Who Stella Nyanzi is away from Facebook

In the recent months, Facebook posts of Dr Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow at Makerere University, have captured the attention of many social media users with their sexual innuendo.
While a section of individuals have come out to condemn her use of erotic language, Nyanzi’s fans have endlessly cheered her on by liking several Facebook posts and in the end attracted thousands of likes.
Nyanzi in her Facebook profile regards herself as a woman who loudly speaks her mind based on banal experiences of life. She is followed by more than 141,000 people.
Her immense popularity on social media is without a questionable doubt. But some wonder who Nyanzi is away from Facebook. How is she at home?
On April 7, I sought out the 43-year-old for answers. It was a Friday and we met at 3pm, a few hours before her lecture on menstruation and sanitary pads at Mackinnon Suites Hotel in Kampala.
Initially, the plan was to spend a day with her but this arrangement was changed because of the numerous meetings that kept coming up during the course of the day. In the end, we opted for a fixed appointment.
At the stipulated time, I found Nyanzi at a restaurant in Bugolobi, a Kampala suburb. She was sited at a dining table with two other people. Knowing who she was, I walked over and introduced myself.
Dressed in her usual signature look, a kitenge with a head wrap tied around her dreadlocks, she ushered me to an empty seat next to hers before introducing the other two women who included Sheila Nyanzi, her younger sister.
“You found us ordering lunch,” the research fellow mentioned, adding, “You should order something as well.”
I turned down the lunch offer after reasoning that I had already had mine back at office.
Playfully, she reached out for her portable mug, offering me the coffee inside it. As I hesitantly reached out for it, she burst into small fits of laughter and joked, “You fear poison?”
In the end, I ordered for a bottle of water. Nyanzi got chatty as they waited for their food.
Her demeanour during the interview was inconsistent. There were moments she would be calm, cool and collected talking in a low tone before suddenly bursting into fits of laughter. Then, there were occasions she raised her voice in a high pitched tone while stressing certain points. She was unpredictable.
“I am in my periods (menstruation),” she mentioned while pointing at prescriptions on the table.
She then quickly changed the topic.
“My daughter should meet you, away from the journalist, but more of the person. You know, she was fat and short like me and then something happened and she suddenly became very tall. Her father is a very tall handsome guy,” Nyanzi said with a smile.
Her daughter is 12-years-old while the twins are nine-year-old boys.
In one of her previous Facebook posts where she writes about the children’s father, part of it reads:
“My sons have never seen their father. Not because they are blind or anything like that, but because we parted ways after he impregnated me. He paid for the air tickets from Heathrow (airport in the United Kingdom) to Entebbe, those many years ago.”
She continues, “At the airport, our daughter did not want to let go of her father’s hands. She cried and clung onto his legs as if she knew intuitively that this farewell was forever; well for almost a decade.”
Since then, she has raised the children singlehandedly.
The food finally arrived. Nyanzi had ordered mushroom and fish. Just as she had started eating, she called a waitress and showed her a strip of long hair in the food.
“Why is there a Muzungu (White’s) hair inside my food? What part of the body is it coming from? The head? The armpits? The legs?”
The waitress looked shaken and was forced to apologise. Nyanzi discarded the hair and continued eating the food. Although the other two remained quiet, she would tease them from time to time to say a word.
Instead, they ignored Nyanzi forcing her to make a joke, saying, “I was born mad… I was born high…drank… prhhhhh…a loose cannon…I was born a bullet,” she said in an assertive voice before bursting into laughter.
“I do not listen and that is why I am in trouble with everyone,” she added.
The other two seemingly uninterested at the jokes continued ignoring her.

