‘Kivuli & Nuru: The Afrodisiacs Collection’ —African erotic stories delving deep into the queer world of desire

The respect of elders and those around you is so deeply entrenched in African culture that it’s often hard for Africans to openly speak about sex or anything about sexuality without being chastised for being crass.

The situation is far worse if you’re an African that identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ).

“The situation of queer people around the continent is multifaceted; it is incredibly painful in some spaces and in others incredibly powerful,” said Tiffany Mugo.

Together with Siphumeze Khundayi, Mugo is the co-founder of HOLAAfrica, a Pan-Africanist digital platform that focuses on sex and sexuality in Africa.

This past Sunday, on Africa Day, HOLAAfrica! launched Kivuli & Nuru: The Afrodisiacs Collection. It is a collection of African erotic stories that delve deep into the world of desire.

The albums are described as a celebration of LGBTQ+ intimacies in their own words and voices.

In a truly African way, the first episode opened with a prayer from Mpho Andrea Tutu van Furth, aptly titled A Prayer for Good Sex.

“Good sex inspires me because good sex is the wish that I have as a mother for my children. It is the hope that I have as a priest for my congregation. It is the desire that I have as a woman for myself, it is the prayer that I have as an African, for every person on our continent,” Tutu van Furth is heard in her prayer.

Tutu van Furth is the daughter of revered political activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

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Complexities of LGBTQ+ in Africa

Mugo speaks about the complexities faced by the LGBTQ+ community on the continent, saying it’s full of ‘hard times and full of joy’.

“The thing about the situation of queer people on the continent is it is not any one thing because even in the darkest moments you will find such fun and chaos and delicious goodness. This is part of what the work we do focuses on, a more holistic idea of what it means to be LGBTQ+ on the continent,” Mugo shares.

She adds: “What is happening in those private moments, those mundane moments, those moments where the whole world doesn’t seem to be against you. What does it mean to exist in your full glory?”

HOLAAfrica has taken its work around the world, including to global TED Talk stages.

Mugo admits that it’s not all rainbows and sunshine as a queer on the continent and says Africa still has a long way to go before reaching the proverbial promise land.

“In a lot of cases, queer people’s intimate lives have been used against them, making them seem dark and degenerate. Because so little is known about queer sex (outside of porn) it can be shaped into whatever those who weaponise it want it to be.”

She says queer sex is as intimate, messy, beautiful, confusing and magical as heterosexual sex. “It’s no different.”

“It is not always easy to be queer and African, but it is always magical. Yes, there is a long way to go, but what must be celebrated is how far rights have come,” she said.

Kivuli and Nuru mean ‘shadow’ and ‘light’ in Kiswahili, and Mugo says they chose these names to represent the light and dark aspects of sex, intimacy, and sexuality on the continent.

“If one wants to see how far we have to go, we can look to Kivuli, what is still lurking in the shadows; the things people can’t express or explore,” she said.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and Mugo says that is what Nuru brings.

“These are stories of being able to bring their desires to the light and be who they want to be. No matter how you engage with your sexuality, there is always more to learn and unpack and engage with, but we have also come so far in a number of ways.”

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The episodes

There are 30 episodes of Kivuli & Nuru in the collection, which vary in length and titles.

“The albums are explorations into the different ways we love and lust, in both covert and open ways. Featuring stories from Lagos to Nairobi, from Cape Town to Cairo, The Afrodisiacs Collection takes you on an audio journey through tales of immortality, coming home, gyrating in nightclubs, or tempting daytime trysts in the middle of an afternoon,” shared Mugo.

In one episode, titled Why is There Never Foreplay in the Public Bathrooms written by Ghanaian author Kobby Ben Ben, the listener gets to be a fly on the wall in a public lavatory in Ghana during an intimate encounter between two lovers.

“During public sex, foreplay isn’t a forgotten formality. Rather, it’s elusive, measured by infinitesimal fractions of a second,” says the narrator in the episode, Anthony Oluoch.

“…or just plainly edited out just to make for a racier porn clip.”

The moans and grunts of pleasure give the episodes a strong sense of reality. So real that a minor listening to this collection of stories would be grounded for at least a year.

“Everything is delightful and pleasurable, even the darker stories, because it is erotica,” said Mugo.

“However, if you want to really zero in on the stories about threesomes, always delight, namely Ghosts of Threesomes Past, and It takes 3. But all of the stories will bring a hint of deliciousness.”

In the heat of all the pleasure in the stories, Mugo says that at the core of it is education.

“Stories have always been the biggest way to teach people about things, and in terms of sex and sexuality, these will do that. The stories will bring you into a world of sexuality that informs you through storytelling.”

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