For Anyango, that question mark became the beginning of a journey marked by confusion, stigma, poverty, and years of searching for people who could explain what was happening to her child. Agnes Anyango’s first child was born in Kenya in 1996. She expected the familiar question that follows the arrival of a baby. A boy or a girl?Instead, she was left with a question mark. The uncertainty was not only in her mind. It appeared on the child’s birth card.For Anyango, that question mark became the beginning of a journey marked by confusion, stigma, poverty, and years of searching for people who could explain what was happening to her child.“I was happy to have her. She is my firstborn,” Anyango recalls.As the child grew, Anyango noticed physical characteristics that did not fit the assumptions she had about boys and girls. She sought answers from health workers but says she struggled to get clear information. At one point, she was told the child had a “malformation”.She did not know what that meant.She only knew she had a child who needed care.Her experience captures a question confronting Africa’s intersex movement today: what happens after recognition?Kenya has taken steps that would have been difficult to imagine when Anyango’s child was born.Intersex people were included in the 2019 national census, which recorded 1,524 intersex people. The Children Act 2022 also amended the bir...
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