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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by OP | Nov 29, 2021 | Culture
I return from a two week trip away from my home to find my little daughter at the door as I enter the house. I bend down to give her a hug but she is not too keen on it. I was expecting her to grab my leg and declare how much she missed me while I was away. Instead, she is only briefly interested in my suitcase before she runs back into the living room. I hear her mother calling after her, “Come back baby, come say Hello to Daddy properly”.
I have come to accept that my daughter is not like those kids I have watched on Youtube videos, who wait expectantly at glass doors and start to jump up and down in excitement at the sight of their fathers returning home. It is one of the first lessons I picked up as a parent. Children are different. My relationship with my children is not conditional to things that please me. The power to parent, is to accept children as they are.
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by OP | Nov 23, 2021 | Culture
It was the time before corona.
Jamaa, a regional technology sales leader, travelled to Europe from Nairobi to report to the head office in Stockholm. While on these annual trips, he never ventured on his own beyond the confines of the head offices or hotel. His spirit of adventure was limited to packaged city tours buses. He concluded that he could only handle Europe in small doses and usually after a week, he would be eager to return to the familiarity of Nairobi.
But after a generous company bonus, he decided to do something selfish, urged on by a senior executive who subtly reminded him to prioritise his mental health.
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by OP | Nov 8, 2021 | Society
Stadhouderskade is a teeming thoroughfare in the heart of Amsterdam, part of the city centre ring connecting Amsterdam-West to Amsterdam-South. It begins at a bridge over the Amstel river snakes for two kilometres alongside a series of canals, running past the historic Vondelpark, Leidseplein, the Amsterdam Marriott and several national monuments like the iconic Rijksmuseum.
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