Obama's transgender ex-nanny 'proud'

By NINIEK KARMINI

Associated Press
March 4, 2012

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.

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 smashed out glowing cigarettes onto 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 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.

"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.

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.

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."

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.

"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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