Overheard at university: ‘My dad says I should drink less, judging from my facebook-pictures.’
‘Well I didn’t hear from my dad for a while until one day he called and said ‘you have a spelling mistake in your last blog-post”.’
I know a lot of people get married because they feel they have met ‘the one’, their ‘soul mate’, or even ‘their other half’. I’m not one of those people. Walid and I love each other, but our marriage is mainly a practical affair: staying together when you are from different countries requires a lot of paperwork – an amount that can be significantly reduced by getting married. That one marriage certificate replaces a whole lot of other paperwork. Unfortunately, it seems to also replace half of who I am. Cases in point:
In the Netherlands, we have compulsory health insurance, with an accompanying system of financial assistance from the government for those (like me) whose income is too low to pay for coverage. Walid, due to the type of residence permit he has, is not obliged to have this health insurance, nor does he qualify for the financial assistance. So I apply for it on my own, in my own name, for myself, mentioning Walid only as my legal partner.
A few weeks later the application is approved and I get the money in my account. Surprisingly, it has Walid’s last name on it. I call the Belastingdienst (Tax Offices) to ask what happened. Well, says the lady on the phone, it’s your husband’s name, so he probably applied for it. I’m pretty sure he didn’t, I answer, since he doesn’t even speak or write Dutch, nor does he have insurance or qualify for financial assistance. In fact, I remember very well filling out the form MYSELF, under MY name, to get MY money. The lady fails to see the problem. But he’s your husband! She says again, what does it matter? It matters because I am not my husband, I say, I am ME.
The only way to change this, according to the lady of the Belastingdienst, is to write a letter to their offices requesting a ‘name change’. See that? Not a correction of my name, a name change. To get them to address me by my own name.
**
Last week we moved to our new house, and yesterday we went to the offices of the municipality to register our new address. For the sake of efficiency, as all of this is in Dutch, I do the talking; I answer the questions, I ask what other steps need to be taken, etc. Basically, Walid is just standing there because he has to be there in person for the registration.
After all necessary information has been noted and the required copies have been made, the lady behind the counter prints out a form and says I put the registration in his name, since you’re married anyway, and he has to sign here. So then I have to translate the form for him and tell him where to sign. Suddenly I became the attachment.
**
Yesterday I received a standardized answer to my letter to the Belastingdienst: That they automatically assign the financial assistance to the husband, and there is nothing I can do about that.
I wonder if I will have to divorce in order to be seen as full person again. I may have gotten married, but I did not become half a person. And definitely not someone else’s other half.
(This is the second in a series of posts about ‘unknown Dutch treasures’ – themselves usually well-known, but not the fact that they originated here, in this tiny country. Enjoy.) A while ago, a Lebanese friend was on a business-trip to Amsterdam, and we went for a dinner together. Now Dutch cuisine is not famous, and there’s a reason, so I took her to our colonial cuisine: Indonesian. Still wanting to try something truly local in her short time in the country, she asked for recommendations for beer.
Well, I said, I don’t know what kinds of beer they serve here, but I’m sure they’ll have Heineken.
No, she said, I mean, I would like to try some local beer.
Yes, I said, Heineken.
It might not taste good, but Heineken is definitely Dutch.
Lesgeven in 4 VWO, een vrijwel geheel witte klas in Almere. Ik leg uit wat het verschil is tussen dominante cultuur (“het geheel van waarden, normen en kenmerken dat door de meeste mensen binnen een samenleving wordt geaccepteerd”) en tegen-cultuur (“mensen die zich afzetten tegen de dominante cultuur of daar een bedreiging voor vormen. Via protesten proberen deze mensen de dominante cultuur te veranderen”). Een leerling steekt zijn hand op en vraagt: ‘Dus Geert Wilders is een voorbeeld van een tegencultuur?’
Ik probeer hem uit te leggen dat Wilders, hoewel luidruchtig protesterend, juist onderdeel is van de dominante cultuur. Dat hij zelfs vindt dat hij die beschermt. De leerling is het hier niet mee eens. ‘Die man begrijpt het niet. We ZIJN hier toch gewoon allerlei kleuren, met Moslims en alles!’
Wat heerlijk te constateren dat in hun wereldbeeld de Nederlandse cultuur niet automatisch wit en christelijk is!
A friend gave me the book ‘Eating Animals’, written by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is not a plea for becoming vegetarian, as you may think based on the title. However, I am sharing these quotes with you because, like he writes, when I tell people I’m vegetarian, they often respond by ‘pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or try to find a flaw in an argument I never made’. Being vegetarian is not an argument. Jonathan Safran Foer's book is an argument. Below is a passage from the conclusion. I suggest you read the whole book and decide for yourself.
“If we are serious about ending factory farming, then the absolute least we can do is stop sending checks to the absolute worst abusers. For some, the decision to eschew factory-farmed products will be easy. For others, the decision will be a hard one. To those for whom it sounds like a hard decision (…), the ultimate question is whether it is worth the inconvenience. We know, at least, that this decision will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in world history. What we don’t know, though, may be just as important. How would making such a decision change us? Setting aside the direct material changes initiated by opting out of the factory farm system, the decision to eat with such deliberateness would itself be a force with enormous potential. What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption? … It might sound naïve to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you sat in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. It would have sounded equally fantastic of you were told in the early 1970s, before César Chávez’s workers’ rights campaigns, that refusing to eat grapes could begin to free farmworkers from slave-like conditions. It might sound fantastic, but when we bother to look, it’s hard to deny that our day-to-day choices shape the world. When America’s early settlers decided to throw a tea party in Boston, forces powerful enough to create a nation were released. Deciding what to eat (and what to toss overboard) is the founding act of production and consumption that shapes all others. Choosing leaf or flesh, factory farm or family farm, does not in itself change the world, but teaching ourselves, our children, our local communities, and our nation to choose conscience over ease can. One of the greatest opportunities to live our values – or betray them – lies in the food we put on our plates. And we will live or betray our values not only as individuals, but as nations. We have grander legacies than the quest for cheap products.”
(Jonathan Safran Foer, ‘Eating Animals’, p. 257-258).
