From There To Here
Rugare Gomo · 71 min
A gay Black African man who arrived in Australia at 16 with $300 and no citizenship reveals how shedding other people's expectations — and learning to ask for help — became the most radical act of freedom he could choose.
Rugare arrived in Australia at 16 with $300 and no citizenship, fleeing not for education or opportunity but for freedom, a word he didn't yet have for what he needed. Born stateless in the UK to Zimbabwean parents, raised in Zimbabwe where being gay meant danger, he spent years suppressing a part of himself he couldn't name. It took a German friend's direct question in France, followed by repeated approaches from men who saw something he wouldn't admit to himself, before he found the courage to ask the question alone: who am I, really?
What sets Rugare's story apart is not the hardship, though statelessness cost him access to healthcare, education, and a passport, and though arriving in a country with radically different beliefs about family, alcohol, and community felt like landing on another planet. What matters is how he learned to ask for help in a culture that taught him to suffer quietly. He raised over $120,000 for university by asking, and later, one email brought $120,000 for his book. He discovered that when someone says no, it reflects their circumstances, not his worth. He built a community instead of trying to survive alone.
Today, 24 years later, Rugare is a leadership coach and author whose memoir speaks to anyone caught between who they are and who they are expected to be. His message is simple: the only thing you can control is who you say you are. Nobody can legislate that away. When you stop pretending and start being yourself, people respond with far more love than the noise of hate suggests. Australia became the place where he could reclaim all the parts of himself, British, Zimbabwean, Black, and gay, and discover that being more of everything made him stronger.
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