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[MUSIC]

Lesedi: Our reporter, Ayodeji Rotinwa, was doomscrolling on Twitter when he saw a video that made him stop dead in his tracks.

It was an image of an elderly woman. She had a full head of thick white hair, and she was talking about growing up queer in Ghana.

Ayodeji: It might sound strange, but as a gay Nigerian myself, I’d never seen an elderly queer African before.

The oldest one I know is fictional. A 70-something-year-old character in an Evaristo novel, and to be strictly factual, he’s actually Caribbean. So stumbling across this video felt like turning out my pockets and finding money. Since I’ve been little, the only image of a long, old life I’ve ever seen usually had the same characters: Mr.and Mrs., 2.5 kids, joint bank accounts. Now, here was something else entirely. I needed to know who had found this woman. I clicked on the poster’s profile

[MUSIC ENDS]

Awo: Um, this is Awo Dufie, and today is

Ayodeji: Awo is Queer and Ghanaian too. Her profile picture, a lethal face card. Wavy wig, silver nose ring, gold hoops, giving glamour.

She takes no shit. She drags elitists, misogynists, homophobes, all the while cracking up.

Awo: Even the people who want to harm us, one of the reasons that they want to harm us is because they think all we do is have sex, right? But that’s not all we do. I haven’t gotten laid in such a long time.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: But her post about the queer elder, it wasn’t about pissing off homophobes. It wasn’t about going viral. It was deeply personal, about a prophecy she once received, one that said she would die at 30

But to understand all of this, we need to go back to 2006, a time when Awo had another name, another body, another life.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Awo is eight years old, living in the town of Akosombo. That’s in the eastern region of Ghana. Awo’s mom, let’s call her Kusi, is worried because Awo is not like other boys.

Awo: I was very, very, very effeminate. Um, one of the things that my mom had immediately noticed was how effeminate I was and [MUSIC] also that I preferred to spend a lot of time with girls or by myself.

And she was really worried.

Ayodeji: Kusi wanted to fix her child, and she was willing to do anything. She took Awo to churches and mosques, even though she was a never-miss-a-Sunday kind of Christian. When that didn’t work, Kusi decided to go ancestral. She found a traditional priestess, a believer in indigenous gods, usually spelled with a small g.

The priestess moved into the two-bedroom apartment Awo shared with her mother and her two siblings. She even planted garlic in their yard.

Awo: Because she believed garlic banished evil spirits, and when she saw me, she said I was evil. She would put some in my mouth, in my nose, like the juice of the garlic.

Ayodeji: The priestess said an evil goddess had possessed Awo and caused her to be effeminate. She also said she could get rid of it.

Awo: She told my mom that we had to do a proper divorce ceremony.  So that’s what we did.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: The ceremony had to happen in the Atlantic Ocean on Awo’s ninth birthday. Kusi put Awo in a white shirt dress. The priestess packed her ritual essentials: an eagle’s wing, candles, and anointing oils. They drove three and a half hours to the beach. When they arrived, it was nearly midnight.

Awo: We went into the sea and, like, a very piercing cold because she puts, like, my entire body into the sea, and I couldn’t breathe.

It felt like I was being drowned.

[SOUNDS OF THE OCEAN]

Ayodeji: Awo tried to resist, but the priestess plunged her in and out of the water.

Awo: I held onto her legs and, like, we both fell, and I ran back out to the shore, and then my mommy brought me home

Ayodeji: They did not speak a word to each other on the way back

Awo: It wasn’t something that we have ever talked about again.

Ayodeji: Awo says the waterside conversion failed. Nothing changed. She was still effeminate. Everyone around her was convinced something was wrong with her, but she did not let it get to her, thanks to an unlikely ally, her stepfather.

Awo: I remember shortly, like after I turned, I think 14 or 15, he caught me with a boy and I was so scared.

And I went to his room crying and telling him it’s the devil and it’s not me. And he was like, why would you say it was the devil? [MUSIC] Like, this is normal. And it happens between boys. Sometimes they grow out of it. Sometimes they don’t. I hope that you grow out of it. But even if you don’t, like, it’s okay.

Ayodeji: All Awo had to do was

Awo: Just make sure your mother doesn’t find out

[MUSIC ENDS]

Ayodeji: But she did.

When Awo was 23 and had just graduated from university,

Awo: I remember I had just come from seeing a friend when my mom called. As soon as I answered, she asked me, “Hello, Kojo.” And like, that’s my dead name, by the way.

Ayodeji: In the days of he, him pronouns, Awo went by Papa Kojo.

Awo: Hello, Kojo. {speaks Twi}

Like, and to translate it, she meant you are part of the gay people. Reaction, I froze.

Ayodeji: To be fair, Awo’s mother was always going to find out. Awo was never really in the closet. Her stepfather gave her the confidence to live out loud. In high school, she outplayed the bullies at their own game.

