What Does PRIDE Mean To You? (My Birthday Giveaway)

What Does PRIDE Mean To You? (My Birthday Giveaway)

Getting older has a way of making one less energetic, less adventurous, more focused on what life is about with sober reflections. I came from a very humble ground, grew up in my grandmother’s house and was taught early in life the benefits of discipline, contentment and hard work.

Life is dynamic; sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are sad. There’s no plateau to the circumstances we go through while living. However, whatever else may come our way, especially as individuals of a marginalized group, we should never give up. Through discrimination, healthcare trials and antigay crimes targeted at us in Nigeria, we should always endeavour to get through them stronger than we were before.

My birthday is coming up, and as a testament of my appreciation of my life already lived, I would like to give something to my community.

I have 80 thousand naira (N 80, 000) and I want four KDians to be recipients of the money. I thought long and hard about what structure to follow to enable the fair dispensation of this money, and because we are in the spirit of Pride and Kito Diaries is after all a place where we tell our stories, I figured: why not to he or she who has the best story to tell about what Pride means to him/her?

So, here it is.

Write a personal essay of not more than 500 words on what Pride means to you. It can be a story about something in your life or an abstract thought or a determination for the future. Stories will be judged on the basis of creativity and depth, on the strength of your expression, on the power of the story you want us to believe in.

And the writers of the four best stories will each win a twenty thousand-naira (N 20, 000) cash prize.

Send your entries to kitodiaries@gmail.com. (I want to make a special plea for the ladies to participate in this. I would love to see a lesbian win a prize).

Deadline for submissions is July 13 2019.

A week after, the winning stories will be posted, and their winners will receive their prize.

In the spirit of owning our narrative, may the best stories win.

Written by Sim

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11 Comments

  1. David
    July 01, 08:22 Reply

    Great!.. My Birthday is on the 8th of July

  2. Mandy
    July 01, 08:26 Reply

    Damn, Sim!!! This is impressive. What a way to give back to the community.

  3. demi
    July 01, 09:43 Reply

    leggooo!!! this is a nice idea, might just try my luck… hehehehe

  4. James
    July 01, 09:54 Reply

    I will try my luck as well ?. Great idea

  5. J
    July 01, 10:42 Reply

    Maybe he wants to be the gay president of the Nigerian gay community ?. There’s no gay pride in Nigeria, nothing to celebrate. We could write essays on how to be less promiscuous, how to be more self accepting, how to cope with the various STDs dealing with us and how to be contented and happy in a stable gay loving relationships. With that we can be able to envision what pride is all about.

    • Pink Panther
      July 01, 13:52 Reply

      You think gay pride is just about marching and pride parades?

    • Delle
      July 01, 18:43 Reply

      Why not channel all this energy into your piece and see if it makes the cut? We don’t want you projecting falsehood.

      And that gay president remark. Was that supposed to be a jab because it’ll be a pretty stupid one if it was

  6. mike
    July 05, 01:07 Reply

    20k, 500 words 13th July.

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