Gay writer brings hope amid Africa clampdown In the past week, globally renowned Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina has received promises of bottles of whisky, flamboyant new shirts, party invitations and strangers" hearts. It is his unexpected reward for becoming the most prominent African to come out as homosexual in a continent passing increasingly repressive anti-gay laws. "It's been incredible," says the 43-year-old of the reception to "I am a homosexual, Mum," a piece he wrote in the early hours of his birthday a week ago as a "lost chapter" omitted from his 2011 memoir. "The satisfying feeling is to be part of a search of love and support," he says during a three-hour conversation in which he never loses his ecstatic air. I'm in that eat-the-world mood, so I have a lot of energy. His timing could not be braver. Lawmakers in Uganda and Nigeria have unleashed a renewed campaign against homosexuals in recent months, "Nigeria expanding it in almost a Nazi German way," he says, appalling western aid donors and forcing many gay people ever deeper into the closet. But Mr Wainaina, a prizewinning author and polemicist, this week burst out of the closet loudly. His hair is styled in a turquoise and pink short mop, matched with a turquoise jumper over a pink shirt. "I have a pink shirt for a reason today - because I'm a gay man in a pink shirt," he shrugs, smiling. In his poignant and deeply personal piece, written years after both parents died, Mr Wainaina reveals he knew he was gay at five years" old. But he had no sexual contact with a man until he was 34, and for years battled a feeling that comes "like a bout of malaria and leaves me shaken for days, and confused for months." He only told friends he was gay four years ago. "For twenty-something years, I even hug men awkwardly," he wrote. Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya, but arrests are rare and large cities have a thriving underground gay scene. Mr Wainaina expects no state backlash against him and enjoys Kenya's "more cosmopolitan population," although this week he says he feels "a bit vulnerable" walking down the street but is sure "that will go away." The experience of being gay varies across the continent. Next month, a new book from a regional publishing house, Invisible, will chart experiences from gay Kenyans who live below the radar. Neela Ghoshal at Human Rights Watch says class plays a major role: "There are people who are afraid when they take public transport; if you're more upper class you're not exposed in the same way," she says. Mr Wainaina agrees: "Nothing really [bad] happened to me - I've had a blissful middle class life with the usual hiccups of people." In Uganda, however, rights campaigners speak of gay men being frogmarched to ATM machines to bribe police not to arrest them. Blackmail is also common. In Nigeria, Mr Wainaina says friends scared of arrest or violent attack hide behind anonymous WhatsApp identities or cower in celibacy. It's not just [the threat of] prison it's the innuendo, what does it do to people's sense of themselves. It's not a life of dignity," he says. You cannot do that to gays and lesbians; they are real things. Ms Ghoshal believes that the coming out of such an influential a figure will shift public understanding. "It's so powerful that he talks about developing an awareness as a young child," she says. Mr Wainaina's coming out, described not only in his writing but also in six videos recorded and released this week, does much more than make a claim for sexual freedom and equality. The writer is also assaulting the foundations that underpin many unaccountable African states. "There's something about the younger generation which may be homophobic, but also distrusts bulls**t," he says, characterising Uganda president Yoweri Museveni, who last week said women become lesbians because they are sex-starved, as "a buffoon." "Africa is changing extremely fast," says Mr Wainaina, who in 2005 delivered a withering satirical essay, "How to Write About Africa," that exposed postcolonial clichés. He prefers to use the phrase "the African Hurricane" to describe the continent's dynamic extremes - the brash success of Nigeria's "Nollywood" film industry, the horrors of terrorist attacks, growing middle class consumption and efforts to transform the continent through new roads and railways. He discusses all this jumping between themes of colonialism, church, state and sexuality. "Victorian ideas haven't been updated . . . and there's no more Victorian word than "sodomy,"" he says, referring to the term used in many sexuality laws in Africa's former British colonies. He argues that rather than reflecting rising conservative values, the campaign against homosexuality is more about ailing leaders "playing politics." Despite his public declaration Mr Wainaina may not yet be prepared for his sudden propulsion as de facto gay ambassador on the continent. "It's not like I want to be one of those installations - like I make myself a shark in formaldehyde, I'm not really thinking like that," he laughs. But he is nevertheless determined to find a way to visit Nigeria, which he loves and where for the past eight years he has taught a prestigious annual writers" workshop. "The idea that now that I've come out I can't go [to Nigeria], that kind of makes me feel stubborn and mischievous," he says. You've got to try, let's see.