An Integrative Approach to the History of Migrants

Discovering Diversity An integrative approach to the history of migrants

Educational Material: Case Study

Some lines from his speech:

•Dear listeners: the situation is so alarming that I want to discuss this on the radio. •It is about the shortage of female workers in general and more specifically in the field of nursing. This could have disastrous consequences for the post-war situation. •Young girls are not as willing to do this work as they used to be. We see this happening also with domestic help, laundry girls, typists and the girls who work in workshops and factories. •Nursing is a profession, but it is also a calling and a duty: to provide help to a suffering fellow human being. I urgently call upon the nurses to come back. This is an emergency situation.

Later you will read more about the speech of the Minister.

Birthday party of the Jenny Caupain (sitting behind the woman that holds the record cover of the Cuban band La Sonora Matancera) on 25th of May 1958. The year before she and her compatriots started their nursing training in the Bergweg hospital in Rotterdam.

Territories administered by the Dutch East India Company.

Territories administered by the Dutch West India Company. Territories occupied later, during the 19th century.

The first attempt to settle a colony in Suriname was made by the British Lord Willoughby, the governor of Barbados. However his settlement was invaded by Dutch ships led by Abraham Crijnssen in 1667. In the seventeenth century Suriname became a Dutch colony. Slavery in Suriname started with the English and continued when the Dutch took over Suriname. The slaves had to work at plantations with sugar, coffee, cocoa and cotton, which was exported for the Amsterdam market. The Dutch abolished slavery only in 1863; although the British had already abolished it during their short rule from 1799 and 1816.

In 1954 Suriname gained self-government, and became an Overseas Territory. The Netherlands kept control of defence and foreign affairs until the country became independent in 1975. It had 200.000 inhabitants in the 1950s, people with different backgrounds: the (native) Indians, black people (Creoles), taken as slaves out of Africa, Hindustanis (contract labourers from India), Chinese and Javanese from the Dutch East Indies, Jews, Dutchmen and many other nationalities. All groups had their own religions (Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus) and languages. But everyone in Suriname still speaks Dutch, which remained the official language after 1975. The natural resources are rubber, gold and bauxite. From the latter, aluminium is made which is important for the airplane industry. Surinamese drive on the left side of the road, a remnant from the time the British ruled Suriname. In 2010 Suriname had 486.618 inhabitants.

The part in Sranan Tongo is written by Trefossa in the 1950s.

Bali

In the colonial society of Suriname difference in skin colour and ethnic origin marked daily life. Some newcomers-nurses had experienced themselves that when going for a certain job skin colour made the difference. It was difficult to hold an important position, higher in the hierarchy. Hertha Gullit remembers that her father was only paid his normal salary as a teacher during his first years as Inspector of education – and that he did not think of complaining to his superiors about this. The experience of Hertha Gullit's father was typical of many colonial societies, such as British India, French Indochina or Portuguese East Africa.

After the Second World War the Netherlands returned politically and socially to the pre-war situation. The war time feeling of unity was lost and the old divisions returned. The three „pillars‟, the Protestants, the Catholics and the Socialists, regained their fixed positions in society, each living their lives within their own groups: The integrative forces that were there during the war disappeared. The old political coalitions governed again like before. Like before the war there was a strict morality in the social order. It was an homogeneous „white‟ society with a tradition of tolerance.

The family was the heart of daily life. Most married women returned to house work. The country embarked on reconstruction. The burst of economic energy led to prosperity, and to a shortage in labour in factories, households and hospitals. There was a severe housing shortage. Till 1952 food, soap, clothes and shoes were rationed. The labour shortage was especially acute in the poorer paid jobs. Therefore the Dutch government made a moral appeal to women to serve the country as nurses.

Peak 1, 1946: shortly after the war, many Dutch nationals in Indonesia wanted to return to the Netherlands. But also many people from the Netherlands left before 1950 to Indonesia. Peak 2: in 1950, after the year Indonesia became independent, many Dutch nationals decided to leave. Peak 3: 1958: In December 1957 Soekarno decided that all Dutch nationals must leave the country. They returned home in the first months of 1958.

