7 quick honest answers
1. Where are you from?
If you ask me as a person, the answer is easy. I am from the Netherlands, born and raised where the flattest land possible meets the sea (in north Groningen). I spend my childhood in a tiny village where the horizon was dotted with windmills, farms and dikes. I lived there until I was twelve. Then my parents moved to Hattem (Zwolle) and because I was too young to stay behind (back then I would have liked to although in hindsight; the move was good) where I lived until I was 18 and old enough to spread my wings. I flew to Kenya for a gap year and that's when I started to grow roots in Africa. When I came back from Kenya I studied in Belgium until I graduated as a midwife and moved to Cape Town.
If your question is about my family, it gets a bit more complicated because we have as many nationalities as people in our family. Hartmut is born and raised in a German speaking family in Namibia. The girls are born in Cape Town where we got married and lived for 8 years. Now we live in Malawi, a place that has started to mean a lot to us in a short time. So that's where we are from. Sometimes it confuses us, sometimes I worry about my girls' cultural identity, where will they belong? Where will they feel like they belong? But most of the time I feel rich because we get to draw from such a diverse world of traditions, experiences and culture. It's confusing but it's us and I would not want it any other way.
2. You travelled for so long, how did you do that financially?
Since we live in Malawi we have lived on a very meager salary that hardly (actually not at all) covered our expenses. We knew that in advance so it was not a problem and when we needed more that we earned, we took some from our savings. Same goes for our trip, our salary continued but was in no way enough to cover a trip (Max 200 dollar a month is not enough for anything really) but we used our savings and travelled on a tight budget. This means that we stayed with friends and family or in backpacker hostels, travelled when possible by public transport and got most of our food in (super)markets instead of restaurants. (That heavily discounted dessert that I got in the supermarket that we eat during our date at the Victoria falls tasted amazing!).
The last part of the trip, in Malawi was made possible by my parents in law and for that we are very grateful.
3. Why are you there? Are you a missionary or development worker?
Please define missionairy or development worker ;-). No, we don't get paid by an ngo or mission organisation to be here. And frankly, it kinda bugs me that this is a question I get very often (but thanks for asking so that I can tell you why) as it reveals the believe that a European can only live in 'dark Africa' to help because people in Africa cannot help themselves. Which is not true. The area that we live in may be one of the poorest areas within one of the world's poorest countries and yet, the people don't need me. It's a well functioning society and most people are more content and connected than I have seen anywhere else. I have been in and out of Africa for 14 years and in that time I was always full-time or part-time working for development organisations. This time in Malawi was the first time that I did not come into a place as a problem solver for problems people sometimes did not even know they had, but as a human being, trying to run a business (a lodge), just like most other people here and that changed a lot in how I was able to relate to people. We weren't as much seen as magical money trees and solvers of all problems and did not need to see the problems before we could see the people living with those problems. Instead, we could just be part of the village, get to know people, be friends and just see people for who they are. That doesn't mean that we haven't helped the village to develop but when we helped it was always because people asked us to help with a problem, not because we told them they had a problem that we then solved for them. This also doesn't mean that I will never work for an ngo again. I think many of them do valuable work that needs to be done and after living here, my passion to help the people of this continent to thrive has only grown.
And about the missionary part; I believe that anybody who calls themselves a christian is a missionary in some way, whether you are paid to do it or not.
4. Does life as you live it now make you happy?
Absolutely! It is not always easy, but tell me a kind of life that is always a smooth ride. It's easy to focus on that grass on the other side that always seems to be greener but I try to always remind myself that we not only chose to be here but also felt called to be here. Realising that we are where God has called us to be, for this season, brings a deep joy and inner peace. And besides that, I am very happy here. I love that every day is different and full of challenges. I love it that I am stretched and forced to learn, to think outside the box and to be creative with what I have. I love to meet and learn from people who have such different ideas and philosophies than the ones I grew up with. And I love it that I have no idea what our lives will look like one year from now, where we'll live and what we'll do. God knows and we will know when we need to know.
5. What is the first thing you will do in your new house?
Easy! I'll put bananas in the freezer to make nice cream. We have missed it and nice cream is the main reason that the girls are excited about having a freezer again. If you have never made it, I recommend you to try it too. You peel some bananas, chop them and put them in the freezer. Once they are frozen solid, you can put them in your kitchen machine until they are smooth like soft serve (it tastes lake it too). That's it. You can make it better with cocoa, berries, peanut butter or anything else you fancy but it's great just likw that.
6. Do your speak English with your children?
Yes, but only sometimes when circumstances demand it (like when the girls are playing with other kids who don't speak Dutch or English.) Normally I speak Dutch, sing Dutch songs, read Dutch books and whisper in Dutch that I love them. Hartmut does the same but in German. We have done that from day one and although I was very nervous about it then, I am so glad that we did it. The girls have acquired our languages in the most natural way possible and it would just feel weird to speak a language other than my mother tongue to the ones I mother. We were lucky that the world around us has always been mostly English because as a result the girls speak all three languages. Hartmut and I speak mostly english to each other too (unless we need a code language. In that case we use Dutch, German or Afrikaansb depending on which language the people around us speak.) so our dinnertable conversations are a mishmash of languages and words. The girls don't speak the languages without mistakes; they mix up word order and words and sometimes come up with their own words but I am not worried. They can understand and make themselves understood in three languages, I'm sure that they'll fine tune their skills over time.
7. Do you plan your outfits?
If I would post more pictures of myself online you would probably not ask me this question because the answer would be obvious. My outfit planning is the what's-still-clean-and-suitable-for-the-weather style. That said, I tend to buy clothes in similar colours so everything sort of goes together. And I actually do like to plan outfits for special occasions like weddings and parties.
Bonus question: What are you listening to right now?
My friend Annelies send us a a very thoughtful package with a usb-stick for the girls full of music and an audio book. So at the moment I am listening to the soothing songs from Kapitein Winokio. I can recommend them because they are not annoying and that's quite a feat for children's music. That it's in Flemish is an extra bonus and the fact that the songs stay in my head for days is something I'll live with.
