With a lot of music and traditional dance, a group of Moluccan walkers was welcomed this afternoon in Assen. The 75 participants in the Mars ‘From Hout to Steen’ walked from the former Woonsoord Schattenberg to the Moluccan district 1.
A group of men in red clothing storms over the Klenckestraat with a wild look. Under the guidance of Tifa drummer, they wave around with machetes and spears. Occasionally a loud cry sounds. It is all part of the Moluccan Tjakalle-Krijgsdans, in honor of the jubilee walking tour.
Just before that, the walkers entered the neighborhood. A dance group with girls and women welcome them after an almost twenty kilometer long trip. It started on the grounds of the Kamp Westerbork Memorial Center. Moluccan families stayed at that location for twenty years who had been brought to the Netherlands after the Indonesian War of Independence.
The soldiers of the former Royal Dutch-Indian Army (KNIL) arrived in the Netherlands in the 1950s. Once here they were housed in residential areas, including the old Voornerkamp Westerbork, which was renamed Schattenberg. The Moluccans built a new life in the wooden barracks. Many people from the second generation were born in the residential resort.
The walk symbolizes the departure of the first generation of Moluccans from the barracks in the residential resort to Huizen in Assen. That happened in 1965 and marked a sensitive moment in the history of Drenthe. For many Moluccans, it now became painfully clear that they would not return to their birthplace, but that they were supposed to stay permanently in the Netherlands.
“It’s a special place for me,” says Isaac Pattikawa from Zutphen. “My parents were brought through the Netherlands and I was born here,” he says. The march ran in Pattikawa with his parents today. “It is a commemoration for me, but I also enjoy walking.”
The walking tour takes Van Schattenberg via cemeteries in Hooghalen and Assen towards the Moluccan neighborhood. Along the way, the participants stop at the De Slingheborg residential care center, where Moluccan elderly people live. Children join the group at the shopping center on Nobellaan.
The Moluccan neighborhood has been in existence for exactly 60 years this week. The streets are decorated with flags and the flag of the South Moluccan Republic (RMS) is fluttering on many houses. Everywhere music sounds and the along the road are countless neighborhood residents who want to capture everything from the celebration with their smartphones.
Pattikawa in the front of the procession, clearly enjoying the party in the neighborhood. The company stops at the Moluccan Evangelical Church. “If I walk here, I really feel the reception in the neighborhood inside. Beautiful, the most beautiful there is.”