Laura Broersen (28, ponytail, shorts) walks across the field with firm steps. All around her is the tapping of hammers. We are in Huttendorp Stede Broec, six hundred children from the West Frisian village Bovenkarspel build huts here for a week.
Laura Broersen usually walks through the residential groups of Esdégé-Reigersdaal just as energetically. As a nurse in care for the disabled, she works with clients with severe disabilities. She helps them shower, escorts them to daycare, and back to their apartment. Pretty heavy work, so you might think: if you’re on vacation, you’re going to have a good rest. But no. Every year she takes time off to build this scaffolding wooden paradise.
Huttendorp Stede Broec was founded in 1981, when a local garden plant grower wanted to do something for children who could not go on holiday. That ideal is still alive. Broersen: “If you can’t afford it, you can participate for free. And for the others we keep the price low, with the help of the municipality and sponsors. We borrow tractors, local growers bring pallets, the Lidl from the village gives fruit.”
This morning she is sitting on a stage with fellow supervisors watching twelve-year-olds splash each other with their water bottles. T-shirts and shorts are soaking wet. Broersen: “This is freedom. They’ve been messing around all week, their cellphones don’t come out of the bag.” What pleases her: “They experience that you can be satisfied with little.”
hit newspaper
On inspection along the cabins. The little ones need more help. Broersen holds the nail of a seven-year-old with pink sunglasses and an oversized hammer. “Delicious. So was I. I remember when I was seven I was hammering in a bikini with my best friend… always in love with someone from the leadership.” She laughs: „And posters from the hit newspaper stick in your cabin, from the Beastie Boys or Spice Girls.”
As the daughter of a chicory grower, she is handy. She stretches a tarpaulin over a hut, so that it is watertight for the overnight stay on Thursday. “You can see who works with their hands at home. Yet most children pick it up quickly.”
And she is not just familiar with tackling things: “You have to look closely in care for the disabled. Some people can’t talk, you can see what they want by how someone moves their hand. I also keep an eye on the children. Is there a fight? Do they eat and drink? You pay extra attention to safety with the little ones.”
Why does she do this every summer? Broersen: “On Monday morning you see shy faces and at the end of the week, dirty and crying with fatigue, they shout: I want it never to end.” And then: “You can achieve so much for a child. There is a kind of magic in a group that did not know each other before.”