JV

· 04 Jul 2020

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Then the war came near

I was 14 years old and lived in a living group, popularly called a children's home.
After I moved from another living group, then foster home, I ended up here.
After living here for about six months, a girl from Bosnia came to live with us. The war suddenly came very close. We soon became buddies and went together as sisters. We were there with about 10 children and that were more or less a bit of brothers and sisters, but all with very different backgrounds.
Now we went to watch the news every night, and although we were always fighting for who could see what, it was now over. Our new sister didn't know if her parents were still alive. She told us her story, how she fled with an aunt and uncle and how heartbreaking her parents begged her to leave them. I'll never forget this again. I went to school in a village in Twente at that time. In our class, some classmates were very racist and said terrible things about refugees that touched me because I lived with a refugee I also loved. Me and a girlfriend always got very angry, of course they only liked that and that's why it got worse. So much that one day we came into class and sworts were drawn on the board. The more I went against it, the more it ate me and the sadder it made me. I notice that the same thing is happening now and that I have to take a little bit of gas back. I think all these experiences have contributed to the human that I have now become. I've always worked for refugees. And also took action, it included for endangered Christians, refugee work, help on Lesbos. And now stand up for the #500 and resist racism, it's who I am and it belongs to me. It's just that it's not always easy to be yourself.
I'll never forget Sunday morning again. I was at the neighbor's coffee after church when the window was knocked that I had to come home right away. There had been an important phone call. Our Bosnian roommate's parents had called. They were both alive. We all cried with emotion.
This period has been essential in my life. I've learned so much from it, especially from the resilience this lady had. In 2 weeks she learned to speak Dutch, because a Dutch teacher caught her in the house for 2 weeks. The war came closer, but we had almost no quarrel with each other in the group. Often we were very sad about what did not happen in our lives, for many of us contact with parents was not always as good, but we, we still had our parents. Why were we often complaining and whining when we haven't heard our bosnian “sister” do that once. She told us about how they fled, but she just moved on with her life. Eventually went to HAVO and could live independently at the age of 16 without room training. I'm sure we learned a lot from her with all nine other children.
I hear so many times people say, when I make my plea for the #500kinderen : “What have these children been through, how damaged are they, is that good for other children?” I can tell you that this experience of living together with a “refugee child” has only enriched my life and I would not have missed it for the rest of the world. So yes, I would also like to call on the government to #500kinderen to record. Not to fear that, not only to look at it from the negative side, because it can also bring so much positive! We can always learn from each other! So dear people who have a responsibility to govern our country: just read the Convention on the Rights of the Child and realize that you cannot leave these children to their fate, but please do not see it as a burden but realize that it can also be enrichment!