Hello friends!

Thank you for taking valuable time out of your busy day to consider the pressing issues at hand. Due to a community bereavement, Harry sadly didn’t have time to assign a fellow refugee for writing this piece, so I have stepped in to fill the gap.

My name is Kat and I’m a bisexual (she/they) from Greater Manchester in the UK.
There are many topics I could have chosen as the focus of this article. The rates of gender based violence against bisexual women. Our difficulties in dating. Our horrendous UK unemployment rates. These are the sources of personal experience I would be able to offer knowledgeable commentary on. But this article isn’t really about me. I could also not, for instance, comment on the lived experiences of bisexual refugees globally who are often denied an escape route due to our unrealistic purported capacity to “blend in” with heteronormative ideals.

However, I DID recently discover how difficult life can be without a working toilet for EVEN A FEW HOURS when another member of my household blocked ours recently. I discovered this only when trying to answer the call of nature, so as you can imagine, my desperation intensified as I continued the gruesome, arduous repair.The most devastating part was not finding myself elbow-deep in human waste as my efforts continued. It wasn’t even carrying buckets of sewage downstairs through my house to the drains outside as I prayed not to spill any on the unmovable carpets, resulting in a 3 hour scrubbing job which would have aggravated my carpal tunnel syndrome. No: my greatest hardship was worrying about contamination and my family’s health. Effects can include cholera, typhoid, E.coli, diptheria. The list is endless. These preventable diseases have resulted in countless tragedies worldwide.

Can any of you (who like myself are lucky enough to live in a home with running water and usually adequate sanitation) begin to imagine the strain of living this way on a daily basis? Not for a few hours, but weeks or months? Yet this is exactly how we expect the refugees of Gorom in Juba to cope.
For only a few hundred quid, an ordinary loo to serve their community can be built. A few kind individuals have brought our total up to 40. That means we’re one-fifth of the way there! Even as little as a tenner from each of you could make a huge difference.

Let’s see the global queer community pull together and have their backs. Because this is what family (chosen or otherwise) should always be about.