Peak“This4: document1962: Transfer has been producedof New with theGuinea financial toassistanceIndonesia of the Anna. Lindh Foundation. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of EUROCLIO and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Anna Lindh Foundation” Migration by persons of Surinamese descent (1950-2010)

In the 1950s the level of migration from Suriname to the Netherlands was still low. Only about a thousand people (almost equal numbers for men and women) a year. In this period only a few thousand people of Surinamese descent lived in the Netherlands. Their numbers started to increase around 1975, when Suriname became independent. In 2010 around 340.000 people of Suriname decent were living in the Netherlands.

Shortly after World War II Dutch hospitals were faced with a shortage of nursing personnel. In a radio broadcast the Minister of Social Affairs addressed young Dutch women and urged them to go into nursing. To attract more attention his speech was later published as well.

Cover of the published speech of the Minister of Social Affairs. “The Dutch people ask for nurses NOW!”

Broadcast speech of the Minister of Social Affairs Minister Willem Drees seeks to raise public awareness about a threat to national health. You read already something of it at the beginning of the Case Study.

„Dear listeners: the situation is so alarming that I want to discuss this on the radio.

It is about the shortage of female workers in general and more specifically in the field of nursing. This could have disastrous consequences for the post-war situation…

Young girls are not as willing to do this work as they used to be. This we see with domestic help, laundry girls, typists and the girls who work in workshops and factories.

People want to escape the feeling of strictness and misery which is understandable. But the girls also want something different: E.g. They go into the navy, I noticed that 1500 girls for the Marva were needed and that 70.000 girls applied!

But there is such a shortage of nurses. There are a few men in the hospitals, but I especially call upon women: “Come back to work in our hospitals”.‟

This is the first page of the scrapbook Fina Engelbrecht kept during her stay in the Netherlands. It begins with the advertisement in a Surinameese newspaper from the psychiatric hospital Hulp en Heil in Leidschendam for trainee nurses. After reading the advert she decided to apply. In April 1957 she left on the SS Cottica for the Netherlands.

The urge for adventure was an important factor for the Surinameese women. For Surinameese women, the colonial situation offered an opportunity to move themselves to another world. In the documentary Meisjes voor Maasoord (girls for the Maasoord hospital) by André van der Hout the former nurse Jos Herfst tells about her image of the colonial motherland before she left Suriname.

In the 1950s people travelled from Suriname to the Netherlands by boat. Delfi Baal left Suriname on the 14th of September 1956 to work in the Netherlands as a trainee nurse. She came on her own initiative, therefore she had to pay for the boat ticket of the KNSM - Royal Netherlands Steamship Co. herself. In those days you had to pay 235 American dollars for a ticket from Paramaribo to Amsterdam.

The boats had names such as Bonaire, Boskoop, Willemstad, Oranjestad and Cottica. On the day of departure, when the women walked along the pier to Boat ticket of the KNSM - Royal Netherlands Steamship Co. for the the large boat, the girls felt special. Many of them Cottica. recall this as a wonderful feeling.

Sailings, September 1963-August 1964 Vessel, Irpinia Ports of call Typical voyage:

Westbound:: Genoa, Cannes, Barcelona, Tenerife, Martinique, Trinidad, La Guaira. Eastbound:: La Guaira, Guadeloupe, Tenerife, Barcelona, Cannes, Genoa.

Additional ports of call on other voyages: Las Palmas, Guadeloupe and Barbados westbound; Trinidad, Grenada, Martinique, Dominica and Antigua eastbound.

They first flew to Trinidad and there they took the boat to Genoa in Italy. From Genoa they One roundtrip sailing in December/January: continued by train via Switzerland to the La Guaira, Curaçao, Kingston, Tenerife, Madeira, Netherlands. They took this less direct route because it was cheaper. Lisbon, Vigo, Le Havre, Southampton and vice versa.

