Nov 19, 2008 Posted by Herko on Nov 19, 2008 in Personal notes | 0 comments

Heroes

I would like to write a bit about Heroes. And as much as I am a fan of the sci-fi drama series, I’d like to write a bit about my own heroes. Peo­ple who inspire me, and who teach me some­thing about myself. Since I’m eas­ily inspired, and know very lit­tle about myself, I have many heroes. But some are extra spe­cial, and they deserve some sugar from me on this blog. Espe­cially since they’re family.

This may sound like a huge cliché, but both my par­ents are my heroes. But it veers away from the cliché dogma because they are not my heroes because they are my par­ents. In fact, I feel that they left their par­ent­hood behind, and moved on to become my heroes.

Head and heart

My mother used to work hard as pres­i­dent of a non-profit ama­teur writ­ers guild, pro­mot­ing and devel­op­ing writ­ing skills for ama­teurs. Since she stud­ied orga­ni­za­tional sci­ences with a major in the art sec­tor, she felt intel­lec­tu­ally at home. Her board of direc­tors how­ever showed a degree of ama­teurism too, and she was forced to quit. Being close to the age of 50, and at a time of reces­sion, she had a very hard time get­ting a new and chal­leng­ing job.

Then some­thing hap­pened that turned her whole life around. She met a sailor.

You have to under­stand that my par­ents have split up over 20 years ago, so my mother meet­ing some­one is a good thing. This man was build­ing his own sail­ing boat all by him­self, and he intro­duced my mother to the wide open and free world of sail­ing. And she was hooked. Hook, line and sinker. She went to the Col­lege of Sea­far­ers and learnt how to nav­i­gate, take apart a diesel engine, cal­cu­late depth based on the com­po­si­tion of the water, and inter­pret the weather. All these things were so new to her, but she rel­ished in the edu­ca­tion it brought her. And it opened a whole new avenue in which to day­dream about mak­ing long trips to far­away places.

And then the boat was sold.

This was a bless­ing, because now they could find a new ship to buy, and use the left­over money to travel. They went to Eng­land, France, Bel­gium and even Turkey to look for a new ves­sal, but they even­tu­ally found their dream boat in the United States of Amer­ica. The Mag­net was anchored in Wilm­ing­ton. Cal­i­for­nia. West-coast USA. On the ‘wrong’ side of the continent.

So they decided to travel from Wilm­ing­ton (just below LA) to Baha Cal­i­for­nia, MX, and from there across the Pacific Ocean to the Mar­que­sas Islands, Bora Bora, Tonga, Fiji, New Cale­do­nia and onwards to Aus­tralia. Just the two of them, on a 50 ft sail­boat, across the Pacific. Hav­ing the great­est adven­tures, going to the most beau­ti­ful places in the world, meet­ing new peo­ple, mak­ing new friends. Liv­ing life to the fullest.

That’s my mom. I’m so proud of her liv­ing her dream! That’s why she is my hero.

You can find her blog at www.reismeemetdemagnet.info.

Stolen heart

My dad is a retired col­lege pro­fes­sor who had a stu­dent that went to Ghana, West Africa to learn about orphan­ages there. This stu­dent was so taken by the needy chil­dren that she decided to start her own project to cre­ate a children’s home. My dad thought this a wor­thy cause to sup­port, and did his best to raise money for the Wa Yiri Children’s Home, in Wa, Upper West Region, Ghana.

He became more and more involved, rais­ing funds, pro­vid­ing every­one infor­ma­tion about the chil­dren, even help­ing out in select­ing who would be accepted in the Wa Yiri home, and more painfully, who wouldn’t.

SO it didn’t really come as a sur­prise when he told me he was going to Ghana to help with the final selec­tion and attend the open­ing of the Wa Yiri Children’s Home.

He went there, and left his heart with the lit­tle children.

That was 2004. In Feb­ru­ary 2005 he went back to Ghana to look into the oppor­tu­ni­ties for him to start new projects to raise funds and vol­un­teers, together with the locals and Ghan­ian gov­erne­ment, to help out the needy chil­dren in the Upper West Region of Ghana.

So far he started an AIDS hos­pice where women and chil­dren come to get love and care and die in peace (or, with the arrival of Anti-Retroviral-Treatments, get them into the med­ica­tion pro­gramme and send them back into soci­ety). This project has recieved a lot of media atten­tion in Ghana, includ­ing a meet­ing with Ghana’s Sec­ond Lady, who praised the project and donated sacks of food.

He also started pro­vid­ing med­ical treat­ments in the out­ly­ing vil­lages, where peo­ple are too poor to go to the hos­pi­tal. He’s no MD, but he has trained nurses and med­ical stu­dents and other vol­un­teers to help him out.

He started sev­eral other projects as well, such as a street chil­dren project that gen­er­ates some of its own income, an edu­ca­tion project for illit­er­ate chil­dren, and a shel­ter home for street children.

He’s now real­is­ing his Big Dream by build­ing a com­plex of build­ings that will house all the projects in one place: the Child Sup­port Ghana Res­i­dence. The Child Sup­port Children’s Home (for­merly the Wa Yiri project), is fin­ished now, and the kids now live there. The AIDS Hos­pice is near­ing completion.

My dad felt he could still be rel­e­vant in soci­ety, but also found that at home, the rel­e­vance was lim­ited. So he fol­lowed his heart and went to Wa, Ghana. He’s found his call­ing, and fol­lows it through to the limit. And that is why he is also my hero.

You can fol­low his work on the Child Sup­port Ghana Foun­da­tion web­site, or on his per­sonal weblog Under African Skies.

Oh, and I help him out by being the sec­re­tary of the two Dutch Foun­da­tions that sup­port his projects.

A fam­ily of Heroes

You might think ‘so, what is it like to have a fam­ily of heroes?’. For me, there’s two sides of that coi

On the one side I’m immensely proud of what they’re doing. It shows to me that it is never too late to find a new dream and to fol­low it. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. And you don’t need to win the lot­tery first to be able to live your dream.

Also, it pro­vides me with some great new expe­ri­ences as I visit them in some of the less trav­elled places in the world. I’ve been to Ghana in 2006, and vis­ited my mom in Fiji this sep­tem­ber. SO they’re a per­fect excuse to travel far

The most dou­ble feel­ing is that they both feel that they can go out into the world because me and my brother have turned out fine and are inde­pen­dant enough to make do on our own. I’m glad that they did and do, but by doing so, they stopped being my par­ents and became some­thing else.

You see, they’re lit­er­ally not there when you might need them. Oh, I get lots of love and sup­port, that’s not a prob­lem. But being a par­ent is also about pro­vid­ing the safe haven, the home­base, pro­vid­ing well-meant but unasked advise, being there at major and minor events in your life, basi­cally being part of your life. And all those things I pro­vide for them, from a distance.

Is this a prob­lem? No. I love them more for doing what they do, and they’re right when they think and say that my brother and I are inde­pen­dant, strong peo­ple who can deal with what life throws at us. But hav­ing heroes as par­ents isn’t all good.

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