Herinneringen - T. Doelwijt
Hier komen persoonlijke verhalen over 'het Caraïbisch familiearchief'
Thea Doelwijt vertelt over haar overgrootmoeder Misi Bethania:
MISI BETHANIA
Mi afo komopo na nengrekondre
Soko hé, soko nyun gron
My ancestors come from Africa.
My great-grandmother is still furious: Mrs Albertina Hermina Doelwijt, better known as miss Bethania, born in 1847, year of death unknown.
After the abolition of slavery she worked so hard and saved for such a long time that she was able to buy a house and a yard. Yes, there, at the corner of Molenpad and Koningstraat.
People sang for her: Misi Bethania, yu presi na moi fu tru.
Mrs Bethania
Your yard is truly beautiful
So many beautiful flowers
So many faya lobi... passionate love
Your yard is so beautiful
Like Bethania in the Bible
So many swaying palms
Everything in her life revolved around freedom.
For years it seemed so far far away… that freedom. Nobody believed that the chains would ever be broken.
And yet it happened.
Miss Bethania, are you happy, i bréti?
She is looking at me from the golden frame. In her lap is a dish with fruit and one dried fish. The photo is brown and here and there are stains.
Angry she is, still angry. “Lib’ mi. Den bakra ferfer’ mi. Leave me alone, the whites, the Dutchmen, they irritate me.”
The Dutch insulted her terribly. Didn’t you read about it? First, they talked about it, for ten long years.
That was in 1853: they established a State committee in The Hague for the abolition of slavery in the colony of Suriname. Then they talked and talked… It was already 1863 when the slaves were freed: the first of July.
Miss Bethania sniffs: “Not 1863... 1873!!!
You’re stupid. Here in Suriname, there in Holland, you’re stupid cows, you only tell lies. Nobody talks about the period of Government Control anymore, while after 1863 we still had to work on the plantations for ten years. Allegedly as free people... What free? We weren’t free at all.
And those Dutchmen, those bakras, they interfered in everything.
Especially in your love life... They considered marriage such an marvellous thing that they wanted everybody to get married... especially ‘those blacks’. You do know what those Dutch people said...
-What can we achieve with measures to promote marriages among the blacks?
--Nothing. Their disposition is against it.
The black man sometimes lives with six or seven women and seldom with less than two women at the same time.
While the women are usually involved with more than one man.”
Miss Bethania, my great-grandmother is a whore, who annoys the missionaries in such a way that they exclude her for five years. She may not sit in church from 1875 until 1880... ‘Barred because of whoring’... really, it is written like that.
And what does miss Bethania say? “I take the man I want and after that I again take the man I want. And my children and I keep the surname I chose. I won’t get married, never.”
Thus my name is Doelwijt and all of us, we Doelwijts, white Doelwijts, black Doelwijts, are related to each other... thanks to miss Bethania and her white and black men!
Miss Bethania still sulks. “Those missionaries are jokers, they don’t understand a thing. When you marry, you become a slave again. That’s the problem.”
Dit verhaal is eerder verschenen in "Diversity is power", Schrijversgroep '77, Suriname, Paramaribo 2007
foto Thea Doelwijt: Usha Marhé