The Attacks on Eden House, A Trans Haven for Kenya

The gang catches up with residents of Eden House to discuss the attacks and the work that Trans Rescue do to keep trans people safe around the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
So I'm here today with Aria and an Aria. She
lives at the Eden House over there in Kenya and
is the chair of the management board at trans Rescue
and has over forty years of trans rights activism. And
they're going to explain today a little bit of what
trans Rescue is, what Eden Houses, and the threats and

(00:27):
attacks that they've been facing in the last couple of
days here and so preaps and you could explain what
Eden House is. And I think I really liked in
the website where you explain the difference between like a
heidie hole and a haven. So if you could get
into that, that that would be wonderful. Sure, um uh Eden
House is a uh, there's a trans haven in in Kenya.

(00:51):
It's our primary mission is that we helped trans people
escape from dangerous places. That implies that we help them
go somewhere, because of course they have to have a
safe place to go too, which means we often end
up renting an apartment short term or doing something like

(01:12):
that while they get established in their new place. The
problem and of course that that was getting expensive in
Kenya where we can move a lot of people because
some areas of Kenya are quite dangerous but the major
cities are not quite so dangerous, so we move people
into the major cities. But we were trying to be

(01:36):
efficient and save money, and uh, we thought about making
a kind of temporary doss house or a place with
bunk beds to the ceiling and what happen. But we
realized that would still cost his money and it wouldn't
be a very positive experience or affirming experience for the

(01:59):
folks living in it. And we realized for that we
could instead do a trans haven. That is a place
where a person could come and if they chose never leave,
live there the rest of the life if they want. So,
when someone comes to Eden House and expect to receive

(02:24):
help to find some income producing activity, and as time
goes on, they will eventually be expected to contribute to
the running of the house. Our plan is we just
started a month ago, but our plan is by about
the end of the year to have the house no
longer be requiring funds from us, and then we can

(02:48):
do it again. Yeah, we have space freight people. When
we get up to eight and it doesn't look like
it's going to bleed us dry, we can do it again.
And we can and in the end, we end up
with something that I think many trans people in any
country would love to have, because that's uh, you know,

(03:08):
that's something as long as I've been around, there have
been many discussions of building such places. Yeah, it's it's
a very admirable project. And I know Gary and I
just used to be Tenacious Unicorn Ranch. I've been before,
and it's really powerful to see like how empowering those
spaces are and how they can help people. So I

(03:30):
can see that you set up in Kenya. Was there
a reason that you picked Kenya? It was that it
was was a very large trans community there or something
that led you to uh, frankly, in in such places,
people often have um uh there is the old queer Uh.

(03:51):
I know somebody who knows somebody a lot system and
people have kind of webs of trust and as a result,
where we get people coming from to ask us to
move them, it is very irregular. Uh. There are some
countries we never hear from, and we certainly know there

(04:12):
are queer people there. We know the conditions are bad
and would you know, and we'd be happy to move people,
but we don't have a lot of penetration. And others
like Kenya. We're in the network and people are telling
giving each other are uh contact info. UM. Also, we

(04:33):
have some capabilities we had built up kind of center there,
so we decided to focus on Kenya. Kenya is relatively
easy to get into as for as visas and so on,
and so UM it's a place we can send people
when they when we might have trouble getting them into

(04:54):
uh say Europe or the United States. Um, we can
with and so we're perfectly happy to end up with
lots of folks. Would like to make the place attractive
enough that it's also a place that we even have
people coming who aren't particularly in immediate danger. We'd be

(05:18):
We're working from a philosophy of abundance that we want
to grow and we have a rule of we don't
want to make a place that we wouldn't want to
live ourselves. And honestly, Eden House is a nice place.
It was the personal home of of a rather wealthy family.