Awo: We would spread like a rumor that he’s gay and he wanted to sleep with one of us.

It never failed. We had, we had great men come in front of us to beg us to say they are not gay .

Ayodeji: An Uno reverse card if I ever heard one.

[MUSIC]

At university, Awo hosted classes about queer rights on Twitter and WhatsApp. She identified as queer, but only online. She thought she was safe there. She had blocked all her family members on all the apps, but her sister found a way. She followed her through an anonymous account. That’s how she found out.

She went straight to tell their mom.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Awo: You know, Michelle Obama likes to say when they go, when they go low, we go high. But that’s not the same for her. So if she wants to go low and you go lower, she goes like even lower. I just wasn’t expecting her to go that far.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: Kusi cut Awo’s allowance, her medical insurance, and took back her laptop.

She even demanded that Awo hand over her university diploma. Awo was never to return home. But what left a mark wasn’t what Kusi did. It was what she said

Awo: When you die by 30, I will come for your body and bury you. Yeah

Ayodeji: Awo said that her mom had bought into misinformation that gay people don’t live long, not beyond 30 anyway, mostly because of HIV and AIDS. But what Kusi said went beyond that. She meant that when Awo dies, she will not give her a funeral.

Awo: And usually the people that we don’t do funerals for where I come from are people who commit crimes, like people who do things that are considered evil.

Their bodies are not allowed to be brought into the community

Funeral is a very big deal within the Akan community. So if like someone decided they are just going to bury you, they consider you like a shame.

Ayodeji: Before that Sunday evening call from her mom, Awo had big plans for her future. But

Awo: Her telling me that kind of changed the way, number one, I saw myself in the sense that if I’m going to die by 30, are all of these plans that I have made in my head, are they all worth it?

[MUSIC ENDS]

Ayodeji: Awo and Kusi have not spoken in six years. That’s why we didn’t use her mother’s real name. But even after all that’s happened, Awo does not believe her mom is a one-dimensional villain. The way Awo explains it, her mom was just trying to be a good Christian parent, the only way she knew how. [MUSIC] There have been good times, like when her mom taught her about music and blasted it through the speakers on the weekends.

Highlife, OFORI AMPONSAH, Amache Dede, Opera, Luciano Pavarotti, R&B, Roberta Flack, times Awo may never have again.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Just three weeks after Kusi made her death prophecy, Awo felt like it was coming true. She got COVID, like really bad.

Awo: It felt like punishment for like being queer.

Ayodeji: Awo was coughing up blood. She was hospitalized for days. She thought, “This is the end.”

Awo: I wrote letters to like my family and, um, the people that I cared about, [MUSIC] that if I die, this is why, and it’s because of my own stubbornness.

Ayodeji: Long story short, Awo did not die, but when she recovered, she had to come to terms with her new status: disowned, homeless, very poor. For months, she barely scraped by. Then came a big break in the big city. Awo got a job in Accra as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company. After settling into her new life in Accra, Awo started volunteering at an NGO dedicated to queer rights.

Things seemed to be going very well until the Ghanaian Parliament introduced a new bill, the so-called Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill

News Clip: Welcome back to the Pulse, to this controversial conversation. Now, a group of lawmakers have introduced a draft bill to Parliament to criminalize same-sex activities in the country. The MPs as part of the bill

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: What kind of same-sex activities? So let’s say Rihanna comes on in the club and two men start grinding each other.

That’s PDA and could land you with a one-year jail sentence. Or maybe you’re Netflix and chilling with your person. Same-sex intercourse, three to five years. Say you posted a rainbow flag, promoting LGBT activities, 10 years. Amnesty International said the bill would stir up hatred. They were right.

[MUSIC ENDS]

News Clip: A very disturbing video and it is showing a number of men attacking a man they allegedly believe is gay.

He was beaten and stabbed multiple times.

Ayodeji: Part of Awo’s job at the NGO included monitoring the news for these kinds of violent attacks. Sometimes she sat with the victims, hearing horrific accounts of their past experiences.

Awo: I realized that I was getting depressed. The stories were exhausting and it looked as if the further the anti-LGBT bill progressed, the worse the stories got.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: Awo lived in constant fear, day in and day out, of being found out, of being punished. It all felt so bleak. For Awo, the death prophecy still loomed in her mind. She needed a distraction from all the noise to focus on something positive. Where were the stories of hope, of joy, of survival?

Awo: A different form of activism where I didn’t have to focus on abuse

It also came from like very personal motivation of like trying to tell myself that I won’t die. I will live long

[MUSIC ENDS]

Ayodeji: Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, as the world was welcoming 2023, Awo had an idea. “What if I find queer elders that have lived way beyond 30?” Awo reached for her phone

[MUSIC]

Awo: I tweeted that I wanted to do more documenting history, documenting kinship, and I wanted to talk to very old people, older queer people.