On using Facebook
“Social media is for venting out my thoughts instead of storing them,” Nyanzi stated.
“Writing allows people present specific voices. Right? Facebook allows me open up myself and empty stuff from my head,” she said, adding, “I let it out…let it out…let it out.”
As regards to the sexual language incorporated in some of her posts, she responds, “Vulgar? Obscene? How can you say a vagina is vulgar? It is the sweetest instrument of joy.”
“Anybody who thinks that a writer is what they write has not been around many writers,” she emphasised, adding, “Some of the writers of the sanest pieces are suicidal mental cases. I have read works written by men who are high and jumping to reggae in a bar that is full of smoke.”
The mother-of-three acknowledges that her posts are a mixture of real life experiences and fiction.
“It could simply be that I am thinking and speaking to myself. So when I make posts with questions such as how dare she say that? Sometimes I am not asking people but rather asking myself,” she said.
Some of Nyanzi’s Facebook posts mention of her late parents who passed away during her adulthood years.
“When they died, I needed answers. I was grieving. Social media became a place of solace,” she said.
Regarding the question when did she join Facebook?
“I do not know. It’s becoming a constant painful question which I have refused to find an answer for.”
Nyanzi draws her inspiration from reading mostly fantasy literature, poetry and Buganda scholarly works.

Life at home
Before last week’s arrest, Nyanzi revealed that unknown people were trailing her movements back at her residential home, a three bed-roomed flat in Kyanja, a Kampala suburb.
“Those guys are also trying to rent an apartment within the same flat so that they can monitor, tap, hit, kill, who knows?” she said.
On whether she was worried for her safety, she responded, “I don’t care. I am mostly concerned for my children who have been exposed.”
At this point, Sheila Nyanzi added her voice, saying, “We are definitely worried as a family because of what is going on but again, we won’t be intimidated.” she says.
Back at home, the medical anthropologist with a doctorate degree obtained from the University of London in 2009, says, “I hate cooking. I pay someone to do that. I do not wash. I do not make beds.”
Despite of the dislikes, giving a formal education to her children remains one of Nyanzi’s top priorities.
Unlike her sons, Nyanzi’s daughter seems to be following in her footsteps.
“She has a journal where she writes every day. My twin sons refused to write. One draws while the other has refused to do either writing or drawing,” she said.
If it was not the children inspiring her to get up early and take them to school, it was her work at Makerere University where she worked as a research fellow before her first suspension earlier this month.
“But that life was taken out of me. So what is a day in a life without Makerere?”
At home, during her free time, Nyanzi said, “I would yell at my sister who sleeps a few blocks from me and we would have a conversation through open widows.”
For fun, she enjoys dancing and sleeping in bed.
“Imagine the luxury of being in bed the whole day without the kids or maid around the house,” she said.
On what her favourite food is? She said, “I enjoy sweet things, the chocolates and the fudge. Also, I love eating greasy fatty foods many people classify as unhealthy. I do not like fruits or any green stuff.”

Good girl gone bad?
One of Nyanzi’s former schoolmates at Gayaza High School who preferred anonymity says the research fellow was nothing like the character she is today.
“She was humble and quiet as well as brilliant,” the former classmate said.
Upon asking her if this was the kind of person she was back in the day, Nyanzi responded in a sharp commanding voice, basiiru (such people are stupid).
On April 10, she was charged with two counts of cyber harassment and offensive communication after allegations of using social media platforms to offend President Museveni. Nyanzi denied the charges.

Sister speaks out

Stella is 10 years older than I. Our late parents raised us in a modest, middleclass family. Since they had deep Christian roots, they ensured that we read the Bible and prayed every day. Stella is an artiste, a superb one at that. She is a pianist, guitarist and has the talent to play other instruments as well.
Back then, she used to be a worship leader and do faith themed rallies. Most probably, this was a stage for her to do all her activism. She has not come out of nowhere as many people think.
People think Stella is a sexual pervert. What they do not know is that she is a typical Gayaza girl who just said that she will use her education to help other people and question systems.
When you meet people like Stella who have studied a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD), they take their questioning to a level higher. She has spent more than 20 years specialising and majoring in reproductive and sexuality health. She has done publications, lectures, among other things.
Those are her ideologies and tools. Why do we allow everybody else to do their thing but not allow this sexual anthropologist do hers?
Stella is a whole being. If you want fire, she will be able to step in that space. If it’s time to pray, my sister will know that she is the lesser being between her and God. Stella changes her heart according to circumstances.
We are definitely worried as a family because of what is going on but again, we won’t be intimidated,” says Sheila Nyanzi, Stella’s sister.