SS Cottica Built in 1927 in Rotterdam for 88 (later 119) passengers and 78 crew members. The boat, owned by the K.N.S.M. (Royal Netherlands Steamship Co.), sailed from 1927 until 1958. It carried lots of migrants, e.g. it brought 55 Jewish refugees from Jamaica to Paramaribo in the beginning of 1943.

Most ships from Suriname called at the port of Madeira on their way to Europe. The Surinamese passengers aboard the Bonaire are going to the Netherlands to work as trainee nurses.

A photograph taken from the quay in Madeira, February 1957. On board of the Bonaire (from the left): Irene Dongen, Carl Perkins, Vera Kenswil, Helen and Resida Joanita Hanenberg.

Amsterdam, 1957 This is a page in the scrapbook of Fina Engelbrecht about her voyage on the Cottica from 26 April to 12 May 1957. The third picture shows her travelling companion Ronny Alfarez on the right, together with Fina‟s cousin, Cornelly Dankvoort, who came to collect her.

Quotes from the page from the scrapbook of Fina Engelbrecht beside the pictures from above on: •‘the meals were delicious’ •‘From 26 april ’57 to 12 mei ’57 I have had pleasant days on this ship’

Passenger Irene Wong said in an interview „On the ship most people were seasick. It did not affect me so much but some girls were seasick all the travel long‟

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This is a part of an interview with Delfi Baal published in the book: Zusters uit Surinamee (Nurses from Surinamee) in which she tells about her first night in the Netherlands.

Farewell photo taken in Paramaribo of the first group of nurses The first group of young trainee nurses recruited by the psychiatric hospital Maasoord in the Netherlands.

From the left to the right: Irene Wong, Thelma Tolud, Agnes Wong Sioe, Annelies Sriram, Irma Sjiew-A-Joen, Carla Perk, Yvonne van Ommeren, Vera Kenswil, Rea Waarde, Irene Dongen, Helen Resida, Lydia Krieger, Joanita Hanenberg, Nadia Oosterwolde en Anne-Marie Leefmans.

Jos Herfst (on the right) with her friend Delfi Baal on the roof of the hospital where she started to work, in Rotterdam 1956.

Nel Kappel (born in Paramaribo 1938) started as a trainee nurse at the Coolsingel-hospital in Rotterdam in 1957, when she was nineteen years old. Her nurse training was the start of an impressive career. Afterwards she studied at the Social Academy in The Hague and at the University of Utrecht. She was director of the first school for nurses in the Netherlands. Unlike most of her compatriots she returned in 1975 with her family to Suriname. There she worked at the Ministry of Education and as head of the Pedagogical Institute for children with behavioral problems and learning disabilities. In 1980 she became Deputy Minister for Education and until 1993 she was director of the Migration Institute. She was Consul General at the Consulate of Suriname in Amsterdam from 1993 and 1997 and again in 2000.

„From a young age I became involved with the supervision of the ward. As a first-year student I was granted supervision over a number of rooms. Every Monday morning the head surgeon would make rounds. Nobody ever dared to say a word. Those attending and the interns would follow in deference, it was quite a procession. The head nurse and the others in charge would be nearly shaking. One day, I was working in the ward… when the head nurse nearly bit my head off. Because, yes, Dr. Van Staveren‟s arrival was imminent. I went over to the door opening and calmly asked: “Doctor Van Staveren, is he Jesus‟ brother?”

The head nurse‟s eyes nearly popped out of her head and she shrieked: “I‟ll be speaking to you.” When I turned around, I was staring right into the face of the head surgeon, his whole staff behind him. My knees were shaking, because I was thinking: this is it, I‟ll get the boot for sure. I went over to the kitchen and colleagues came up to me confirming my fears might come true. That moment the phone rang: “Could that nurse from the West Ward report to Dr. Van Staveren”. I went over there, my knees trembling. He invited me to sit down, looked at me and said: “You‟re going to be a tough cookie.” He spoke to me in a very encouraging way. Never before had anyone dared to say such a thing to him. He didn‟t enjoy it at all when people jumped and grovelled to him. From that day on I was friends with Dr Van Staveren. Whenever he operated I was always allowed a front row seat.‟

