The kukuxu-history that has been told to us by Bernard Ben Nel from South Africa has delighted us. A story about two good friends which could easily have been a screenplay for a movie that defends the rights of homosexuals in society. We liked it so much that we have awarded it the first prize in our 26^th “Anibestiary” year.

In this movie the background is set in South Africa and there are three main protagonists: Bernard, his gay friend and the girlfriend of Bernard. This friend of Bernard was his first real friend. He was an artist, a writer, a painter, a lover of life, the kind of bohemian type that many of us would like to have around us… Bernard shared many good and not-so-good moments over ten years and learned a lot about himself along the way.

The nicest thing of all in this story is how Bernard’s girlfriend also entered this scenario of friendship. In fact, it was she who decided to buy and gift him with a Kukuxumusu T-shirt which denounced the situation of homosexuals in Uganda and which showed a synthetic drawing and a simple caption, “Why?” A gesture to always remember in this great friend.

Jon Sistiaga brought the facts home to us with his documentary report on Canal+ TV about the reality of life for homosexuals in Uganda. This country is particularly homophobic, although it is by no means the only one, which criminalizes anyone who maintains intimate relations with a person of the same sex. In fact, some things have improved since the broadcasting of the report on TV in February 2013, but much remains to be done.

This week, Bernard has written to us to let us know that he has received his prize – a nice red box containing our ten most popular T-shirts over our 26 years of life and which have been re-edited lately in response to requests from our fans. And he has forwarded the ‘unboxing’ so that we can see the happy ending to this story: the packet arrived safe and sound to its destiny.

So our characters made a good journey despite the distance. More than 11.500 kilometers from our Factory of Ideas and Drawings. They are now adapting to the climate of South Africa and to the multifarious animal life to be found there. They don’t yet quite trust the lions but as they have come in peace (not like others, who pay fortunes to hunt and kill the lions) they will surely end up being good friends with them and we will soon see them all together singing to the baobabs.