My name is Fousani Hamidou, and I am a senior at St Lawrence University (Canton, NY, USA), majoring in Global Studies with a minor in African Studies. Last semester, I studied abroad in Kenya and had the opportunity to travel to Arusha, Tanzania, as a part of my program. We lived for a week alongside the Hadzabe tribe, one of the last surviving hunter-gathering tribes in the country. Throughout the week, we hunted hyraxes and made arrows with the Hadzabe men, and we gathered tubas (a tree root) and made beads with the Hadza women. On the last night, we all gathered with members of the tribe on a large rock by the camp to discuss their lifestyle, the Tanzanian government, education, and forced assimilation.

Recently Kenya has come into the global spotlight following the murder of fashion designer, model, and LGBTQIA+ activist Edwin Chiloba in a suspected hate crime in January 2023. However, there are LGBTQIA+ people in Kenya who rarely make it into the global and even national media spotlight - people like Wayne, a monitor with the Center for Minority Rights, who is working to protect and support LGBTQIA+ people in the coastal region of Kenya.

Across the world there are tens of thousands of attempts to construct alternative realities — either through sustaining things from the past which are still relevant, equitable, and just, or creating new ones.