Almost every migrant who tells about his/her arrival in a new country, will sooner or later discuss „food‟. Together with language, food is one of the two cultural aspects that people familiarize with first and hold on to most, even when they arrive in another environment. Not the climate, not the people, not the heavy work, but the eating habits were an almost insurmountable obstacle. Sometimes they were allowed to prepare food themselves in the small kitchens in the buildings were they were housed

At Irene Dongen‟s birthday, she made pom as a treat for her colleagues. At her room from left to right: Carla Perk, Mildred Tel, Rea Waarde, Irene Dongen, Stanny Wilsterman en Thelma Tolud.

Pom is a Surinameese-Jewish popular oven dish. What roti is for the Hindus,is pom for the Creoles. Pom is eaten as a main course at birthday parties, family gatherings and other holidays. Pom is made from root tubers Tayer (Xanthosoma sagittifolium) that grows in the interior of Surinamee.

In the Netherlands, ready pomtayer, grated and frozen, is available. You need to mix with orange juice or piccalilli and fill with spicy chicken and salt meat. Eat with white rice as well as snack on bread as a sandwich pom. Pom has a fairly mild taste.

In the Netherlands, fresh and ready pomtayer, grated and frozen, is available.

Irene Dongen “This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the Anna Lindh Foundation. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of EUROCLIO and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Anna Lindh Foundation” Cultural Encounters

Irene Dongen cooking Surinamese food in the kitchen of pavilion Zuideinde in psychiatric hospital Maasoord, Portugal 1958

Head Nurse De Wilde and the nurses before the map of The Netherlands „In Suriname we knew everything about Holland. We traveled easily over the „blind‟ map of the Netherlands. But nobody knew anything about Suriname. Dutch colleagues asked the weirdest questions. Even doctors, even a psychologist! Whether we had houses in Suriname? Where we learned to speak the Dutch language? They knew nothing about their own colony!‟

Rotterdam, 1962 Armand Huisden, the later huisband of nurse Irene Dongen, in Rotterdam along the Lange Hilleweg

Nurse Rika Hoogstad (right) spent every weekend off at the house of her aunt and uncle, Annie and Frans in Schiedam. Her aunt was also born in Suriname, she was Rika's only relative who lived in the Netherlands.

Migrants were grateful to have links with people from their homeland that could help them to settle into Dutch life and ways

That‟s why until 1960 three quarters of the working women in the Netherlands were unmarried. The post-war ideology prescribed that the women took care of the children and the man was the breadwinner bringing in the money. There weren‟t any changes in this role pattern until the late 1960s. Until then, women who kept on working were assigned a less qualified position, especially in the service industry.

In Britain nurses from the West Indies kept on working after their marriage more often than their English counterparts. However, they were restricted in their possibilities for advancement. Due to the lack of day care centres and no family members to take care of the children, Irene Dongen they often chose to work the unpopular night shifts. In practice, this was often the only way to combine the teo worlds of work and home.

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After a seven-month stay in Surinamee she decided to train as a midwife since the stork was still missing on her badge. After consulting the chief of the Dijkzigt hospital, she was allowed to bathe babies in mornings and afternoons for six months when they needed her. She finished her training in that hospital and continued to work there until 1968. Because of her wish to have another child and the fact that she worked on the infectious disease ward she was afraid to stay there. The chief was sorry to see her go. She worked for an old-folks home for a while, but she soon missed the hustle and bustle of a Irene Dongen hospital.

She then applied to the Ophthalmological hospital and was hired immediately. After a month she was made night time chief and she continued working there for twenty-five years until her retirement.

That 75% preferred to stay in the Netherlands had to do with the new life that they arrived in. Women met their future husbands, married, and usually got kids. Every time they found a good reason to postpone their return home. In the end, going back didn‟t happen at all and the Netherlands Delfi Roseval-Baal with her family at remained home for most of the women who had moved to the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam. From the this country in the fifties. They spend most of their time here, left her Michaël, Delwijn, her husband and their children and grandchildren now live here. Family Harold, Irvine, Delfi en Corinne ties were a key factor in the decision not to return. In this, Roseval (1967). there is no difference with other migrants in other parts of Europe.

