It was a Sunday afternoon in early January when congregants streamed into the Cosmopolitan Affirming Church (CAC), Nairobi’s only LGBT-inclusive church, for a service that would be different from the usual.
“As a body of faith, we cannot close our eyes to what’s happening around us,” said Caroline Omolo, one of the lead pastors of the church. “Edwin Chiloba was one of us.”
Edwin Kiprotich Chiloba, a gay rights activist, fashion designer and model, was found dead on 3 January 2023. Police said he had been strangled and his body stuffed in a metal box, before being dumped by Kipkenyo-Hurlingham road in Kenya’s Rift Valley area. Eight days later, government pathologist Johansen Oduor told journalists a post-mortem examination had found Chiloba died of asphyxia, with socks stuffed in his mouth and a piece of his jeans tied around his nose and mouth.
