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"You don't belong here"

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almost always means, "We can't find
a function or a role for you."

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"You don't belong here" sometimes means,
"You're too queer to handle."

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"You don't belong here"

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very rarely means,

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"There's no way for you to exist
and be happy here."

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I went to university
in Johannesburg, South Africa,

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and I remember the first time
a white friend of mine

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heard me speaking Setswana,
the national language of Botswana.

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I was on the phone with my mother

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and the intrigue which painted itself
across her face was absolutely priceless.

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As soon as I hung up,
she comes to me and says,

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"I didn't know you could do that.

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After all these years of knowing you,
how did I not know you could do that?"

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What she was referring to was the fact
that I could switch off the twang

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and slip into a native tongue,

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and so I chose to let her in
on a few other things

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which locate me as a Motswana,

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not just by virtue of the fact
that I speak a language

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or I have family there,

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but that a rural child lives
within this shiny visage of fabulosity.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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I invited the Motswana public
into the story, my story,

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as a transgender person years ago,
in English of course,

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because Setswana
is a gender-neutral language

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and the closest we get
is an approximation of "transgender."

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And an important part of my history
got left out of that story,

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by association rather than
out of any act of shame.

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"Kat" was an international superstar,

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a fashion and lifestyle writer,
a musician, theater producer

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and performer --

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all the things that qualify me
to be a mainstream, whitewashed,

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new age digestible queer.

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Kat.

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Kat had a degree from one
of the best universities in Africa,

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oh no, the world.

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By association, what Kat wasn't

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was just like the little
brown-skinned children

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frolicking through the streets
of some incidental railway settlement

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like Tati Siding,

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or an off-the-grid village like Kgagodi,

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legs clad in dust stockings
whose knees had blackened

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from years of kneeling
and wax-polishing floors,

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whose shins were marked
with lessons from climbing trees,

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who played until dusk,

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went in for supper by a paraffin lamp

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and returned to play hide-and-seek
amongst centipedes and owls

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until finally someone's mother
would call the whole thing to an end.

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That got lost both in translation
and in transition,

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and when I realized this,

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I decided it was time for me to start
building bridges between myselves.

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For me and for others to access me,

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I had to start indigenizing my queerness.

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What I mean by indigenizing
is stripping away the city life film

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that stops you from seeing
the villager within.

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In a time where being brown, queer,
African and seen as worthy of space

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means being everything but rural,

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I fear that we're erasing
the very struggles

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that got us to where we are now.

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The very first time I queered
being out in a village,

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I was in my early 20s,
and I wore a kaftan.

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I was ridiculed by some of my family
and by strangers for wearing a dress.

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My defense against their comments
was the default that we who don't belong,

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the ones who are better than, get taught,

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we shrug them off and say,
"They just don't know enough."

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And of course I was wrong,
because my idea of wealth of knowledge

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was based in removing yourself
from Third World thinking and living.

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But it took time for me to realize
that my acts of pride

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weren't most alive in
the global cities I traipsed through,

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but in the villages where I speak
the languages and play the games

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and feel most at home and I can say,

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"I have seen the world,

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and I know that people like me
aren't alone here, we are everywhere."

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And so I used these village homes
for self-reflection

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and to give hope
to the others who don't belong.

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Indigenizing my queerness

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means bridging the many
exceptional parts of myself.

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It means honoring the fact

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that my tongue can contort itself
to speak the Romance languages

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without denying or exoticizing the fact
that when I am moved, it can do this:

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(Ululating)

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It means --

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(Cheers)

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(Applause)

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It means branding cattle with my mother
or chopping firewood with my cousins

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doesn't make me
any less fabulous or queer,

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even though I'm now accustomed
to rooftop shindigs, wine-paired menus

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and VIP lounges.

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(Laughter)

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It means wearing my pride
through my grandmother's tongue,

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my mother's food, my grandfather's song,

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my skin etched with stories
of falling off donkeys

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and years and years and years
of sleeping under a blanket of stars.

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If there's any place I don't belong,

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it's in a mind where the story of me
starts with the branch of me being queer

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and not with my rural roots.

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Indigenizing my queerness
means understanding

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that the rural is a part of me,
and I am an indelible part of it.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)