Delfi Roseval-Baal‟s career When Delfi Baal got her B diplome in 1959 she decided to depart for Paramaribo to practise her knowledge and skills in 's Lands Psychiatrische Inrichting (the country‟s psychiatric Clinic) but after a few months she noticesd that she had got out of the Surinamese working habit. In 1960 she started the A-training in the Dijkzigt-hospital in Rotterdam. When she got pregnant , she stopped the training. She stayed in the Netherlands and now visits her native country only during holidays

What does the graph tell you about trends in migration to the Netherlands from former Dutch colonies?

Country of origin 1996 2000 2005 2010 Indonesia 411622 405155 396080 382411 Dutch Antilles & Aruba 86824 107197 130538 138420 Suriname 280615 302514 329430 342279

Even though there were Surinamese people in the Netherlands before the Second World War, most women stressed that, in the 1950s, they felt as if they were the first ones to go through the experience. They were very visible because of their darker skin colour which in those days was very rare in Dutch society. This did not necessarily mean that patients and colleagues reacted strangely to their presence. None of the nurses that were interviewed seemed to have experienced serious problems with this. Most of the women did stress how different from today the Netherlands was half a century ago, how society was more tolerant and open then. They commented on how the situation at the present time has changed significantly.

The Hague, 1965 Teacher Ann Harris with her class of 4/5 years old ones of the Prinses Beatrix school in the Abraham van Beyerenstraat.

Would it be an idea to contrast this with a picture of modern picture of a mixed school?

Adeline Slagveer-Sylvester in Paramaribo, in an interview, None of the nurses that were interviewed 14th of March 2003 tells how she loved the inhabitants of seemed to have experienced much Rotterdam problems with reactions to their skin colour. Adeline re-migrated later to Surinamee but she loved Rotterdam and "Then I found a new home, with Ms. de Grave, a former patient I its inhabitants while she lived there. had taken care of. I had a coal stove, but did not know how to make it work, so I lived in eternal cold. The house was located in a working-class area, and I must say, they were great people. They had become my family. Rotterdam North had become my family. I was their child. They were ordinary locals, many of them I had nursed. You met many older people, who were very grateful. You just have to give a little bit of love and you get so much in return. It's unbelievable. "

None of the nurses that were interviewed seemed to have experienced much problems with reactions to their skin colour. That the Netherlands stood out positively had certainly to do with the Colonial Surinameese Society. Skin colour used to play an important role in getting a job in their country of origin.

Estimations of the number of Surinamese nurses who moved to the Netherlands during the late 1950s vary. It was at least two hundred, but it is more likely that there were more. In 2003, the names of 184 women were retrieved. Eleven had died by then and the residence of seventy-one of the women was unknown. 125 women could be located. Slightly less that a quarter of them had moved back to Suriname. The large majority had stayed in the Netherlands, although some had moved to Canada, the United States or Curacao.

Most of the women said they did not know what to expect when they arrived in the Netherlands. Some of them quit prematurely because of a conflict, or home-sickness, or because they were unfit for the job, or because they became pregnant.

How many of them succeeded to get a degree? Of the sixty-eight women of which detailed information has been collected, forty-seven (70%) got one or more degrees. 29 got the a-degree. 26 got the b-degree. 21 got the midwife certificate. Other special rainings that were undertaken y this group included those for work in the surgery room, for ophthalmology and neurology, and training to become a teacher

“This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the Anna Lindh Foundation. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of EUROCLIO and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Anna Lindh Foundation” What Rika Hoogstad did with her diploma After my basic training in the psychiatric hospital, I went to the Delta Hospital Dijkzigt for the A-degree. I have also done further training, such as the operating theater training. In 1967 I went back to Surinamee, ten years after I had left. There I could substitute in the operating theatre of the newly built Diaconessen Hospital. I stayed there more than one year, it was very hard work. I've never worked so hard ever. The staff was Dutch, they were nurses who had come to Surinamee on a three years‟ contract. At that time there were no graduates from Suriname, only trainees. I enjoyed the work , but I was alone and was therefore thrown back upon my family. But I was not their daughter anymore but guest. I did not fit into that lifestyle. Moreover more and more of my peers moved to the Netherlands in the late sixties. Back in the Netherlands I first worked one year in a nursing home. Then I was invited to the Van Dam hospital to work in the operating theater. I did that for three years and then I switched to the Dijkzigt hospital where I worked until my retirement.

