She has being an activist for the causes of black and LGBTQI+ communities since the age of 18. She was born in Fogo Island, Cape Verde, where she currently lives. In May 2019, along with her friend and social movement partner Soraya Santos, she founded the Kabu Koloridu Collective, with the objective of making the LGBTQI + community of Cape Verde visible. The main focus of the Collective initiatives is to reaffirm that the sexually dissident black community exists and resists on all islands, in all African countries. The collective sustains itself autonomously mainly in the online space.
Topics related to the LGBTQI+ universe are addressed at Kabu Koloridu: mental health of the black LGBTQI+ population, invisibility of black gay men, black lesbian motherhood, sexual health of women who relate to women. They are also conducting interviews with LGBTQI+ community members who lives in Fogo.
In the beginning, on the YouTube channel, Instagram and Facebook of Kabu Koloridu, Deicilene Gomes, mediator of all these virtual networks, published content in Portuguese. But soon she wondered why not chose Creole, given that most of the public who accessed her content was Cape Verdean. It was then, that through her language, the language that represented her people and her culture, she started to get even closer to those who already accompanied her, which culminated with the even greater support of the black LGBTQI + Cape Verdean community to the initiatives of the Kabu Koloridu Collective.
As founder of the Coletivo Kabu Koloridu, she understands the importance of articulation, self-organization and creation of representative spaces (physical and virtual) for and with the community that she belongs to. She mentions that, on a daily basis, black LGBTQI+ people are extremely stigmatized and identified as monsters. However, even with all the difficulties, they continue to fight for spaces that provide a feeling of belonging, a feeling of being at home, to all lesbian and bisexual black women, black gays, black intersex people, and black transsexuals, especially in African countries. According to Deicilene Gomes, the fight for the criminalization of LGBTphobia and the fight against racism must take place jointly. And she remembers, “black and lesbian woman, be happy to live and be who you are”.
