Pain of growing up with dual sexual identity

• 24-year-old Daniel seeks help, saying he is tired of being taunted by friends

He is already a mature person at the age of 24, but for Daniel Kighala, life has been a nightmare because of a lifelong identity crisis.

He has assumed a male identity, but to date is unsure of his real gender having since childhood lived with both male and female sexual organs.

He has faced cruel taunts most of his life, and his mother and four siblings agonize over how to refer to him; as son or daughter; or brother or sister.

The word sex

“I break into a sweat whenever I hear the word ‘sex’ uttered because what do I tell people. I’m neither male nor female,” he says when he recently visited Mombasa looking for help.

Kighala’s problem was spotted as soon as he was born in Taita, but at the time the medical staff advised his mother to wait until he was a little older for proper diagnosis.

“Since then I have not taken him back to hospital, I have not had time because my husband left me and I had to concentrate on raising children,” said Mrs Vellentina Mkashambi.

His father had by then insisted on a boy’s name, an identity Kighala assumed despite the doubts and confusion as he grew up.

Tears roll down his cheeks as he recounts his lifelong ordeal.

“I really want to know my identity; this situation has left me asking myself why it had to happen to me,” he said.

He was forced to abandon his education at Kighononyi Primary School in standard six because of being taunted by other pupils.

“I could not withstand fellow pupils ridiculing and laughing at me as a result of my condition,” he went on, explaining how he even contemplated suicide.

He does not even have a national identity card, he explains, because he is unable to fill the forms where one is supposed to indicate whether they are “male or female”.

As he grew up with a male identity, he resorted to tightly strapping the breasts that started to protrude from his chest.

Two big rubber bands strapped on his chest make the breasts hardly noticeable when he is in a shirt.

The strapping is painful and has left black scars on his breasts.

Kighala, who earns his living scooping sand at a nearby river in his home area of Taita, explains that both his sexual organs are “working”. He can get an erection but also gets monthly periods.

He is now appealing to well wishers to assist him in any possible way to receive medical care for his condition. He would like the issue of his gender solved once and for all.

His distressed mother said Kighala’s breasts started developing when he reached adolescence.

She’s desperate for help to have Kighala secure medical treatment so that the condition may be rectified.

“I want to know whether my child is female or male,” said Ms Mkashambi, adding that she will accept her child in any gender.

A teacher at a school where Kighala used to attend, Ms Honorinah Mwashighadi, said she got concerned when she heard the boy’s story from the villagers and at the school.

Making fun

“People in the village were making fun out of Kighala’s plight so I decided to help them secure assistance since they come from a poor family,” said Ms Mwashighadi.

“I talked to my brother who agreed to accommodate them in Mombasa where medical help may be available,” said the teacher, who met transport costs for Kighala and his mother from Mtomogoti Sisera area in Taita district.

According to medical experts, Kighala’s condition is rare but not uncommon. Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi has performed surgery on people, including adults, with two sets of sexual organs.

The treatment involves first establishing which sexual identity is dominant or preferred by the patient, and them performing surgery to remove the unwanted organs.

The treatment may also involve a regiment of drugs, hormone treatment, to help repress features of the unwanted identity, and enhance the required features, such as beards and deep voice for men and breasts for women.