Life as a transgender athlete in Uganda is a dangerous proposition: the heavily Christian country is one of the world’s most homophobic. For Jay Mulucha and Williams Apako, of the Magic Stormers, it’s a reality they have come to terms with together, as a team

On a black tarmac court in Uganda, Jay Mulucha dribbled the ball between his legs as he surveyed the chaos around him. The 5ft 2in point guard, his eyes up, concentrated on knowing where to be and to what to do, where each player on the court was and where the danger lie. But everything was all wrong. No one seemed to be in the proper place. A whistle blew.

Jay picked up the ball and joined teammate Williams Apako in the huddle as the coach re-explained the play. Jay and Williams are players on the Magic Stormers, a women’s basketball team in the Federation of Uganda Basketball Association (Fuba). Jay and Williams also identify as transgender men in one of the world’s most homophobic countries. And much as we like to think of sports as a refuge, their story is a bit more complicated than that.

Basketball was introduced to Uganda by American Peace Corps volunteers in the sixties. The president of Fuba estimates 1 million of Uganda’s 36 million people play the game. Still, football is the main game in Uganda, with the upstart Fuba league just emerging.

When Jay began playing basketball as a teenager, for example, there was no court at his boarding school. The boys would play on netball pitches at night, and Jay would play among them. “I was the only person born biologically female who liked basketball at that school,” Jay said, “and I was the only one with a ball at that time.”

Jay loved the game because of the teamwork, the dance of the players as they weave and interlock on the court. Each play was a puzzle to be solved. Jay would watch basketball games on DVDs, marveling at Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Further inspiration included his older sister and brother, who played ball in high school league.

But Jay was also grappling with his identity. It was a long process, Jay said, and he struggled alone, until a friend introduced him to Uganda’s LGBT kuchu community. “I got to know I belonged to somewhere and that there were people just like me in this world,” Jay said. “I wasn’t alone.”

This, however, is a dangerous proposition in Uganda. The heavily Christian nation, like many former British African colonies, has long had anti-gay laws, including the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014, known by Western media as the “Kill the Gays bill”. At least 500,000 gay people live in Uganda, according to the BBC, but many Ugandans understand homosexuality only through what they’ve learned from religious leaders.

So when Jay came out in 2010, his family rejected him. Even his older brother and older sister, who had been such an inspiration on the court, turned their backs on him. “Since the whole town found out, wherever I go, people feel threatened when I was in the company of their women,” Jay said, “and even warned me off as if I were some kind of alien.”

Jay found refuge on the court, with the Magic Stormers. There, he met Williams Apako, another queer basketball player. Williams, a 5ft 6in small forward on the team, looked up to not only LeBron James, but transgender heroes like Gabrielle Ludwig and the basketball player Kye Allums.

The two formed a bond on the team, which had other LGBT members on it, people in the kuchu community who could understand and trust each other. “We are being discriminated,” Jay said, “but for us we are lucky at least to have a team, a basketball team who can help each other out.”

But whispers grew about the team. Uganda is a country where tabloids and radio stations publicly out people, and whispers can be dangerous. Whispers, Jay said, led to his firing as a high school referee in 2014. They had told him they suspected him of being gay and favoring a female student. Players on the Magic Stormers wondered if the whispers biased referees and sponsors against them.

But sometimes the discrimination was more obvious. Players on other teams would advise rookies not to join the Magic Stormers, and during games would point at them, call them names. They would say: “Don’t touch me, don’t even come close to me, we don’t want to touch a gay person.”

Jay remembers the urgent phone call he got one night last season. Williams had been assaulted. Jay rushed to the clinic where Williams had been taken. Williams’s eye was gashed and swelling, his arms and legs bruised. And he was crying.

The Magic Stormers had had a game earlier that night. Normally, the Magic Stormers go home after games, but Williams had stayed to watch the remaining games alone. The rowdy crowd began pointing fingers at him, yelling at him, hitting him. “They said, ‘We will rape you, we will teach you how to be a woman,’” Williams said.

After the beating, Williams stayed in treatment for a month. He was scared to come back to the team, back to the sport he loved. Additionally, the 2014 passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act left him without a job. Only after much cajoling did he decide to return to the team.

“Before I was discriminated and segregated,” Williams said, “I used to dream basketball, talk basketball, breath basketball. That’s how much obsessed I was with the sport, until my energies began going down slowly by slowly, due to the nature and setting of sports in my country.”

Jay too spoke to me of the way reality intrudes upon his play. Sometimes when he is stressed, he’ll head out to the court and play. It is a refuge then, its boundaries pushing out the world. “But still, at the end of it all, life goes on, and problems are still there,” Jay said.

Today, Jay and Williams are practicing for another season with the Magic Stormers. Last year, despite all the troubles, they finished third out of 10 teams in the Fuba women’s league, and they hope to improve on that.

However, they hope to make their biggest impact off the court. The two are both advocates of LGBT rights in Uganda, and while the Anti-Homosexuality Act was struck down, a new version is in the works despite the opposition of a lively and growingly outspoken kuchu community. Jay and Williams now hope to help people learn to love themselves, whoever they are.

“I have suffered humiliation right from my time of growth, always referred to as a man in women’s clothing, before I discovered that I was actually trans,” Williams said. “And now I celebrate my identity. I am proud that I am transgender and playing basketball.”