The Encampment Barber
By Kai
Every Sunday morning, I set up my shop under the same monkeypod tree.
The shop is a five-gallon bucket turned upside down, a folding chair with one bad leg, a plastic cape I’ve had for six years, and a hand mirror with a crack running through the corner. My clippers are cordless. My trimmers are cordless. Everything I own that matters runs on a battery.
By eight, there’s usually a line. Uncles from the tents along the canal. A couple of young guys who just got out and want to look sharp for a job interview. A kid whose mom wants him cleaned up before school starts.
I don’t charge. Never have. If somebody wants to give me something, I’ll take a musubi or a cold water. Mostly people just say mahalo, and that’s enough.
My name is Kai. I’m 38, I’m Kanaka Maoli, Native Hawaiian, born and raised on Oʻahu. I’ve been houseless for almost three years. I’m a trans man.
And around here, I’m known as the guy who gives the best fade in the camp.
How I Learned
I cut my first fade on myself.
I was nineteen, living with my tūtū in Kalihi. I’d been growing my hair out since I was a kid because that’s what everybody expected. One night I locked myself in her bathroom with a pair of clippers I bought at Longs and a YouTube video playing on my phone.
It came out terrible. Uneven, a patch near the back where I went too high. My tūtū knocked on the door, saw me, and put her hand over her mouth. I thought she was going to cry.
Instead, she laughed and said, “Eh, come here. Let me fix the back.”
She’d cut my grandpa’s hair for forty years. She took the clippers out of my hand and cleaned up the line, and she didn’t say anything else about it. She didn’t need to.
That was the first time I looked in the mirror and saw a man looking back.
After that, I practiced on anybody who’d sit still. Cousins. Friends. Guys from the construction crews I worked on. I watched barbers on YouTube until I knew every kind of fade by heart. I never went to barber school. I couldn’t afford it. Back then, I couldn’t picture myself walking into a shop full of guys and asking for a chair.
But I got good. Really good.
How I Ended Up Here
People always want to know how somebody ends up living in a tent. They want there to be one big reason, so they can tell themselves it won’t happen to them.
For me, it was a lot of small things that piled up.
My tūtū passed when I was thirty-two. The house was in my uncle’s name, and he sold it. I was renting a room in Waipahu after that, working construction, getting by. Then I hurt my back on a job site. I couldn’t work for months. The landlord raised the rent. Then he sold the place too.
Rent on this island is no joke. Wages don’t keep up. A lot of local families I grew up with have already moved to Vegas or the mainland because they can’t afford to stay home. I didn’t want to leave. This is my ʻāina. My family is buried here.
So I tried the shelters first. That’s where being trans made it harder.
At one place, the intake worker looked at my ID, which still had the wrong gender on it back then. She said they’d have to put me in the women’s dorm. I told her I’m a man. She said that was the rule. I slept in my car that night instead. Then I lost the car.
That’s how I ended up by the canal. A guy I knew from construction had a spot and said I could set up next to him. He’s still my neighbor.
The Shop Under the Tree
I didn’t plan to start cutting hair out here.
A few months in, one of the uncles asked if I could clean up his neck, because it was itching him. I still had my clippers. They were one of the few things I didn’t sell. So I sat him on a bucket and gave him a full cut.
When I handed him the mirror, he didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he said, “Brah, I look like me again.”
That’s the thing about a haircut. When you’re houseless, people stop looking at you. They look past you, or through you. A fresh cut makes people look at you again. It makes you look at yourself again.
Word spread. Pretty soon I had a line.
Now I’ve got a system. Sundays and Wednesdays, mornings, before the heat gets bad. I keep a spray bottle of alcohol and a little brush, and I clean the blades between every single person. People out here deal with enough. They shouldn’t have to worry about catching something from a haircut. I oil the blades every night.
Power is the hardest part. Everything is cordless, so everything needs charging. For a while I’d sit at the library for hours waiting on one battery. Then an outreach group came through handing out portable power banks. That changed everything. Now I charge them when I can and run my clippers off them all day.
People don’t think about that. A phone charger isn’t a luxury out here. It’s how you get calls about jobs and housing. It’s how I keep my business running.
The Best Fade in the Camp
I’m not going to be humble about it. I give the best fade in the camp.
