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\f0\fs24 \cf0 My name is Ricco Siasoco and I'm originally from Council Bluffs, Iowa.
But I've lived in Boston for the past twenty years. The Story I wanted to tell, I'm a faculty
member at Boston College and I usually bring a group of about ten to fifteen undergraduates
to parts of Africa every summer. Obviously attitudes are very different and over there
in countries in Africa as apposed to here where we talk about sexuality very openly
and either people who are anti-gay or pro-gay, we have discussions about it. So before we
went to Uganda - at Rwanda we would meet every week and one a week we talked about sexuality
and gender. So I talked to my students about how because of laws there - like the 'Kill
The Gays Bill' that was happening in Uganda at the time, that I didn't necessarily feel
comfortable about always being open about my sexuality. It's as much an interesting
point of conversation for them as it was for me to kind of say, "I might not always say
'My partner' or when people ask me why I'm not married, I might just be a little bit
vague about that. So, one of the surprising things is when I get off the airplane and
because I've been there three times now - I know what to expect. At the gate of the airport
in Ghana, there's a big sign next to customs that says, "If you are homosexual, you are
not welcome in this country." What I was thinking about is - the second or third time I wanted
stop and take a picture of the sign but I also didn't want to get arrested or draw attention
to myself. So it's this weird meta, looking at yourself, like - "Should I take the picture
of the anti-homosexual sign or not?" So when we ended up going to Uganda - often we were
working in an orphanage and orphans would ask, you know, "Who's married?" and "Why aren't
you married?" I was often vague about it. I remember one night, two of the students
- they were talking to our driver. He was Ugandan and he had very strong anti-gay views
and we'd been there for three or four days at that point so they actually were engaging
him and he wanted to talk about it. So I remember eaves dropping - really being interested in
how they were going to talk about it to our driver and that was a moment when I thought
this would be a good place for them to say, "Well, Ricco is gay and how does that effect
his life?" So, they never outed me but I remember that that was a moment when I wanted to sort
of be out to them. Unfortunately I never came out in Uganda, but about four months later
I took another group of students to Ghana and there I ended up coming out to people
that I trusted and I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable which is a little bit like
you feel when you first come out and I've been out for twenty years. But I didn't want
to make the Ghanaians I talked to uncomfortable or have to - the certain laws in some of the
countries say if you know somebody who is gay and you don't tell the government, that
you are just as culpable. So I didn't want to make other people uncomfortable but I think
more than that, it was my level of comfort and sort of being out. So one of the co-teachers
in Ghana, Sernet, asked me why I wasn't married and I told him "It's because I live with my
partner," and we had a really great conversation. He told me some of his friends at university
were gay, which was a surprise to me, as being Ghanaian, so it was just a nice conversation,
and sort of surprising to me - that we can both learn about each other. }