I was born into a large family like most somalians do. I have 8 brothers and sisters and I had a nice childhood. We used to travel a lot and so have lived in different parts of the world from Asia to Africa and Oceania to Europe.

Around the age of 9 I noticed that I was developing feelings for guys. Those feelings were natural to me but I soon found out that it wasn't ok in our culture to have such feelings for people from the same sex. All they do is to try to brainwash you by saying ‘being gay is like a sickness that you can cure’ but I knew better though I continued to act straight.

By the age of 16 we were living in Rotterdam, which is a great city and it was an eye opening experience to see Dutch gay guys who were open about their sexual orientation something I wished I could do too but then at the same time thought, no way, because it could give my parents a heart attack or something else. 

For quite some time I didn't know whether I was Bi or Gay so I started to explore my first time experience with a boy called Ameen. Ameen used to live near our house and we used to hang around a lot in order for us to discover the city.

Ameen and I used to tell everything to each other and kept no secrets from each other except that I never told him how I felt about him so one day during the summer period while my parents were away for a  summer break I invited Ameen to stay over for this particular night which he agreed to.

How it went was, we first went clubbing with some others friends, later that night when we got  back home, we could not fall in sleep right away so we started talking about sexual experiences but  we both soon found out that we were both still virgins.

My heart was really bouncing because the guy I had crush on was in my bedroom sometimes I couldn't help but to think that I was in somewhere else with my thoughts reason being that I was thinking of kissing his soft sweet lips but when he asked something I would come up with other explanations.

In the end I gathered all my courage and thought it's now or never so I came up with the lame excuse that he had something on is eyelid and got closer and finally kissed him, at this point in time he didn't push me away instead he grabbed me tighter by the waist and pulled me closer to him, it was a night to remember.

When I turned 22 my parents started about me getting married and stuff but I didn't want to and couldn't tell them the real reason why so they kept arranging the one hook up after another with somalian girls and their parents. So I came up with a plan to get them off my back without disappointing them and got married with a Dutch Bi girl. This was all a façade at the time which seemed to me a win- win situation as the whole thing was a sort of cover up. Annemarie knew I was into guys and I knew that she was into girls. Annamarie grew up in a catholic family and they didn't know about her sexual orientation either. However, as we both had strong wishes to have children we decided to do an In Vitro Fertilisation that gave us beautiful children.

We are no longer together anymore because we couldn't keep up with the pretence so we divorced and now she is happy with her girlfriend and I am single at the moment and I am enjoying it.

In terms with my sexuality I cannot say that I am all open about it to everyone as only few close friends know about it. However, one thing is for sure, I accepted the way I am about myself and I am happy with it. Sure, being gay is not easy in our culture and for change to arrive it will take number of generations while it has taken the West decades to get where they are today but  TOGHETHER WE WILL OVERCOME ALL OBSTICALES.  


Bye for now and I hope to see more of your stories out there on the site