I can do a skin fade so smooth you can’t find the line. I can do a burst fade around the ear, a taper with a hard part, a high top for the younger guys. I can do lines and designs if you ask. The keiki always ask for designs, a lightning bolt or a little star, and I always say yes.
Some of my regulars have been coming every two weeks since I started. Uncle Benny, who’s in his seventies, gets the same thing every time: short on the sides, a little longer on top, combed back like he’s going to church. He tells me about fishing off Sand Island in the eighties while I work.
I don’t make anybody tell me their story. Some people talk the whole time. Some people close their eyes and don’t say a word. Either way, for fifteen minutes, they’re just a guy getting a haircut. They’re not a problem to solve. They’re a customer.
Being Trans Out Here
Most people in the camp know I’m trans. Some figured it out. Some I told. A few still don’t know, and that’s fine too.
I was nervous about it at first. You hear stories about what happens to trans people living on the street, and some of those stories are true. I’m careful. I know which people I can trust, and I keep my spot near the ones who’ve got my back.
But here’s something I didn’t expect. Being the barber has protected me.
When you’re the guy who makes everybody look good, people look out for you. Somebody gave me a hard time once, said something about me “not being a real man.” Three of my regulars stood up before I could say a word. One of them said, “That’s the guy who cut your hair last week. Show some respect.”
In Hawaiian culture, there have always been people who don’t fit into just kāne or wahine. Māhū were part of our communities long before missionaries showed up with their rules. They were healers and teachers, keepers of hula and chant. I’m a kāne. That’s who I am. But knowing my kūpuna had room for people like me helps me stand up straighter. Being trans isn’t something new that came from somewhere else. We’ve always been here.
The other trans guys in the area found me pretty fast. Word gets around. Some of them are housed, some aren’t. They come to me because walking into a regular barbershop is scary when you’re trans. You don’t know if the barber is going to clock you, say something, make you feel small.
When they sit in my chair, I already know. They don’t have to explain anything.
I cut a fade for a young guy last month, maybe twenty, three weeks on testosterone. He was so nervous his leg was bouncing the whole time. When I gave him the mirror, he just kept turning his head side to side, looking at the line. Then he said, “Uncle, how did you know how to make me look like this?”
I told him, “Because I’ve been where you are.”
When the City Comes Through
Every few weeks, there’s a sweep.
Sometimes we get notice. Sometimes we don’t. Crews show up, and you’ve got a short time to pack everything you own. Whatever you can’t carry might get thrown away or hauled off to storage, which can be hard to get back.
The first time, I lost my good trimmers. They were in a bag I couldn’t grab in time. I sat on the curb afterward and cried. It sounds small. It wasn’t small. Those trimmers were how I took care of people.
Now I keep my kit in a backpack that never leaves my body during a sweep. Clippers, trimmers, guards, blades, oil, spray bottle, mirror, power banks. Everything else I can replace. That bag is my business, my purpose, and the one thing nobody can take from me.
After a sweep, people scatter. I’ve lost track of customers that way. I hope wherever they ended up, somebody’s keeping their fade clean.
What I’m Working Toward
I’m on a waitlist for housing. I’ve been on it for a while. A caseworker from an outreach program checks in with me, and I check in with her. I’ve learned that you have to keep showing up, keep answering the phone, and keep your documents safe.
I got my ID fixed last year with help from a legal aid clinic. It says male now. When the caseworker handed it to me, I didn’t know what to say. I just held it for a while.
I’ve been back on testosterone for eight months, through a community health center that does street medicine. Before that, I’d been off it for two years. It’s hard to keep a prescription going when you don’t have an address.
My big goal is barber school. I want my license. I want my own chair in a real shop someday, with a sign out front, so I can make a living doing what I already do for free. I want to hire guys from the camp and train them. And I want it to be a shop where any trans guy can walk in and feel safe.
Until then, I’ll be under the monkeypod tree on Sundays and Wednesdays.
People ask me why I do it for free. The answer is simple. Everybody out here has lost something. Their house, their job, their family, their name. I can’t fix all of that.
But I can give a man back his face for fifteen minutes. I can make him feel like somebody looking at him would see a person. My tūtū did that for me once, in a little bathroom in Kalihi.
I’m just passing it on.
Editor’s note: Kai is a composite character based on common experiences of trans men and Native Hawaiians living without housing on Oʻahu. It is not one person’s account. A phone charger is a lifeline for people without housing. Learn how The Power Bank Project gets free power banks to people who need them.
