by OP | Jan 11, 2022 | Culture
The Amstelveen bus station is located under a large parking lot serving the Stadshart shopping mall where several luxury brands have stores. It is not the kind of bus station that I am used to and I find it quite sterile. The passenger platforms are wide and mostly empty and the walls on one end are a dull grey in a way that emphasises the often lugubrious weather in Amsterdam. There are two lanes where the buses enter and exit smoothly and on time. The drivers never honk their horns, or leave the engine running as they go off to look for a toilet. There are no touts jostling for customers or hawkers trying to catch the eyes of passengers through the windows. I have never seen a queue for the bus even in the rush hour. The efficiency of public transport in this new country can feel robotic and it does not encourage idling.
But today, I find myself idling because I did not bother to consult my transport app to time my departure to precision. The electronic bus schedule screen tells me that I have a twelve minute wait time for Bus 348 that takes me to Amsterdam South station where I can catch a train to the North.
From where I stand, I spot a motherly figure about 20 metres away walking calmly towards my direction. She stops in front of a pay point. The Netherlands uses a cashless system and you have to buy a ticket to use a bus, tram or train. She starts ruffling through her bag. I find myself staring at her unusual presence and instinctively straighten up as one does in the presence of a woman deemed to be in the age group of one’s mother. I have this sudden need to be helpful but all I do is stare at her.
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by OP | Jan 4, 2022 | Culture
It is the last days of 2021, and instead of thinking of New Year resolutions, I am more concerned about when they will open up this country, so that I can resume doing normal things like having a haircut.
I check the time. My watch glows in the dim light and it reads only quarter to five. The darkness is descending fast on this moderately cold winter evening in late December. I walk towards a wooden canteen, decorated in glittering Christmas lighting, situated at one of the entrances to the Amsterdamse Bos forest. It sits adjacent to a car park, under a cluster of tall bare trees. Across the road, lies a hockey stadium with its flood lights partially illuminating the bright green artificial playing turf.
The Netherlands is a hockey loving country and they are the most successful team in World Cup History of the sport. I hear the banging of hard rubber balls against the woodwork, the clash of hockey sticks and the chatter of the players responding to instructions from a coach. A metal fence shields my view from what strikes me as a parallel universe, where a sense of normal still resides.
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by OP | Dec 21, 2021 | Culture
The Netherlands went into a hard lockdown on December 19th in response to the Omicron COVID-19 wave sweeping through Europe. Everything shut down except for provisional shops, supermarkets, grocery stores and pharmacies. This comes as we officially begin the winter season, dumping sombreness on the Christmas cheer with the restriction on house guests. The government directive on the number of guests permitted into a home has been reduced from four to two visitors with the exception of children under the age of 13. Outdoors, three is a crowd. Two is the magic number.
At a press conference announcing the new lockdown measures, the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte stressed that despite the difficulty in observing the 1.5 metre social distance rule, people should limit direct contact between persons aged over 70 and children as much as possible. He pleaded with the elders, “…do not hug the grandchildren under the Christmas tree”.
I wanted to tell the PM, “If only he knew what I would do to hug my grandmother, one last time’’.
Three days prior to this announcement, I received a text message from my mother who lives in a little village in Siaya County in Kenya.
“Dani Wahonya passed away this morning at Sagam hospital. Her body is at the hospital morgue”.
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by OP | Dec 13, 2021 | Culture
The first thing you need to adapt to in this new country is the weather. Amsterdam has a maritime climate, which means you can have four seasons in a single day. On this particular mid morning in spring, the weather transformed from a moderately sunny day to a wet one in less than an hour and I decided to call an Uber to drop my daughter off at the day-care centre about 6kms away.
The grey Skoda Octavia arrived promptly and we jumped into the back seat. There was a clear safety screen that has become a compulsory feature in Ubers in the wake of Covid-19 to protect drivers from sneezing passengers. I was happy that my Uber driver was a black man and we struck up a quick rapport.
One of the many fascinating experiences as a new resident in Amsterdam has been meeting an African diaspora who identify as black and European. The driver was an affable young man. I asked him where he was from?
“I was born here but my parents are from Suriname”.
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by OP | Dec 6, 2021 | Culture
It is your first time out of the country of your birth. Your first time on an airplane on a trip overseas carrying a brand new blue passport. It had happened so quickly. As your mother escorts you to the Jomo Kenyatta International airport, she says, look at God and you cannot help but agree with her. You are the first person in your family to travel out of the country. It is only a short visit. Three months to visit, the cousin of an old school friend who lives in the Netherlands. Your old friend, who you met in church, proposed your name for the babysitting job in Europe. She was supposed to go but her husband refused. Your friend’s cousin who lives in Amsterdam has started a new job with an international company and she needs help settling in. You come highly recommended and everyone seems to agree that you are honest and hardworking.
You are a single mother of two teenagers and have raised over a dozen children in your long career as a domestic worker. Your mother says, it’s all God’s work. No one would have imagined that a simple person like you could be going to Europe.
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