Homosexuality 101

Kids fishing in Kendwa
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Our first night in paradise happened to be the night of the big easter party at Kendwa Rocks on the Northern tip of Zanzibar.  The party was a huge sausage fest as has been my experience in East Africa.  Anouk got drunk and I started talking to these two Maasi guys as an evasion from the rest of the locals.

Talking to Simon a 24 year old Maasi was really interesting, I learnt that he was on the beach selling jewelery but lives in Arusha where he already had 10 out of the 35 cows he needs for his bride price.  Anouk was talking to Kimosa who was showing him a bracelet  made from lion's skin (they've both had to kill lions to protect their herds) when Anouk went on a tangent about how she didn't believe that they were  Maasi and in fact they were faking it to sell their goods, all this despite their gear, hair styles, stretched ears, etc.  Kimosa thankfully found this very amusing and I left them talking (after explaining to her that she was being retardedly paranoid) until a few minutes later when I learnt that she answered Kimosa's question "do you have a boyfriend" with "no, i have a girlfriend".

Every time I answered I would get renewed props and cheers for my heterosexuality

I'm pretending I can swim, pretty convincing eh?
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I don't know if she didn't realize that you don't find gay lifestyles within the Maasi community of just didn't care but either way she wasn't prepared for the onslaught of questions and turned to me to explain.

Thus I held my very first Homosexuality 101 class to Anouk's great amusement and Simon and Kimosa's curiosity.  Here are some samples from the question period that proceeded my introduction:

Q: So how do two women have sex? A: Well, because in a relationship between two women there are no male body parts they improvise by using both the hands and the mouth.

Beautiful Zanzibar, Anouk was hardcore and swam to this big boat and climbed up with a rope a couple of times
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Q: How do they have babies? A: Two women in love that want to have babies will either adopt or acquire the "seed" from a man which they put inside themselves (this was very amusing for the Maasi)

Q: How do two men have sex? A: Well, two men have sex the same way as a man and a women only, because they don't have the same body as women they use "different body parts".  Here I paused and looked at the Maasis as they performed their calculations quietly and then once realizing what I meant giggled as they discussed it in Swahili to each other.

Mommy and baby Red Colobus monkey's in the Johazani Forest, Zanzibar. They would come so close to us!
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Throughout the entire lesson i was asked at least 18 million times if I liked men or women and if Anouk and I are lovers.  Every time I answered I would get renewed props and cheers for my heterosexuality.  Finally I thought it best to break it down, "in many parts of the world there are men that like women and men that like men and women that like women and women that like men, so

even though Anouk likes women we won't have sex because I like men, but we are still friends", within that I of course mentioned that there are other divisions (or amalgamations) of those 4 "groups" of relationship types but that would be for another lesson.

Monkey flying out of a tree
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All in all it was a very educational evening for the Maasi and myself and very VERY amusing for Nookie :)