Obama's transgender former nanny living in fear in Indonesia

In the 70s Evie looked after 'Barry' Obama when he lived in Jakarta, now she is afraid to dress in women's clothes after suffering taunts and beatings over her identity
  • The Guardian,
Evie, also known as Turdi, stands at the doorway of her room in a slum in Jakarta. Photograph: Dita Alangkara/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 is living in fear on Indonesia's streets.

Evie, who was born a man but believes she is really a woman, has endured a lifetime of taunts and beatings because of her identity. She describes how soldiers once shaved her long, black hair to the scalp and stubbed out cigarettes on her hands and arms.

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 of her feminine clothes 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. "So I decided to just accept it. I've been living like this, a man, ever since."

Indonesia's attitude toward transgender people is complex. Activists estimate there are 7 million in the population of 240 million. They hold the occasional pageant, work as singers or at salons and include a well-known celebrity talkshow host, Dorce Gamalama.

However, societal disdain still runs deep. When transgender people 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 hardliners. The country's highest Islamic body has decreed that they are required to live as they were born because each gender has obligations to fulfil, such as reproduction.


Many transgender individuals turn to prostitution, putting themselves at risk of sexually transmitted diseases.



The threat of violence is very real: Indonesia's National Commission for Human Rights receives about 1,000 reports of abuses a year, ranging from murder and rape to the disruption of group activities. Worldwide, at least one person is killed every other day, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project.

Evie says she chose her 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 is 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.


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 and decided to learn how to cook.


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 was also eight-year-old Barry's caretaker, playing with him and bringing him to and from school.





It was a cat-and-mouse game with security guards and – because the country was still under the dictatorship of General 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.



"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 any more."

She says she didn't know the boy she helped raise was now president until she saw a picture of the family in local newspapers and on TV. She blurted out that she knew him. "I couldn't believe my eyes," she says.

Her friends at first laughed and thought she was crazy, but those who live in the family's old neighbourhood say it's true. "Many neighbours 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 US 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.


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