A century ago, a black schoolmaster was the odd one out in ‘gloomy’ Nieuwe Krim/Dalerpeel. ‘He taught the boys to swim and they taught him to skate’

Muddy dirt roads. Dead straight neighborhoods with ships to transport peat. Bridges with a railing on one side only. Only intended to reach the other side on foot. Here and there some stone houses. Otherwise dilapidated chain and huts far into the field. Where large families had to do everything they could to keep their heads above water.

‘A gloomy region in the peat bogs’, is the first sentence of the book that historian Huib Minderhoud, who died last year, wrote about the Christian school in Nieuwe Krim/Dalerpeel. It has existed for a century this year, reason for celebration.

Poverty

Despite the poverty, the villagers had managed to afford a church and a parsonage at the time. ‘They had to scrape together the money, as it were saved from their own mouth,’ writes Minderhoud in his book from 1993. Around 1920 there was still one big wish left: a private school.

,, Village children were mainly dependent on the public school in Steenwijksmoer at that time. They went there on foot via all kinds of muddy paths, or sometimes by boat,” says Klaas Veldhuis, who is committed to a large photo exhibition about a hundred years of primary school in Nieuwe Krim and Dalerpeel.

Quarrel in the school board

Distance and bad weather were a major obstacle to the journey to Steenwijksmoer. This also applied to the public school in Dalerend. But according to Minderhoud there was another important reason for having its own school: the village wanted Christian education. Not only for the reformed church community of evangelist Willem Veldmeijer, but also for the Reformed. They were mainly peasants and farmers. The two movements would regularly get into a fight with each other in the school board.

That mutual suspicion was there from the start. It was to be determined by lot which church party would be the first head of the school. The Reformed won, and Master De Koning was appointed on their behalf. The Reformed came with Master Venghaus. ‘As black as the peat water in the Dommerswijk’, Minderhoud notes about how surprised the village community was at first about his skin colour.

Swimming and skating

‘It was very special that a Surinamese master was appointed,’ writes Jenny Spaargaren about her youth in Nieuwe Krim and Dalerpeel. Spaargaren is the granddaughter of evangelist Veldmeijer, next to whom Venghaus came to live. ‘This master was much loved by the parents and the schoolchildren. He taught the boys to swim and they taught him to skate.’

That swimming happened in one of the many neighborhoods. In return, one of his students promised to help him skate. ‘But he secretly sprinkled some sand on the ice beforehand. When the master fell all the time, the miscreant was watching with pleasure.’ Despite this, Venghaus learned to skate very well, writes Minderhoud.

Venghaus also had school children’s choir Het Mosterdzaadje under his wing. He wrote a song that one of his students could still sing along seventy years later. ‘Guys, what a jool! ‘t Bimbamt, ‘t Bimbomt. Upstairs at the school. Now we step into the beat. And never be late. Bim-bam-bom-bam-bam!”

youth leader

Venghaus was a kind of youth leader for the boys who had grown up, but that didn’t last long. After only a few years he contracted tuberculosis. He had to give up his job. According to Minderhoud, he moved to a larger house in De Krim, where he spent another year curing in a tent. In 1927 he died. The whole school attended his funeral.

Within ten years of its foundation, the school had five classrooms, making it the largest in the region. CNS (Christian national school) became CVO (Christian folk education) to now CBS (Christian primary education) Willem-Alexander. The school had three locations in those hundred years.