Ayodeji: She went back to bed, not expecting much. Then a DM came in. The sender knew a woman, her great-grand aunt, who might fit the bill. So Awo made her way to Garu, a town in northern Ghana, not far from the Burkina Faso border.

She was nervous.

Awo: So before I left, like everybody I talked to  would tell me, “Hey, are you sure? You know, are you sure?”

Ayodeji: As in, was Awo sure about heading to a conflict zone? There had been clashes, casualties, and curfews. Unless you lived there or had important business, you were risking your safety. But Awo had very important business.

[MUSIC ENDS]

She was going to meet a queer elder for the first time.

Awo: Maybe this would be very important for me, you know, and the life that I would like for myself. I– it just felt like if somebody was trans and that old, then, like, I would love to hear whatever they had to say.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: 30 hours of travel later via buses or motorbike, squeezed into a four-seater taxi with nine other people, Awo finally arrives. It is a huge family compound with several thatched mud huts in a circle. Awo is welcomed in, but she still has more hoops to jump through. She’s cross-examined by the elders’ caretakers.

They have many questions for her. Is she a journalist planning to sensationalize the story? Will she stop the interview when asked? And please, no cameras. Awo is not disappointed. Instead, she’s moved.

Awo: I don’t come across a lot of queer people and their family are going through, like, all of these things to make sure they are protected.

[MUSIC ENDS]

She came out, and the first thing she did was she put on lip gloss. She had, like, lip gloss on, but she still added more lip gloss, and I thought that was so cunty.

Ayodeji: The elder takes a seat in the courtyard next to Awo. The caretakers stay close, almost like she’s royalty. A child fans her feet. A carer wipes sweat off her back. Someone applies shea butter on her arms and her legs. She introduces herself in Dagbani

Fuveen: {speaks Dagbani}

Ayodeji: She says her name is Fuveen. She’s 83 years old, and she has been living as a trans woman since the 1950s.

Awo: I think for me, I just wasn’t expecting her to, to look normal because of the pictures of trans people that I have seen, especially if they haven’t, like, medically transitioned. She looked like a woman.

She looked– she was a woman. L- I don’t want to say like a woman because she was a woman. She completely passed. She was so moisturized, and she asked me why I was staring at her so much because I was staring and, like, I couldn’t say anything.

Ayodeji: Just imagine it. There’s this whole anti-queer bill brewing, people telling you it’s not in your culture, and here is this 83-year-old trans woman right before your eyes.

Mind you, Fuveen grew up at a time when being queer was illegal. In her time, there was a British colonial era law banning same-sex activities. It’s actually still part of Ghana’s laws.

Fuveen: {speaks dagbani}

Ayodeji: Fuveen says that growing up, she was very beautiful, so beautiful that people came to ask for her hand in marriage, not knowing that she was born a boy. But her father was very protective. He refused all suitors. He did not trust the men’s intentions. He saw Fuveen as special, almost like a good luck charm. So did the rest of her family and her wider community I asked Awo how hearing this felt

Awo: It makes me envious. Like, I cannot have everything. I cannot, like, be trans and also expect to have, like, a happy family.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: Before meeting Fuveen, Awo questioned her gender identity all the time. She knew she didn’t have a masculine bone in her body, but she could only go as far as she/her pronouns. She didn’t feel brave enough to transition physically. But then there’s Fuveen, someone outwardly trans for over half a century. That made Awo wonder.

Awo: Why have I been so afraid? Why have I been living in so much fear, um, of, like, what I could be, of, like, what people would say, of losing friends? Like, I don’t want to be a cis man at 40 years and have regrets because, like, I was so, too scared of what everybody was going to think.

I think I pretty much started my transition after I went to talk to Fuveen.

Ayodeji: Fuveen lived a full life. She fell in love in 1956 with a member of Louis Armstrong’s band, who was on tour in Accra at the time. Eventually, she moved to be with him in the US, but there was some loss, too. The relationship did not work out.

She found living in the US too difficult, so she moved back to Ghana 18 years later. By then, Ghana had become way more homophobic, but the love and protection of her family never changed. Here was a past Awo had never seen, a history she never thought possible. If Fuveen could have a full life, maybe Awo could too.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Awo: And I just, yeah, I think I just wanna live. I just, I j- I just, I just wanna live and be surrounded by, like, my friends, and I want to grow flowers, very different colors.

[MUSIC]

Ayodeji: On the long journey back to Accra, for the first time in a very long time, Awo is contemplating her life, not her death.

