One night in Kampala, Vinka Silk, 20, a trans woman and sex worker, was in a bar when a friend she had come with told the bouncers that she was a man dressed as a woman. Silk was taken to the police station where she was frisked and undressed so the police officers could check her genitals. She was held till the next morning.

“That was the [worst] moment of my life,” she says. Following the incident at the bar, Silk decided she wanted to transition and start hormone replacement therapy. She didn’t know anything about the process so she turned to the trans community, both in Uganda and outside of it, for help, advice and support.

Since she started taking hormones in July 2020, Silk has relied on a group of fellow trans sex workers for support.

The group is run by Anna Xwexx Morana, 24, another trans woman and sex worker in Uganda who, frustrated by how alone she felt at the start of her own transitioning journey, decided to create a support system, especially for trans sex workers to find community before, during and after they transition.

Ideally, trans people looking to undergo hormone replacement therapy have to see an endocrinologist and then get a prescription unique to them.

This is not an opportunity many trans women in Uganda have, primarily for the transphobia ubiquitous in Uganda’s healthcare system but also for how expensive endocrinologists are outside of that. Uganda has little to no services available to support transitions. Transgender people are not included in studies, they say, and so data about them is not readily obtainable. Many trans people like Silk and Morana report experiencing often violent transphobia when aiming to access medical services within the country and without the financial capability to look elsewhere, some of their needs are left unaddressed.

Informal networks like the kind Morana is fostering have stood in the gap.

“It’s a privilege for me,” Morana says about creating a community for women like her. “It's like I have a child and I am giving my child everything they've never had: a family, good health, anything.” Read more via VICE