(05:39):
It's looks nice. Sorry, would you maybe like to describe
for us at your experience at the house what it's
like and how places like this are important so that
people can understand. Maybe if you could start with how
you became aware of the Eden House and that that
this was an option that was available to you. Okay,
so um I met um um we got in touch

(06:03):
with Anne Ali this uh this year, yes, Aliceia around
February generally, if I'm not wrong, so um we if
that was before Eden was formed. So we really had
a long discussion on us moving from where we are
were at the coast and things were really really brutal
at the coast side of Kenya, like we were going

(06:24):
a lot of stress, even lost to one of our friends,
and um, yeah, it wasn't really good. It was really bad.
So yeah, we had a discussion about moving to um
to Eden House and that it was a working progress.
So we took some time working on that. So eventually
it happened and so we came to Eden House and

(06:47):
it's a very beautiful place. I would agree with that.
Um yeah. And yeah, and also flew all the way
to hear because we were new here and there were
some things that we needed done. And yeah, we are
three of us currently in Eden House. Um I got
in touch with Anne and the rest of the team.

(07:10):
There was dooris on board. Actually she's the person who
was like you know, responsible for the Malindi team. And yeah,
the two sisters that I have like okay, they're my
sisters because we've been through a lot of help together.
So yeah, um, we come all away from Malindi. Also

(07:30):
we are here together and so far. Um when we
got here, Um, the place it's very beautiful, but just
needed a little you know here and their decoration and
you know, clarifications and modifying and you know, precusuals were
by you know, putting on security lights and the security wires. Yeah,

(07:55):
still somethings need to be upgraded, but you know, um,
we still need to resource for a lot so that
we can have something's being done by So far, so good.
Everything is good. I'd interject that we're trying to foster
a spirit of self sufficiency and so we've been Um,

(08:20):
we've got everybody to make the furniture. The furniture in
the house has been made by the residents. And we're
starting some various sort of fundraising, you know, our income activities.
We're we've made a chicken coop and we're in the
process of getting chickens, getting chickens and and uh sewing machine.

(08:46):
And one of our residents is a talented artists we're
going to set her up to have a place to
sell her artwork. Ah, that's the kind of things we're doing,
thank you, um all. Yeah, I'm really curious kind of
on a day to day basis, what are the things
that you and the other people who are at the

(09:08):
Eden House do in order to like protect yourself, like
when you're going about town, when you're doing errands. Um,
is there like a degree of operational security that you
have to keep in mind? Yeah, Actually, we have a
rule whereby we don't go anywhere without letting each other know,
especially if we're going to a long distance UM. Putting

(09:31):
in mind, we are very new into this area, so
we don't know a lot of places. So currently we
are just in the house trying to get to understand
a few things. Actually we've been doing um um the
repairing we have. We have a chicken coope at the back.
It's kind of a small um as a small place
whereby we needed to fix some things. So we've been

(09:53):
working on that so that we have the places ready
for the chicken when they're ready to come in. And
also for me have been um going around to see
at least allocate some few places where by you know,
we can feel safe, like the hospitals. I've been trying
to get in touch with people like around here. I
haven't been easy, but at least now I can say

(10:17):
I can go to an hospital that at least it's
kind of familiar with me. Um. Yeah. We also have
a place where we buy what are these things that
the house supplies and all that stuff. We're really trying
as much as possible to like minimize our moving around
from places to places to draw attention. So we're just

(10:39):
trying to go with time and see how people will
accept us existing to these community. So we don't want
to bring any attentions whereby people who start asking questions
like you know, what's happening there? What's not happening there? Yeah? Yeah,
I noticed as well that the house you to belong
to a politician. It's right, so I has some measures
of external phasicals and purity as well, Yeah, which is good.