Poortugaal, 1958 posing with flowers after the graduation ceremony in the hospital‟s garden of Maasoord in the front at the right Irene Dongen, Rika Hoogstad behind her Irene Wong.

Qualified personnel in the health sector are often scarce and their departure to Europe would come with a loss of expertise in their homeland. This goes against the principles of the Dutch policy for development aid. In 2001, it became an official policy that nurses from outside the EU are allowed to help the shortage on the labour market in the health sector if they do not come from Suriname or South Africa.

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“This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the Anna Lindh Foundation. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of EUROCLIO and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Anna Lindh Foundation” Brain drain Debate in the House of Representatives on the labour market in the health sector Member of the Dutch Mrs. Kant (SP): Parliament Agnes Kant President! The reason I have (Socialist Party) posed in the requested this debate has to do with recruiting nurses from outside the EU and parliament many questions our resistance to it, which I have already expressed. Health care institutions may related to the brain drain in the in the coming years to 7000 nurses and careers from outside the EU, e.g. the health care system of other Philippines to the Netherlands. I have five reasons why I did not find desirable. countries (e.g. Suriname and These I will briefly mention, before I issue a motion… South-Africa), such as this one on May 24th 2000. The fourth reason is that it is highly questionable whether sufficient efforts have been made within the EEA countries to recruit. Is actively sought everywhere, in Germany, and how is it verified?... I find it outrageous that our staff want to solve problems in health care by withdrawing people from countries where the situation is worse. I have looked into the problems of the Philippines where people on average die 10 years earlier than in the Netherlands, and infant mortality is six times higher. There they have the care run by 43 nurses per 1000 inhabitants, here we do it with 400 to 500 nurses per 1000 inhabitants. Experience has also shown that Filipino nurses who come to the Netherlands, not return to their country, as has been set by the terms, but e.g. move on to the United States. Often, the experienced people are selected so that there does exist a kind of brain drain. The condition is that the people are not needed in the country itself…

At the time of independence, in 1975, Dutch subjects living in the colony of Surinamee were given the choice of Dutch or Surinameese citizenship. Amazingly, 200,000 out of a population of 450,000 left Surinamee for the Netherlands – a level of migration that is staggering in size and scope. Today, the population of Surinamee has rebounded to roughly 450,000, while 300,000 people in the Netherlands trace their ancestry to Surinamee. While only 2% of the population of the Netherlands is Surinameese, 40% of the Surinameese population lives in the Netherlands.

Like all immigrant groups, the Surinameese experience in the Netherlands was initially rocky, with high rates of poverty, crime, drug use, and unemployment plaguing Surinameese communities. But, similar to the path followed by the “Indos” (immigrants from the Dutch colonies in Indonesia), Surinameese have slowly and steadily integrated into mainstream Dutch society without any major obstacles or delays. Unlike migrants from Turkey or the Middle East, Surinameese migrants spoke Dutch and were at least marginally familiar with Dutch culture. Additionally, the migrants who came from Surinamee were generally far more educated than those who stayed behind, a fact which helped them find jobs and independence.

We can conclude that they are rather well integrated in all layers of the society. There are small groups of mainly Moroccan youngsters of the second and third generation mixed with Dutch autochthones that attracts attention and receives attention on the front pages of newspapers and on television.

The Netherlands is a more multicultural society than it used to be. There are 16.5 million inhabitants on nearly 34.000 square kilometres, (400 inhabitants per square kilometre) and people from abroad continue to come in, attracted by our prosperity and wealth.

