 |
In this
Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 photo, Evie, also known as Turdi,
the former nanny of U.S. President Barack Obama, shows a picture of herself, left, dressed as a woman with an unidentified friend in a pageant, in Jakarta, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) |
JAKARTA,
Indonesia (AP) — Once, long ago, Evie looked after “Barry” Obama, the kid who
would grow up to become the world’s most powerful man. Now, his transgender
former nanny has given up her tight, flowery dresses, her brocade vest and her
bras, and is living in fear on Indonesia’s streets.
 |
| The Obama statue will be relocated from Menteng Park to the US president's former elementary school. (JG Photo/ Afriadi Hikmal) |
The turning
point came when she found a transgender friend’s bloated body floating in a
backed-up sewage canal two decades ago. She grabbed all her girlie clothes in
her arms and stuffed them into two big boxes. Half-used lipstick, powder, eye
makeup — she gave them all away.
“I knew in
my heart I was a woman, but I didn’t want to die like that,” says Evie, now 66,
her lips trembling slightly as the memories flood back. “So I decided to just
accept it. … I’ve been living like this, a man, ever since.”
Indonesia’s
attitude toward transgenders is complex.
Nobody
knows how many of them live in the sprawling archipelagic nation of 240
million, but activists estimate 7 million. Because Indonesia is home to more
Muslims than any other country in the world, the pervasiveness of men who live
as women and vice versa often catches newcomers by surprise. They hold the
occasional pageant, work as singers or at salons and include well-known
celebrity talk show host Dorce Gamalama.
However,
societal disdain still runs deep – when transgenders act in TV comedies, they
are invariably the brunt of the joke. They have taken a much lower profile in
recent years, following a series of attacks by Muslim hard-liners. And the
country’s highest Islamic body has decreed that they are required to live as
they were born because each gender has obligations to fulfill, such as
reproduction.
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| In this Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 photo, Evie, also known as Turdi, the former nanny of U.S. President Barack Obama, stands at the doorway of her room at a boarding house in a slum in Jakarta, Indonesia. (Photo: Dita Alangkara/AP) |
“They must
learn to accept their nature,” says Ichwan Syam, a prominent Muslim cleric at
the influential Indonesian Ulema Council. “If they are not willing to cure
themselves medically and religiously” they have “to accept their fate to be
ridiculed and harassed.”
Many
transgenders turn to prostitution because jobs are hard to find and because
they want to live according to what they believe is their true gender. In doing
so, they put themselves at risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually
transmitted diseases.
Some, like
Evie, have decided it’s better to hide their feelings. Others are pushing back.
Last month, a 50-year-old Indonesian transvestite applied to be the next leader
of the national human rights commission, showing up in a borrowed luxury
vehicle with paparazzi cameras flashing as she stepped out.
“I’m too
ugly to be a prostitute,” Yuli Retoblaut said, chuckling. “But I can be their
bodyguard.”
The threat
of violence is very real: Indonesia’s National Commission for Human Rights
receives about 1,000 reports of abuses per year, ranging from murder and rape
to the disruption to group activities. Worldwide, at least one person is killed
every other day, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, which
collects homicide reports.
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| In this Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 photo, Indonesian transvestites perform a dance for small change in Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia's attitude toward transgenders is complex (AP) |
Evie says
she chose her current name because she thought it sounded sweet. But she adds,
as she pulls out her national identification card, her official name is Turdi
and gender male. Several longtime residents of Obama’s old Menteng neighborhood
confirmed that Turdi had worked there as his nanny for two years, also caring
for his baby sister Maya. When asked about the nanny, the White House had no
comment.
Evie, who
like many Indonesians goes by a single name, now lives in a closet-sized hovel
in a tightly packed slum in an eastern corner of Jakarta, collecting and
scrubbing dirty laundry to pay for food. She wears baggy blue jeans and a white
T-shirt advertising a tranquil beach resort far away in a place she’s never
been. She speaks softly, politely, and a deep worry line is etched between her
eyes.
As a child,
Evie was often beaten by a father who couldn’t stand having such a “sissy” for
a son.
“He wanted
me to act like a boy, even though I didn’t feel it in my soul,” she says.
Teased and
bullied, she dropped out of school after the third grade and decided to learn
how to cook.
 |
| Evie |
As it
turned out, she was pretty good at it, making her way into the kitchens of
several high-ranking officials by the time she was a teenager, she recalls with
a smile and a wink. And so it was, at a cocktail party in 1969, that she met
Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, who had arrived in the country two years
earlier after marrying her second husband, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro.
Dunham was
so impressed by Evie’s beef steak and fried rice that she offered her a job in
the family home. It didn’t take long before Evie also was 8-year-old Barry’s
caretaker, playing with him and bringing him to and from school.
Neighbors
recalled that they often saw Evie leave the house in the evening fully made up
and dressed in drag. But she says it’s doubtful Barry ever knew.
“He was so
young,” says Evie. “And I never let him see me wearing women’s clothes. But he
did see me trying on his mother’s lipstick, sometimes. That used to really
crack him up.”
When the
family left in the early 1970s, things started going downhill. She moved in with
a boyfriend. That relationship ended three years later, and she became a sex
worker.
“I tried to
get a job as a maid, but no one would hire me,” says Evie. “I needed money to
buy food, get a place to stay.”
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| U.S. President Barack Obama |
It was a
cat-and-mouse game with security guards and — because the country was still
under the dictatorship of Gen. Suharto — soldiers. They often rounded up
“banshees” or “warias,” as they are known locally, loaded them into trucks, and
brought them to a field where they were kicked, hit and otherwise abused.
The raid
that changed everything came in 1985. She and her friends scattered into dark
alleys to escape the swinging batons. One particularly beautiful girl, Susi,
jumped into a canal strewn with garbage.
When things
quieted, those who ran went back to look for her.
“We
searched all night,” says Evie, who is still haunted by the memory of her
friend’s face. “Finally … we found her. It was horrible. Her body swollen, face
bashed in.”
Today Evie
seeks solace in religion, going regularly to the mosque and praying five times
a day. She says she’s just waiting to die.
“I don’t
have a future anymore.”
She says
she didn’t know the boy she helped raise won the 2008 U.S. presidential
election until she saw a picture of the family in local newspapers and on TV.
She blurted out that she knew him.
 |
| U.S. President Barack Obama |
“I couldn’t
believe my eyes,” she says, breaking into a huge grin.
Her friends
at first laughed and thought she was crazy, but those who live in the family‘s
old neighborhood say it’s true.
“Many
neighbors would remember Turdi … she was popular here at that time,” says Rudy
Yara, who still lives across the street from Obama’s former house. “She was a
nice person and was always patient and caring in keeping young Barry.”
Evie hopes
her former charge will use his power to fight for people like her. Obama named
Amanda Simpson, the first openly transgender appointee, as a senior technical
adviser in the Commerce Department in 2010.
For Evie,
who‘s now just trying to earn enough to survive each day on Jakarta’s streets,
the election victory itself was enough to give her a reason – for the first
time in a long time – to feel proud.
“Now when
people call me scum,” she says, “I can just say: ‘But I was the nanny for the
President of the United States!’”
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