(11:21):
Maybe we can talk about I know, Kenya is a
big country and it differs vastly depending on where you
are and who you're with. How is the climate towards
trans folks. I haven't been in Kenya for probably ten
fifteen years. How how is the climate towards trans people,
have things. Have it become like a big topic like

(11:42):
a culture war thing recently or is it sort of
can you explain, but I guess what it's like. You're saying,
it seems like it can be a risk just to
go outside, which is pretty sad. Yeah, yeah, it is.
That is to go outside, you know, um here and Kenya,
um in different sites of kind of like at the
cost Okay, taking example, at the cost side from where

(12:04):
I come from, it's, um, it's really bad for the
trans community because now they're they're very transphobic and homophobic people,
Like most of the transphobic and homophobic people come at
the coast side, because um, these are people that tend
to keep their culture and religious like you know, more
of more of a key thing in in someone's life,

(12:26):
more of like they use they use the Quran and
the Bible to presus to crititize the trans people and
the gay community. So being in that area, it's very
very bad and very very risky for trans community. Comparing
to the other side of Kenya, I wouldn't say it's
not risky, but um, their level of understanding of the

(12:49):
trans community and the gay community it's um, it's more
of an it's more of an away that they're kind
of confused, not true awhere to understand. But it depends
with also the air that you are, you might find
you end up. For example, now we're eating houses like
for the few for the man that we've been here.

(13:11):
The feedback that I can say I have from the
community around here is they're like more of people that
are come and more of people who are you are
more of used to their own personal things. They don't like,
you know, put their nose into the to the things
that they're not involved with, if you get what I mean. UM,

(13:32):
In other towns um having new people, people who like
you want to know why they're there and do you
know all that stuff. But in this town that we have,
we are in eating house. It's it's kind of safe
in a way that people are not putting their nose
in into us, like more of wanting to know about
us rather than they're welcoming us. Moreover, you know, the

(13:55):
landlord is kind of friendly. I would say that the
cubander cuband it's more of a small grocery shops. So
the cubanders around here at the small grocersy show that
the people who are selling the you know, the groceries
and all that stuff, they're friendly. I haven't. Um, I
haven't in card or you know, engaged or seeing any

(14:16):
transphobic or homophobic reaction towards demand that I've been here.
Most of the people here are much of welcoming, like
I would say that, and uh, yeah, it's really different
from where I come from. Trust me, from the town
that I come from. You can't walk with makeup or
with anything that makes you look garish or anything that
makes you look resemble to a transgender or maybe gay

(14:38):
or something. It will be a bad thing for you
in the day. Yeah, a little bit of the geography
of Kenya. Remember that uh on tenuous coast up in
the north. Uh is the border with small Yea and Um,
so the culture natural and mixes over the order and um.

(15:02):
This is also an area where lots of folks are
coming over because of the political instability and Somalia, and
it's an area of al Shabab terrorist activity. So so
that makes particularly the north part of the coast rather
dangerous place. Yeah, just if people are interested, I know,

(15:25):
like the State Department sort of has it do not
travel like north of Lama pretty much. So like people
can sit on the map, but ageah, there are certain
areas where risk would be higher. And fortunately talking of that,
like it it hasn't. There have been some attacks, right
threats against edenhouse in the last couple of days. So

(15:49):
if either of you would like to explain exactly what
happened as far as you're comfortable, I think that would
be great. Yeah, let me explain, because I think I'm
the right passaic in that. So, um there, there, there there, Okay,
this happened when amalz around here. Actually we had an
attack and one of the windows people people breaked into

(16:13):
their house, not inside the house, but inside the compound
and they tried getting in the house. But yeah, thank
god the place has secured doors and windows. But they
took off one of the glass from the window and
they tried to like they had a stick that was

(16:36):
was was holding um yeah, a magnet on the end.
So they were trying to use the stick with the
magnet to pull out the keys so that they can
have and clear entrance into the house. But thank god,
we had removed the keys to where we used to
we normally used to put and kept it to somewhere else.
So the keys that we are aware they were targeting,

(16:57):
there were only the keys to the meter box and
the fridge, so they took those and yeah, I presume
they later realized that they wouldn't go through with those
because we're not the right kids. So the next thing,
we wake up in the morning, the magnet was down
on the floor and we noticed that the window had
the piece of glass missing. So that was the first

