“I grew up among the Dutch people,” she says. “At school I was the only tinted girl, so I always felt different.”
At the same time, she also found no complete connection with the Moluccan community. “During the weekend we often went to my family, but there too I was an outsider. There were other norms, values and habits. They ate rice, while I got potatoes, meat and vegetables at home. It was constantly switching.”
We don’t talk about that
In her youth, Nanariain can still deal with that indefinable feeling, but the older she gets, the heavier it presses. She wants to know what it means to be Moluccans, but she hardly gets answers. Her family is silent about the past – and not without reason.
“My grandfather was in the KNIL,” says the Haarlem. “He was recruited by the Dutch to fight against the Indonesians, who competed for independence after the Second World War. My grandmother, like the other soldiers women, stayed behind in Java. They experienced the most horrible things: killing, corporate punishment.”
The period thereafter, when the family fled to the Netherlands after the takeover of power by the Indonesians, was also traumatic. “They were housed here in former concentration camps, in barracks,” she says, audibly emotional. “My father was born in Camp Vught. Really horrible. These people had fought for the Dutch flag, but were tucked away somewhere afterwards.”
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