Prose: Samen
Though the finish line is near, only one hurdle stands in my way as I walk towards the final gate at Schiphol Airport. Die meneer looks carefully at my passport then back at me, and being pleased with my documents, he bids me a safe and enjoyable stay in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Finally, as I pass through the gate I am welcomed by a waterfall of tears: I’ve finally met my girlfriend’s mother. Ingrid van Gent’s embrace was warm and loving, much like the weather that mild afternoon in Maassluis.
Ironic isn’t it? I’ve just been greeted with open arms by the people who greeted my people with hands clutched firmly onto their Mauser rifles. How did the natives react? Perhaps it was too early to speak about the social climate on that particular day in 1652, but it is quite evident that their presence lacked much to be desired of, as time elapsed. However, the plot thickens. My recollection on history books and classes only engulfed me much later and further into my stay, when I met an old Dutch man (a family friend of the van Gents). He causally connected the dots of where I hailed from with Jan van Riebeeck, almost as if he found ‘the last missing puzzle’. It’s been more than three centuries since van Riebeeck’s forgotten spirit landed on the Cape shores and even then, whilst Mandela’s presence is still felt, hierdie meneer gives me the imperial handshake.
Maassluis is quite a small city/town. Within a twenty minute drive you could be in another city altogether. Add forty-five minutes more and you’ve left the province completely. That doesn’t say much about Maassluis though, as much as it says about Holland as a whole. However, what’s beautiful about Maassluis, and just the Netherlands in general, is the culture of small, intimate and pocketed communities. The source of the social entanglement must be synonymous with the homes themselves. They are so close together that they socially epitomize the interaction of the natives. The van Gents’ home is basically attached to their neighbour’s home, and their neighbour’s neighbour …and so forth. What distinguishes them apart are the interior and exterior walls which aren’t much of a barrier when your neighbour’s entrance gate is ten centimetres away from yours. To some the architectural design may seem impersonal but I find it quite integrative. It keeps conversations alive even when the street lights come on, which signal to the young boys and girls that it is time to come home and get ready for dinner. Through the air you hear the vernacular screech through the throats of the citizens and gradually realise that English is a rarely spoken commodity. I appreciated that.
In the Netherlands, Dutch is the vernacular. In cosmopolitan cities, such as Amsterdam, people tend to be able to communicate fluently with English speakers, particularly tourists, but Dutch rings the loudest. The early Dutch explorers that landed in South Africa also imprinted remnants of their language in the country. They gave us Afrikaans as opposed to Dutch and did a good job of making it the third most spoken language in the land (out of eleven official languages), surpassing English that took fourth place. Clearly the Dutch were proud imperialists and elements of their culture are distinctly visible today, and having passed a legislation that made Afrikaans a medium of instruction in schools, during Apartheid, it’s no wonder their co-colonizers (the British) came second best.
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The neighbourhoods of Maassluis are made up of block settlements. Most homes are made out of stone bricks. With so much similarity, including the colour of your door and gate, it is no wonder that many inhabitants are devoted to adding flair to the mundane. The van Gents have a ‘Zen’ garden. Although very quaint, the garden encompasses a small water feature with frogs, a stone sculpture of Buddha, tropical flora, an L-shaped couch made of a wooden frame covered with leopard-print pillows and covers, as well as a white wooden bench and table, that is ceremoniously occupied with steamy cups of tea in the mornings. Inside the house are shades of baby-blue and white on the kitchen walls and cabinets. The lounge accommodates a reasonably large group with its vanilla leather sofas. As you lie down and slip a brown, furry throw over your skin, you realize that it is an act of cosy conformity rather than a response to your body temperature. My girlfriend’s brother and fiancé re-enact the same lounging tendencies in their home, and so too, does their oma. There’s an inviting atmosphere of liveliness and sociability in Maassluis. The genuine greetings, smiles and short pit-stop conversations that accompany the walks, make the simplest of walks ever so pleasant. Even as you stroll out the van Gent household, past the pre-school one block away, towards the Turkish bakery that’s a couple steps up the road from the dentist, as you take the short pathway going down on your left. Cars are abundant too but you can easily navigate yourself around with your two feet, or better yet on a cycle. Boats and ships are also prominent in and around the area, depending where you’ve drifted off to. The sight of boats and even ships is common as you journey towards the metropolis of Rotterdam.
Rotterdam is home to the largest port in the world. Although Amsterdam gets more fame than its counterpart; Rotterdam also stands out amongst the brightest of stars at night. Ships and other sea vessels have passed through here for centuries on end and it may be quite likely that the Dutch imperial ships that docked at Table Bay may have once left the harbour of Rotterdam, which isn’t too far away from Maassluis.
The residential streets of Maassluis are like something that popped out of a history book. Flat, stone blocks pave many neighbourhoods and it becomes a subtle recollection of colonialism, as seen through the history texts that spoke of the ‘great’ kingdoms of Europe and their Scramble for Africa. As you walk the streets at night to partake in the routine of walking Dino — you realise that walking your dog(s) in the evening is very much a ritual for the people of Maassluis. It’s always the same route with Dino: around the nearby pre-school and adjacent homes, then a right towards the bridge near the main road, over the bridge and a steady narrow walk by the bushes towards oma’s house, then lastly a few steps around the swings and just one block ahead is the van Gent household. As Dino rests downstairs, my girlfriend and I kiss her mom goodnight, as we spiral our way upstairs to bed. I lay my head near the window of the bedside and in the stillness of the night I can hear the water feature sing me a lullaby.
No, kisses are not a van Gent phenomenon. It’s a Dutch thing. Greetings, and sometimes goodbyes, are incomplete without two or three kisses on the cheek. Closer relationships warrant a kiss or two on the lips. It’s almost like a spell that breaks the barrier of unfamiliarity and differences between two strangers, by replacing it with the essence of ‘namaste’ or ‘sawubona’. If such a welcoming embrace is birthed from one’s culture then why can’t it be carried, within, and permeate all the way to the shores of Cape Town? If our cultures are pro-community values why not co-exist rather than colonize? The earth is our home.
It’s Saturday morning now and the weather is mildly warm as the van Gents and I make our way towards the local, weekly market in the centre of Maassluis. There are so many Dutch delights such as stroopwaffels (sugar-coated waffles with a sticky syrup filling), haring (raw herring fish) and various types of traditional Dutch cheese. The diversity of treats is somewhat like the people in the morning buzz of the market.
Maassluis has a distinct amount of diversity as seen through the Surinamese shop near the ice-cream parlour in the town centre, the numerous Moroccan and Turkish immigrants that speak the vernacular with the natives, as well as the chocolate skins of the descendants from the Dutch Antilles. The diversity of relationships I saw would attack the very pillars of Apartheid and thus would be punishable by law. “These warm people cannot be the same as those that passed the Immorality Act”, my grandparents and parents would say.