(17:18):
incident that happened. So we reported that to um, to
the to the landlord. And previous day before that happened,
those neighborhood came by and they said that someone tried
to break into their apartment and they were kind of
curious because they never knew if people moved into this

(17:41):
house or they just wanted to check in what was
going on. And we can we kind of get into like,
you know, know each other, and that they kind of
gave us a warning and that's why we removed the kids.
And the day when they came, they couldn't get in.
So yeah, after I left, now this is a recent incident.
That then then the next they came back and found

(18:02):
a couple of broken windows in the morning, like they
tried to price some windows out and ended up breaking
the glass and gave up. But but yeah, that's so.
At the time, I think we all just thought of
this as ordinary, you know, theft activity. But it's later incident,
it's pretty unclear, but this maybe more targeted attack. Yeah,

(18:28):
and perhaps it's silly of me to even ask this,
but could you speak of it on what kind of
help you can expect from law enforcement? If any, um,
I would say, if any, I would say, like, you
see the place where we are staying, from the law enforcement,
I would expect that they put some like you know,

(18:49):
the they have a name that they put that that
that the lights that normally the government's supposed to supply,
like you know, the what's what did they call that?
These lights they normally have to support from Yes, street lights.
So the place you're staying, there's no street lights. So
if if if, if if a police was to ask

(19:10):
me or you know, any security measures that were to
be put, like I would say that they put the
street lights. Those would help at least there will be
more lights for like you know, that should scare people away,
even if those people are thieves or anything. You see, So, yeah,
that was That's what I would say, Okay, yeah, and

(19:32):
then the two people were hurt in the most recent
sort of activate. Yes, yes, this was the day before yesterday. Okay,
are they doing okay, yeah, they're fine actually, and one
of them I help myself, yes, and one of them
I have my arm injured, but not really deep. The

(19:52):
other one is asleep. She had a really bad injured
back stabbed and you know at the arm also catched
uh eight teachers at the back really bad. Yeah. Sorry, yeah,
that's not good at all. Okay, so that that's not great.
Have you since we attack is like an ongoing aggression

(20:15):
against you, And it seems like someone's targeting the in house, right, um,
if you ask me, I would say it's more of
targeting the eating house, because, um, I don't understand why
we would only be the only person, like the only
people experiencing the same, the same incident over and over

(20:37):
like the next the next houses. They don't complain in
such incidents like you know, like this guy literally if um,
I'm just picturing the fact that we had to go
out and you know, turn on the machine and we
saw this guy and he just bumped into us with
a knife. And catching us all. So I'm just picturing
if this guy was waiting for, like I'm just seeing it,

(21:00):
he was waiting for more people to come so that
they can attack coming inside the house. Why was even
standing there in the first place? Because we found him
there and he was like he came through me because
I was the one who was in the front. So
I just keep asking myself, like, why was he standing there?
What was he waiting for? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And I
point out to get there. To get there, he had

(21:22):
to climb a high stone wall top with razor wire
and get into position without triggering the motion detectors. Yeah,
which is, you know, not impossible to do, but it was.

(21:44):
But they keep coming back. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure

(22:06):
people listening will be upset by this. Is there a
way that people can like express the solidarity or support
you financially? Yes, we need funds to keep running the house,
and in fact, the guy escaped through a hole that
was left only because we ran out of razor wire.
We need funds to keep the project going. We need

(22:28):
funds to also to support our primary work. We're continuing
to get people out of places like Saudi Arabia. We
have people we have people who are kind of who
are in mid travel right now, and we have other
people in the high de holes in dangerous countries, and

(22:49):
we want to move all those people, and we'd like
to start right now. We're not even taking new folks
on because we just have such a backlog. Will very
much like to fix that situation. UM, So for all
these reasons you know, we're doing. We're happy with what
we're doing, but but we do need funds at the moment.

