As the el­dest grand­child, paint­ing his grand­moth­er's nails and help­ing her wrap her sari to go out be­came a nor­mal part of Rudolph "Rudy" Hanamji's child­hood. Hanamji, the co-chair and co-founder of PrideTT felt just as com­fort­able mak­ing and fly­ing kites with his grand­fa­ther. Sur­round­ed by lov­ing par­ents and oth­er close fam­i­ly mem­bers, he went about his child­hood rou­tine un­fet­tered and care­free. When his teenage years struck, he would find it dif­fi­cult to come to terms with how the world would re­spond to him.

"I read a lot and knew that the word "ho­mo­sex­u­al" de­scribed me. I knew that that word is what I was. What I didn't know un­til I went to (sec­ondary) school is ex­act­ly how prej­u­diced peo­ple were about ho­mo­sex­u­als be­cause I would have grown up in a bub­ble," Hanamji re­called dur­ing a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view.

He was a teen at­tend­ing a pres­ti­gious all-boys sec­ondary school when the re­al­i­sa­tion set in that un­like many of his peers, he was not in­ter­est­ed in the op­po­site sex. In a sea of ado­les­cents who had strict no­tions of how a male should speak and act, he strug­gled to ne­go­ti­ate his iden­ti­ty and of­ten felt alien­at­ed.

"Any­thing that was not seen as the ide­al mas­cu­line was bul­lied. For me, it was the first time in my life that I was deal­ing with feel­ing that I did not be­long. The first time that I felt judged; that I felt some­times I was not good enough," he said.

Find­ing sup­port in some of his class­mates, who gen­uine­ly knew him, and in teach­ers, he gained the courage to tell them that he was gay. His per­son­al­i­ty and de­ter­mi­na­tion to be him­self even­tu­al­ly earned him pop­u­lar­i­ty to­wards the fi­nal years of his school tenure as he be­came head of sev­er­al groups and was elect­ed to lead­ing roles.

Be­ing open about who he was gave Hanamji a sense of free­dom and em­pow­er­ment and he re­solved to help oth­ers who would have to walk a sim­i­lar road. At 15, he had al­ready start­ed his ac­tivism, work­ing with LGBTQ+ ac­tivist and pub­lish­er of "Free Fo­rum", De­nis James, and con­tin­ued through uni­ver­si­ty. Fund­ed by UN­AIDS, the mag­a­zine ex­plored the cul­ture of gay men and pro­mot­ed HIV ed­u­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion.

Hanamji dropped off be­ing vo­cal for sev­er­al years, but when gay rights ac­tivist Ja­son Jones chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Sec­tions 13 and 16 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act which pro­hib­it­ed con­sen­su­al sex­u­al re­la­tions be­tween adults of the same sex in Feb­ru­ary 2017, Hanamji was ap­proached to help mo­bilise sup­port the fol­low­ing year.

"I re­alised there was frag­men­ta­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty, a lack of re­sources, some ap­a­thy and fa­tigue. Peo­ple were tired af­ter fight­ing these bat­tles for so many years. I de­cid­ed I would re-en­ter the space."

Jones won the case in April 2018 and for the first time, the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty in this coun­try as­sem­bled in large num­bers pub­licly. Hanamji re­called that ac­tivist Sharon Mot­t­ley who was among them sug­gest­ed hav­ing a lo­cal pa­rade, sim­i­lar to those in North Amer­i­ca. By June that same year, the non-prof­it, PrideTT was born and en­list­ed NGOs, the arts com­mu­ni­ty, women's groups and oth­er al­lies to host their first cel­e­bra­tions.

Hanamji has had to deal with crit­i­cism for speak­ing up. How­ev­er, apart from be­ing spat on once and re­ceiv­ing death threats from mem­bers of re­li­gious groups as the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty cel­e­brat­ed their vic­to­ry out­side the High Court in 2018, the mar­ket­ing, e-com­merce and in­no­va­tion pro­fes­sion­al said he has nev­er en­coun­tered the lev­el of dis­crim­i­na­tion that many of his peers had. Ad­mit­ting that while some may think his "priv­i­leged" up­bring­ing and life, in gen­er­al, dis­qual­i­fy him from be­ing a spokesper­son for their re­al­i­ty, he felt he could still play an im­por­tant role.

