Peter: “We met in Leontine’s native Burkina Faso. I worked there in the late 1970s as a water manager for the consultancy firm Iwaco and Leontine was an office manager there. That’s how it happened. We got married in 1984.”
Leontine: “We had known each other for five years at the time, but it took a while before we liked each other.”
Peter: “I was in Burkina for six or seven months a year for projects, the rest of the year I was in the Netherlands.”
Leontine: “We got to know each other better because we did a lot together as colleagues, even in our free time. And I sometimes went on field work to make contact with villagers.”
Peter: “From 1983 onwards I was in Burkina all year round and we only went to the Netherlands for holidays, where our three children were also born.”
Leontine: “In the Havenziekenhuis in Rotterdam, because they spoke French there.”
Peter: “Our sons grew up in Burkina and Mauritania, where I also worked. We returned to the Netherlands in 1995.”
Integrate
Leontine: “I found it difficult to integrate here. Pieter often traveled and I didn’t speak Dutch. To be honest, I thought that all Dutch people spoke French, because Dutch development workers in West Africa speak that language. I changed from an autonomous woman into a dependent woman, I get sad again when I think about it. I found that more difficult than the cold here. I couldn’t even understand the teacher at school, I couldn’t make myself understood in the supermarket. I felt handicapped.”
Peter: “I couldn’t do much about many problems remotely, even though we called a lot. I did try to find work in the Netherlands, but that didn’t work. I felt quite despondent at times.”
Leontine: “I learned Dutch at the evening school in Rotterdam, but not well enough to find a job. Moreover, the school hours here are such that I always had to take children to school and pick them up. And then there were swimming lessons, football and music lessons at different times, I could do little useful in between. I was the only black woman in the village where we lived at the time. Fortunately, I spoke too little Dutch to understand all the opinions around me. When I went to Dutch lessons, the children had the key to the house. There turned out to be all sorts of opinions about that, I discovered later.”
Peter: “When we moved to Capelle, at the time a brand new neighborhood where everyone was new, things went better. There Leontine could make a new start.”
Leontine: “I found myself again. I started working at an insurance agency with a French-speaking department and later I found a job as an administrator and personnel manager at a language school. I then completed a coaching course and started working as a coach for teachers and study counselor for students at the ROC Albeda College in Rotterdam. I also provided training in intercultural communication from my own practice, Karfo Coaching, for development organizations, among others.”
Pieter and Leontine’s entire house breathes Burkina Faso.
Faith plays an important role in Leontine’s life.
Photos Mona van den Berg
Compensation
Peter: “Five years ago we started a kind of compensation period. I retired and Leontine started focusing on connecting communication training in Burkina Faso.”
Leontine: “With all my experience, I wanted to return to my country for a long time. I felt that I was needed in Burkina, which has been disrupted by terrorism, internal refugees and fear. I retired early and am now working there to build a new, non-violent society. It is volunteer work, I am not paid for it.”
Peter: “We have been there about six months a year since 2020. We have furnished a house there together with her family.”
Leontine: “I am now coordinator and head trainer of the non-profit foundation Maison Karfo Ubuntu Non Violence, which provides free training in connecting communication. That is why you see giraffes everywhere in our house: they symbolize a way of communicating from empathy, because they have a big heart.”
We will try to maintain this combination of living and working in Burkina and the Netherlands for as long as possible
Peter: “We live in a kind of compound, where we want to set up a training center for Nonviolent Communication for young people, women and displaced persons, but also for (policy) officials and people with influential positions. The Onasku foundation, which supports us from the Netherlands, and the Maison Karfo Ubuntu foundation are now writing a project proposal in the hope of finding financiers for the construction of the center.”
Leontine: “We hope that through the training the participants will choose connection and dialogue more often and violence less. Faith is very important to me. God inspires me, because He also wants connection.”
Peter: “I help Leontine where I can. For example, I have arranged solar energy and planted fruit trees. We use her early retirement, my pension and AOW to do this work. In the spring, when it gets too hot in Burkina, we go to the Netherlands for a few months and we are also here around Christmas and New Year.”
Leontine: “Then I provide training in the Benelux, for example for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, but also for the Red Cross in Switzerland.”
Peter: “And we look after the grandchildren a lot, do some maintenance on our house and visit friends.”
Leontine: “But I’m mainly working. My children are worried about that, but now is really the time to encourage innovation in Burkina.”
Peter: “We will try to maintain this combination of living and working in Burkina and the Netherlands for as long as possible.”
Leontine Keijzer-Gango (66) studied business economics in Burkina Faso. She is a coach, certified Non Violence Communication trainer and trainer in the African philosophy Ubuntu (‘I am because we are’). She works in the Benelux, Switzerland and West Africa.
Pieter Keijzer (72) did civil engineering, worked as a water manager in Africa and is retired. Together they run the Maison Karfo foundation, which provides free communication training in Burkina. They live alternately in Burkina and the Netherlands. They have three sons and four grandchildren.
Their income consists of Leontine’s early retirement and Pieter’s pension and AOW, and is approximately 1.5 times the average.
What is your last Tikkie sent?
Pieter: “I have never sent a Tikkie.” Leontine: “I sometimes receive a Tikkie from a younger colleague and I know how to pay for it. But I wouldn’t know how to send one myself.”
Weekly shopping or going to the supermarket every day?
Leontine: “In the Netherlands we go to the supermarket every day, in Burkina I go to the market once a week. We grow vegetables in the garden there.”
What is your latest major release?
Two plane tickets to Burkina Faso.
Second-hand or rather new?
Pieter and Leontine bought second-hand chairs from the estate of a bankrupt company for the training center in Burkina. They have furniture from IKEA for the house in Burkina, but they also have furniture made in Burkina.
How often do you clean the house?
Leontine: “In Burkina Faso very often because of the dust. They are mopped there every day. And in the Netherlands we clean up when we have visitors or when the grandchildren have been.”
What was really a bad buy?
Leontine: “The training device that we bought during corona and that is now doing nothing in the living room. At the time, such a device seemed nice, during all that online work. But when it was finally delivered after months, corona was over.”
Who decides what you eat?
Leontine: “Me usually. And if I have no inspiration, I ask Pieter what he wants to eat. Then he says fries or croquette. Then it will be spinach or cauliflower, haha!”
What do you spend money on with guilt?
Leontine: “I buy a lot of shoes. I developed that preference when Pieter was away from home a lot and my family was far away. Then I wanted something nice for myself.” Pieter: “I think she has fifty pairs. I have two pairs of shoes myself.” Leontine: “But I always buy them on sale.”
What are you saving for?
Pieter: “We have invested a lot of our savings in Burkina. For example, in solar energy and a water project at the family home. We are now saving for a heat pump in Capelle.” Leontine: “And for school fees for nephews and nieces, so that they can study and have the same opportunities as I do. That is a total of about 1,200 euros per year.”
Tip for household or finances
Leontine: “Don’t make impulse purchases. I also rarely go to the market, because then I always come back with more things than I needed.”
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