determine tomorrow; what happened in the past doesn’t determine today. So, when I came to Kenya, for me it was a way to escape the life that I was living in Uganda, the life I was living when my family was putting up all these rules and barriers for me so I could not express who I really am.