The Attacks on Eden House, A Trans Haven for Kenya

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. 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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,

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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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.

But they keep coming back. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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

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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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, 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,

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? 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 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 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 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 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, 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? 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. 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 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 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, 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 podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

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