Awo: I don’t want to be a billionaire. I want to be a baby girl with my farm, and I want a lot of land, and I want to build, like, very cute, cute houses, and I wanna have chickens

Ayodeji: It will be Awo’s birthday in a few months. She’s turning 30

[MUSIC ENDS]

[MUSIC]

Lesedi: This is only the beginning of Awo’s story. What you’ve just heard is the first episode of a new series from Open Democracy. In the episodes to come, we’ll follow Awo as she searches for other elders and the proof she needs to dismantle the prophecy, a quest that unfolds even as the anti-LGBTI bill looms in Ghana

You Will Die at 30 is a collaborative production between Open Democracy and Radio Workshop. It was written, produced, and reported by Ayodeji Rotinwa. This episode was edited by me, Lesedi Mogoatlhe, with assistance from Dhashen Moodley, Bethel Habte, Axel Kacoutie, and Priscilla Alabi. A special thanks to Awo Dufie Fofie and to Ebenezer Peegah, Tiffany Soulbird, and Fyzah. in loving memory of Shakia Ya Asentewabaah.

Gratitude to Daniel Alarcon, Ariana Lee, and Patricia Sulbaran. Thanks to Anja Nilsson, Jill Achineku, and Margaret Coker. Research assistant, Nyameye Akumia. And special thanks to our sensitivity reader, Brian Pellot

Original music by Qhamani Sambu at Edible Audio in Cape Town. Sound engineering by Jo Jackson and Mike Rahfaldt. Jo Jackson is our managing producer. Mike Rahfaldt is our executive producer. Vuyo Lutseke is our executive director. Thanks to PMF Recording Studio in Accra, where we recorded narration. This episode and the work of Radio Workshop would not be possible without support from Fondation Chanelle, Ford Foundation, Luminate, and Stephen Hendrickson. We can only tell these important stories because of your support.

You can make a donation at radioworkshop.org

[MUSIC ENDS]

• Awo Dufie grew up queer in a conservative community in Ghana and was subjected to a range of “conversion” rituals.
• When Awo’s mother learned she was queer, she cut Awo off, saying queer people don’t live past 30-years-old.
• Frustrated by the rising temperature of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and sentiment in Ghana, Awo decided to look for positive queer stories.
• Through an online contact, Awo meets Fuveen, an 83-year-old trans woman who had lived openly in Ghana since the 1950s.
• This story is produced by Radio Workshop in collaboration with openDemocracy.

Ayodeji Rotinwa, a journalist from Nigeria, was caught off guard when he saw a video on social media of an elderly queer woman in Ghana. There aren’t many depictions of elderly queer Africans, even in fiction. The person who posted this video, a queer Ghanaian named Awo, was trying to change that. For Awo, this video wasn’t just about representation; it was a statement against a popular Ghanaian myth that queer people don’t live past 30.

“If I’m going to die by 30, are all of these plans that I have made in my head, are they all worth it?” – Awo Dufie

You Will Die at 30 was produced by Radio Workshop in collaboration with openDemocracy. openDemocracy is an independent media organization that produces investigative journalism centered around migration, human rights and gender. Radio Workshop is a non-profit that works with youth reporters across Africa, provides the tools and teaches the skills, and youth bring their creativity, experience, and passion for tackling the issues that matter to them and their communities. Radio Workshop’s documentary-style podcast has won numerous awards, including Best Standalone Documentary from the International Documentary Association.

Radio Workshop’s editor Lesedi Mogoatlhe says stories like this create new futures for young queer Africans. Lesedi said, “Awo’s story might begin with a prophecy about death, but it’s really a story about visibility. Queer Africans are spoken about as though they have no history and no elders. Awo’s journey reminds us that these lives have always existed, and that preserving those stories is a powerful act of resistance.”

Awo grew up in Akosombo, Ghana. As a child, Awo was very effeminate. When her mother learned about her queerness, she was terrified. Awo’s mother’s fear led to painful attempts to “convert” her. Awo was taken to churches, mosques, and an indigenous-faith practitioner. These experiences were brutal for Awo.

“I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was being drowned.” – Awo Dufie

Years later, Awo was disowned by her mother, who left her with a final proclamation that Awo would die by 30.

Awo battled illness and homelessness. Eventually, she found work in Accra and volunteered for a queer rights group. When a harsh anti-LGBT bill began to fuel violence and fear in Ghana, the reality of queer existence in Ghana started to weigh heavily on Awo. That’s when she decided to seek out hopeful queer stories.

In her search, Awo was introduced to an 83-year-old trans woman, Fuveen. Fuveen’s story of defiance against colonial-era laws to live openly queer gave Awo a new sense of hope. Alongside Ayodeji, this episode explores Awo’s journey to prove a myth wrong.

“It just felt like if somebody was trans and that old then like, I would love to hear whatever they had to say.” – Awo Dufie

This is the first episode in openDemocracy’s multi-part series on queer elders. To find out more about Radio Workshop, visit radioworkshop.org or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Listen to You Will Die at 30 wherever you get your podcasts.