Zuidlaren has a special Bed and Breakfast. Today the doors of guest house Wachtershof, which is specially equipped for people with aphasia, open.
Behind the house of Vicky Voorbraak and her family is a new black barn house with a thatched roof. Completely in style with the environment. The adjacent mill De Wachter watches over the guest house. More than three years ago, Voorbraak moved with her husband and two children from Roosendaal to Zuidlaren. Especially to realize her dream: to set up a guest house for people with aphasia.
“I am a speech therapist. During my study I noticed that my heart beats faster in people with aphasia,” says Voorbraak. “So I specialized in that direction. Soon a dream arose to start a hotel where people with aphasia can stay and also work.”
With the guest house, Voorbraak has made her wish come true in a slightly different form. In the adapted holiday home, problems that people with aphasia encounter are taken into account in all sorts of ways. For example, there is an extensive breakfast menu, where a meal can be put together with the help of images.
“If you get aphasia, for example due to a stroke, your communication is actually taken away. You can compare it to a visit to a supermarket on holiday in a country where you don’t speak the language. You want to ask where something is and you have to ask making gestures clear,” explains Voorbraak. “People with aphasia have that too, but in their own language.”
In addition to all kinds of practical adjustments, Voorbraak can bring its guests into contact with people who are struggling with the same. “People have problems with reading, writing, understanding and speaking. So connecting in the hectic society in which we live is difficult.”
Two years ago, she set up a foundation to promote communication between people with aphasia: In contact with aphasia. “With the foundation we try to empower people by organizing activities by people with aphasia, for people with aphasia.”
She also wants to implement this principle in the guest house. “A few villages away lives a gentleman with aphasia who really likes to cycle. He has offered to plan a bike ride with the guests if necessary.”
What Voorbraak hopes above all is that people can be themselves in her guest house, without being constantly confronted with limitations.