"There are peo­ple who have been beat­en up, put out of their homes. The land­lord would say: get out of here be­cause you're gay. They can't stand up and say it for them­selves, so some­body has to talk about it. I ac­cept that du­ty."

As a co-chair of PrideTT along­side Eva Chavez and Xoë Saz­zle, and aid­ed by a 21-mem­ber com­mit­tee this year, Hanamji is charged with co­or­di­nat­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of month-long ac­tiv­i­ties for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty in T&T un­der the theme, "POWHER". He said this year's theme was about em­pow­er­ing and pro­tect­ing women and by ex­ten­sion, those that are mar­gin­alised and op­pressed, es­pe­cial­ly in the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, as there had al­ways been an in­ter­sec­tion­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween the strug­gles of both groups.

Members of the LGBTQ+ community at PrideTT cookout

"This year, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en what has been hap­pen­ing as re­port­ed by the news­pa­per up to a few days ago, women have con­tin­ued to be vic­tims of vi­o­lence and in­equity in so­ci­ety. Part of the prob­lem that faces the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty vis-à-vis ho­mo­pho­bia is as a re­sult of the pa­tri­archy and misog­y­ny be­cause, in a so­ci­ety that is ma­cho-based like ours, any­thing that is seen as 'fem­i­nine' is less than," he said.

The month-long cel­e­bra­tion runs vir­tu­al­ly this year from June 25 to Ju­ly 25 and in­cludes the an­nu­al film fes­ti­val and Iere Art ex­hib­it. Hanamji said in­stead of the com­mem­o­ra­tive gath­er­ing in front of the Par­lia­ment build­ing on the first Fri­day to mark the Ja­son Jones case rul­ing, be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, a com­mu­ni­ty needs as­sess­ment with just over 200 hun­dred par­tic­i­pants was sent to Par­lia­ment and me­dia hous­es.

In it, 89.5 per cent of re­spon­dents said they want­ed open­ly-iden­ti­fied LGBTQ+ gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, while is­sues of self-harm and men­tal health (69.6 per cent), in­clud­ing "sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion" in the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act (69.6 per cent), and vi­o­lence pro­tec­tion and jus­tice (68.2 per cent) were most im­por­tant to them.

PrideTT al­so hopes to as­sist the MOH in or­gan­is­ing a vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve via so­cial me­dia and gen­er­al net­work­ing and high­light women's health and gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

Since PrideTT's in­cep­tion, the com­mu­ni­ty has en­joyed in­creased vis­i­bil­i­ty and a greater sense of be­long­ing in the so­ci­ety, Hanamji said. Not­ing ef­forts by Sco­tia­bank to align their hu­man re­sources poli­cies with eq­ui­ty and di­ver­si­ty, he said his or­gan­i­sa­tion had al­so seen a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the cor­po­rate so­ci­ety.

But ac­cord­ing to Hanamji, the or­gan­i­sa­tion's biggest re­ward has been sav­ing lives.

"We've ac­tu­al­ly been able to save lives. Peo­ple have writ­ten and told us that be­cause of PrideTT's ef­forts, they've made de­ci­sions not to harm them­selves or that they've found the strength to stand up against bul­lies etc. I al­ways say: if you save one life, all of this work would be worth it."

When it came to the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, Hanamji said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was aware of three mur­ders with­in the last year and six re­quests for help from young peo­ple who have been put out of their homes or lost their jobs.

Peo­ple reach out via so­cial me­dia, es­pe­cial­ly What­sApp, and al­so con­tact in­fo@pridett.com for ad­vice or help, he said.

An­oth­er achieve­ment has been the launch of a PrideTT mo­bile app with a hot­line for those in need of emer­gency as­sis­tance. De­signed by Hanamji's life part­ner, Kei­ta Smith, the app al­so fea­tures re­sources about men­tal health, sui­cide pre­ven­tion and ac­tiv­i­ties of PrideTT and can be down­loaded by any­one.

Al­though there is still a long way to go, Hanamji felt the pan­dem­ic had re­duced some of the prej­u­dice against gays in so­ci­ety.

