Down the Amstel River

by OP | Feb 28, 2022 | Culture

Friday 

1400hrs

My place

Just so you know…we are supposed to be on a boat.

On this day, a good friend invites me for a boat ride. 

Friday at 2.30 pm. We leave the rendezvous point on the West side of the city of Amsterdam. Two black men stride through the streets with urgency, the taller man a step ahead. It is a 15-minute walk to the point where we are to board the boat. I struggle to keep up with the pace but we cannot afford to be the guests that don’t keep time. 

There are five of us – the Moroccans, two brothers, one from Casablanca, the tourist, visiting his brother who is a long-time resident in Amsterdam. There is the friend, a proud black man, a poet and an author from Charleston, South Carolina who lived in Amsterdam since the days of the Warsaw Pact. The skipper, a Dutch man, who I shall tell you about later and myself.