(23:13):
Let's get into that a little bit. You're the we
here is trans Rescue, right, yeah, yes, Trans Rescue is
a nonprofit and you're based in Europe and you move
trans people out of dangerous situations. That's correct. We're based
in Um, we're based in the Netherlands. We're a a sticking,

(23:38):
which is the in the US that would be a
five oh one C three. We're in a n B
I qualified sticking, which basically is a five O one
C three. Okay, And you were telling us before we
started the call that you think it costs you about
twenty euros to move each person. Is that right? Yeah?
That's the average. Um. The average is probably slightly going

(24:02):
down because of course to move somebody into eden House
from the coast might be as cheap as uh eighty
bucks to send them a ticket and then a few
hundred dollars of settling them in eden House. On the
other hand, getting people out of Saudi oftentimes means not

(24:25):
only flying of them, but sometimes flying our own personnel
in and out on um often kind of crazy roots.
So a person might find themselves a long way from
either Saudi or where they're finally going to end up.

(24:45):
And as a result, and then so yeah, we end
up having to spend a lot on plane tickets and
then we also sometimes this takes months, we play paperwork games. Um,
we are not people smugglers, but but we certainly are

(25:07):
helping people get to a country where they can actually
claim asylum for the most part, which means, um, you know,
and successfully claim asylum, and that often means manipulating edge
cases in the international travel system. Yeah, yeah, that makes
a lot of sense. I can see whether would be

(25:28):
expensive and complicated. Yes, so it's great that people can
donate to you. That is there anything like I noticed
you were asking before for some mutual aid help with
your pr Is that something you still need? Look at
the things people can do. Maybe they don't have the
means today. We were a small organization, We're not very large,
and we actually are just cranking up our pr operation.

(25:50):
Um we could use a press list, we could use
we could also use amplification from organizations with more kind
of online cloud. We're basically a little group of people
and for two years we operated as an informal group
of of activists. We realized that was probably not ideal

(26:14):
for this very serious work we're doing, and so last
December we reorganized as a proper sticting But yeah, help
with boosting our signal at the moment would be very useful.
Anyone who can, you know, can spread the word of
what's happened at you now, so we would be very

(26:37):
much appreciative. Yeah, well we can definitely do that. Hopefully
effects come to It's just so people can find you.
It's Trans under School Rescue on Twitter, it's Trans Underscore
Rescue on trigs, or it's trans Rescued or dot org
on the web. I will share that fundraise. I think,

(26:57):
when when this comes out, are you how things been
for you the last couple of days? Like I must
be pretty rough, I imagine not not feeling safe at
the house. Yeah. Actually, actually the advice that we got
from the landlord and the neighbor. There's a neighbor here,
a lady. She came by and I have a number.

(27:19):
Called her the day we had the incident, and she
came in the morning when they had a talk. So
she suggested that we shouldn't be going out late night
and by time we make sure that all the doors
are locked and yes, and stay safe inside in case
of anything. She asked me to call her, and also
the landlord asked me if in case of anything, if
I hear any movement or any suspicious thing happening outside

(27:42):
the gates, I just give them a call. It's good.
It's good that people are sticking up here in your communite.
Is really good to hear. Yeah, really good. Yeah, yeah,
we appreciate that. And on their behalf, what y'all are
doing is very important and more. You know, sorry that
you're encountering this kind of resistance, but we hope we
can help at least get the message out about what

(28:04):
you were doing. It. Unless appreciate it. Thank you, it's
much appreciated. Um. I regret that we spent most of
the time on security I'm I'm more I'm excited about
uh many of the positive things we're doing. We're you know,
we're trying to set up, uh a place where trans

(28:25):
people can live their lives and thrive and and have
you know, normal lives. Uh. Yeah, let's talk about that.
Let's talk about like, how many people do you have
at the eating house right now? If you're comfortable sharing that? Sure,
we just opened, so we've got three people. We've got

(28:47):
one more person who UM went back to settle kind
of settle his affairs and we'll be moving in UM
and we have of UM and we've got space for
eight at the moment um. We've had a couple of
other people in choir but but haven't like aren't there yet.