"I think in COVID-19 times, peo­ple have put away some of their bi­as­es for the mo­ment and are sim­ply try­ing to sur­vive. Wher­ev­er that sup­port comes from–they're not ask­ing if the doc­tor is gay or the nurse–they just want to sur­vive. I think COVID-19 has forced peo­ple to re­flect on what is re­al­ly im­por­tant and not what di­vides us. The pan­dem­ic has forced us to re­alise that we are all in this to­geth­er," he said.

Rudolph "Rudy" Hanamji

Q&A with Rudy Hanamji

You said your par­ents were very sup­port­ive. When they found out you were gay, how did that con­ver­sa­tion go? Or was it some­thing that un­fold­ed grad­u­al­ly?

There's a joke in our com­mu­ni­ty that moth­ers al­ways know. That's al­ways true. My moth­er, in par­tic­u­lar, my ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly, I think peo­ple al­ways knew. There was nev­er any feel­ing from my fam­i­ly that we as chil­dren were any­thing but loved. I didn't have to come out. Over the years, I would in­tro­duce them to my friends and part­ners.

What is PrideTT's mis­sion?

It's very sim­ple. The mis­sion is to high­light the pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion of LGBTQ+ peo­ple to Trinidad and To­ba­go's de­vel­op­ment (names called). There are count­less peo­ple who have con­tributed and con­tin­ue to con­tribute to our coun­try, but they are not al­ways al­lowed to live in their true iden­ti­ty. So Pride's role, un­like the oth­er NGOs who have very spe­cif­ic fo­cal points– some deal with HIV, some with men­tal well­ness, oth­ers with leg­isla­tive change–Pride's role is re­al­ly to cre­ate an um­brel­la plat­form so that every is­sue that im­pacts the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty is fea­tured with­in this pe­ri­od of time.

What, in gen­er­al, does PrideTT cel­e­brate?

We are cel­e­brat­ing the fact that many of us are still here while re­mem­ber­ing the peo­ple that we have lost due to vi­o­lence and them tak­ing their own lives; sur­vival and life and the pow­er to stand up and use your voice to make a dif­fer­ence; a bet­ter coun­try.

Tell me a bit about some of the ad­ver­si­ty PrideTT has faced thus far and some of the progress it may have made.

There is still ad­ver­si­ty. There is still prej­u­dice. Peo­ple are still be­ing beat­en up. Peo­ple are still be­ing put out of their homes. We got a call from a young man two weeks ago. His fam­i­ly put him out of the house and we were able to get some sup­port for him. So these things are still hap­pen­ing. Peo­ple are still tak­ing their own lives as well. We'll get a re­port here and there.

How­ev­er–be­cause at the end of Pride we run a sur­vey to ask what was the ben­e­fit to you–from 2018 to last year when we look at the da­ta, there has been over­whelm­ing sup­port for the sim­ple rea­son that peo­ple feel more wel­come in T&T. They see there is no di­rect vi­o­lence dur­ing PrideTT cel­e­bra­tions and the au­thor­i­ties have sup­port­ed where they can. For the last few years, they are see­ing that there is gen­er­al ac­cep­tance and gen­er­al safe­ty, at least when there are num­bers of us to­geth­er. When peo­ple feel safer in their home coun­try, that al­lows them to be­gin liv­ing their true lives and that con­tin­ues to add to the dis­cus­sion and change opin­ions.

What would you say to those who may say the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty is be­com­ing too loud, too vis­i­ble...or are try­ing to im­pose them­selves on oth­ers?

Re­li­gion teach­es us that when you see wrong, you must not on­ly pray about it, you must act and speak against it and what we are ac­tu­al­ly do­ing is stand­ing up against op­pres­sion and loss of life. We are stand­ing up against the state or pri­vate sec­tor or in­di­vid­u­als op­press­ing us and re­mov­ing ac­cess to our rights. There was a time when peo­ple told in­den­tured labour­ers, they told slaves, women, they even tried to tell chil­dren: don't be heard. We can­not stay qui­et...and how loud is too loud when all you're ask­ing for is to be seen as an equal cit­i­zen in your own coun­try.