It is a festive day in nursing home Sint Barbara in Wijbosch. There is cake, coffee and high visitors from the mayor for the hundred -year -old Egberta. The sister who once went on a mission to Africa is still shining from zest for life. “You don’t have to sit down.”
Egberta is sitting at a large table, along with a lot of other sisters. For her special birthday she gets a letter and photo of the king from the mayor of Meierijstad. “I’m going to frame it. Very beautiful. I never dared to think I would get this.”
“Because I have been quite sick, but luckily I eat again,” she adds full of zest for life. “If you can stay healthy and good with Geest, it’s nice. That you are not a burden for other people. My father and mother both became hundred, so I have good genes, I think. I had a great life and I still have that now. “
Sister Egberta was born in the village of Rijkevoort and comes from a large family with six brothers and five sisters. She went to the domestic school, but she spoke a lot. Later she went to the sewing school in Boxmeer. In 1950 she entered the Sisters of Love in Schijndel.
She worked in the hospital at the time and taught. In 1964 she was asked to do development work in Zambia in Africa. “It was exciting, certainly with the language. I remember that I was told that I had to learn a group of boys to make stones. They were meant to build houses.”
“But I didn’t know about that at all, because I didn’t have to do that at home,” she says. “And they had nothing there, so everything had to be done by hand. I just learned to do it. It was a pleasant and fun time together. I learned a lot from them and she from me,” she laughs.
She remained in Africa for more than twenty years. Egberta eventually returned to Schijndel. “If you see what she has experienced at the time, that is really not normal. It is nice to see that after all these years she can still have the pleasure of celebrating her centenary,” says the generally super sister Agnes Vos.
The sisters don’t just let the special anniversary pass. After coffee and the cakes there is a celebration in the chapel in the nursing home. Family also comes along and everything is also recorded on camera by the 87-year-old sister Arnoldi. “You can only be grateful for that you can still do that.”
“I always did this with another sister, she was in charge of this, but she is no longer there,” says Arnoldi about the film work. “So I am trying to do it as well as possible now. I film and assemble all this for the annual overview. Then you need pieces of everything that happens throughout the year.”
And the crown piece of the day, sister Egberta herself, also gives away a gift. It is a golden tip about how to turn a hundred years old. “Well, you just have to live a healthy life. And accept the normal life of every day. If things go wrong, then it goes wrong. Don’t get stuck with it, but take it as it comes and get the best out of it.”