(29:12):
We're kind of excited by the space we've got because
there's actually room around us to grow. So we're expecting
to get to get bigger. Um. Yeah, I hope you do.
And how many people have trying to rescue been able
to help, like as an organization overall one way or
the other, We've we've moved about two dozen people. Of that,

(29:36):
roughly a half have been the serious kind of get
people out of Saudi Arabia type moves. The others have
been folks that we helped in sort of less dramatic ways. Okay, yeah,
that's a it's a very meaningful contribution to a lot
of people's lives. That is great. Yeah, I get you know,

(29:57):
it's great. Uh, each one person lives locally, and it's
great to kind of occasionally have him over for dinner
or you know, I know that we got him out. Yeah,
that must be really nice. And I think, yeah, it's
important not to just center like hatred but also about success. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,

(30:20):
I love that. And it's cool that, like you have
plans to grow. I've seen that you have agricultural areas around,
so you're thinking of like growing some food around the house. Actually,
we have brought some fools. We have some vegetables like spinach, cabbage, tomatoes,
green paper. Yes, did they did? The gardens survived the flood?

(30:46):
Uh we actually I was about to tell you that.
Actually when the water was coming in the old old
the spinach went and lied down, and we were kind
of worried. But when it stopped, when the water stopped
flowing down, the sound came out. They kind of started
going straight, So I was much worried about that. But
it's kind of freaking out because they all went down

(31:09):
and we were like, they did we have a drainage
problem in front of the house and the recently there
was a trrential rain. Things I did is hard to
kill things I did not know about Kenya. It hails there,
Oh yeah, I did not expect. I did not like

(31:30):
sort of imagine hail, but but it hailed several times
while I was there and everybody was cold. Yeah, while
I was walking around the T shirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I can answer the best weather and Kenya for sure. Yeah,
And looking at these pictures, it is great to see
you guys are making your own furniture and doing all

(31:51):
these things and really enjoying your time there as well
as obviously we don't want to just focus on the threat.
So hopefully you can go back to that. Hopefully people
can support you. Are is anywhere online people can find you.
Do you have a Instagram or Twitter or anything like that. Yeah,
I do have a Treta account. My tutor handle is
at rams hyphen aria. How do you can you spell

(32:14):
that out for us? At MS? Okay, then high fen
lower hyphen underscore, Yeah, yeah, underscore a then are I guess? Okay? Great? Yeah,
and it's for yourself? And is it if you just
trans Rescue it's there a personal one. Anything else you'd
like to my mail if someone wants to contact me,

(32:38):
is Annie A N N I E at trans Rescue
dot org. Okay, yeah, hopefully. And we have a contact
form on the website as well if people are interested
in talking with us. Yeah, okay great. Is there anything
else you'd like to get to before we finish up here? Yes?

(33:00):
At on Fridays we have a m we have office hours.
So if you're in a country like the UK or
the US and you would just like some advice or
to explore your options, that's another service we offer is that, Well,
are happy to talk with you on video about that.

(33:23):
When would those be there? It's six pm Central European summertime, okay,
which I think works out to midday in the US
some parts of the US. And your fingers primarily in English. Uh,
those are primarily in English. If you speak Arabic and

(33:47):
or Farsi or Urdu, contact us. We can arrange to
have somebody who speaks those languages talk with you. We
maintain a telegram group trans rescue and if you get
on there you can use machine translation and talk with

(34:08):
us very well. And we have Arabic speakers the Mama
or that amazing. Yeah, hopefully people can take advount to
that if they need it. Thank you so much for
your time, Like our platform is here for you. If
you want to share anything else, If anything else happens,
please let us know. And we really appreciate you taking
the time. Are you hopefully thank you yeah, thank you,

(34:29):
thank you so much. Al Right, Okay, goodbye everyone, thank
you bye, good very much. Thank you. It could Happen
here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more

(34:51):
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