Indeed, not long ago I worked with a gay refugee at the Kakuma camp in Kenya. He wanted me to tell his story to help get him out of there and into a truly safe place. (While the Kakuma camp is run by UNHCR, its administrators tend to be intensely homophobic, and queer refugees often suffer horrific physical violence from other refugees and neglect/abuse by UNHCR staff.)

I spent 3 days interviewing him and then transcribing/translating some of his story from French.

The man is in his early twenties, and he's already severely physically disabled because of beatings and a stabbing in prison and at the camp.

Fortunately, the end result for him was positive. I was able to put him in touch with an organization that smuggled him out of Kakuma and into a safe house. They'll eventually be getting him to a safer country.

But those three days for me were traumatizing. Nothing compared to what he lived through, but nonetheless.

It's hard to listen to a young man describe being beaten and stabbed for being gay. It's hard to listen to a young man describe how people in power were apathetic to his dehumanizing persecution — because the people in power themselves don't value gay people.

It's also hard to conduct an interview like that, spending days writing a story to move people, only to find the general public apathetic.

I won't for a moment say that my trauma was significant or that it matters, but I did experience some.

And it's worth thinking about.