Apart from the former colonial migrants and guest workers in the past, in recent years many asylum seekers came to the Netherlands and people from the new European countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Rumania.

How to cope with this influx? In recent years there has been a rise of populist movements with an anti-immigration perspective. The tone in public debate has been hardened, as in many countries , not only former colonial ones. Very painful for the good willing and for the successful persons of the second and third generation. While the CBS report from November 2010 states that 40% of the youngsters In higher education are of allochthone descent. One should not forget the Dutch history: Still the Netherlands is an open trading country that has always profited from its contacts abroad and immigrants coming and contributing to its growth.

“This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the Anna Lindh Foundation. The contents of this document are the If yousolewant responsibilityto know of EUROCLIOmore andclick can underhere no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the Anna Lindh Foundation” What is the legacy

Ruud Gullit (left) and Marco van Basten, played for the victorious Netherlands soccer team at the European Championship in 1998.

Ruud Gullit is one of the most famous Dutch football players of Surinameese descent. His aunt, Hertha Gullit (sister of his father), came to the Netherlands in 1957 to work as a trainee nurse in the Bergweg hospital in Rotterdam.

Harry Ganpat (Suriname 1933) was a pioneer in introducing Surinameese food in the Netherlands. When he saw the Surinameese community grow in the 1960s he realized that there was a market for products from the country of origin. He began with a small Surinameese market stall in The Hague and opened his first shop with tropical fruit and vegetables in 1966. In the beginning he imported the products from Surinamee, but later from Indonesia, Thailand and India as well. Today it is hard to imagine there was a period when one couldn‟t buy a roti or a mango.

Roti

Tropical fruit in the market stall of the Surinameese merchant Harry Ganpat (Den Haag 1975).

Eating on Kwakoe festival

At the Kwakoe festival that has been organized in Amsterdam every summer since 1975, food from Suriname plays a central role.

Many women from Suriname were connected to the „Evangelische Broedergemeente (Moravian Church). In the 1950s, the EBG had only three establishments in the Netherlands: in Haarlem, Amsterdam and Zeist. Surinameese travelled to these locations for official matters.

The travelling friar Prinsen offered a solution for more regular contacts. He visited nurses who worked or studies, which got him the name „Friar of the Diaspora‟. He guided people, paid attention to their problems and arranged church masses. The dates and locations of the masses where to be found on a programme that was send around every month. The main event of the EBG was the service at Palm Fifteen Surinameese nurses from various Dutch hospitals do Sunday. The festive, white clothing was send from , their confession on March 22nd 1959 at the Evangelical together with the bags and of course the Halbe Community in Zeist. (small white hat). People from Zeist dressed in black.

Father Prinsen in the center Father Prinsen in the front

Fifteen Surinameese nurses from various Dutch hospitals do their confession on March 22nd 1959 at the Evangelical Community in Zeist.

The Dutch hospitals were not alone in their search for personnel abroad. On the other side of the channel, the door was wide open for nurses from abroad. At first, Britain looked in neighbouring European states. It caused quite a stir when they placed job advertisements in Dutch newspapers. People were afraid that as soon as Dutch women would hear about their opportunities abroad, they would pack up and leave. In the fifties, the majority of the nurses in training would come for the Caribbean islands. Just like their Surinameese colleagues, they came from those areas that used to be called the West Indies, or simply: The West in the Colonial Era.

Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957. Nine black youngsters are confronted with an aggressive crowd when they force their own entry in a white school. Serious riots are the consequences, and president Eisenhower is forced to intervene. In the same year Harry Belafonte sells one million copies of his LP Calypso and shoots the movie Island in the Sun. Tension rises again because of this. The movie is banned in South Carolina due to a „mixed‟ love scene, even though the lead actors don‟t kiss each other. In the same year, about one hundred Surinameese women came to the Netherlands to work in hospitals. Most of them saw the movie when it was shown in the Luxor Cinema at the Kruiskade in Rotterdam.

Audio-file: Island in the sun by Harry Belafonte