Ode to Ernestine Comvalius | In solidarity with the rejected of the earth

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When I walked through the Women in the City exhibition in December and saw the names of the women in the Odes, including my own Ode to Pearl Dias, I was moved by all these love declarations made flesh for the many Kankan Uma's of Amsterdam. Primordial forces are being honored here. And rightly so. But when I heard her distinctive voice via the device that guides visitors through the exhibition, I also knew that I was still missing one Black woman whom I would like to add: Ernestine Comvalius. So there.

Lady Bijlmerparktheater
 

Comvalius is known to many Amsterdammers as Lady Bijlmerparktheater. The former director, co-founder and board member of the Bijlmerparktheater - and formerly of Krater - has just turned seventy, so my request to talk about her life and career certainly takes her back some forty years in time.
 

Ernestine: “My first job after graduating was as a policy officer at an umbrella organization of the Volkshogescholen (community colleges) in Driebergen. There, but also at the Alcides welfare organization, I learned that all those prejudices about our institutes, Black institutes - like banana republic and such - are completely unfounded and that corruption has a different face in the Netherlands and is nicely packaged in terms like 'networking'.” ”And before Driebergen I worked part-time as a psychology and social skills teacher.”
 

She bursts out laughing at an inside joke and when I ask for an explanation, she says: “It's as if I didn't see teaching as a job because it was part-time, but it was my very first work experience. Half of the participants in my classes were Surinamese. They were a bit behind when it came to theory, but when it came to practice, the patients loved them. In my free time, I – the only Black woman on the team – gave them tutoring, but more about the psychology of the Netherlands. In training, they learned, 'Yes, these people should be as independent as possible and do everything themselves. The Surinamese and Antillean caregivers would then say: 'But they are elderly, you have to take care of them, you have to give them warmth.' I said: 'If you say that on your final exam, you can forget about it.' So I helped them learn how to navigate here and how to integrate into this country.”

There is a silence and she thinks for a moment. Her face is a beautiful mix of African and Asian features. Her energy is also extrovert and introvert: expressive and thoughtful at the same time. She continues: “After the Volkshogeschool I started at Krater, part of the welfare organization Alcides where Elin Robles also worked, about whom I wrote an ode for the exhibition Women of Amsterdam.” Now she weighs her words.

“Look... At Alcides they didn't see the importance of art and culture in and... they didn't know anything about it either.” She bursts out laughing before continuing: a laugh like a clear mountain stream. “But that gave me the freedom to build Krater entirely according to my own vision. And it was a success. ‘Well, Krater is the cream of the crop, the icing on the cake’, the director of Alcides would say. But when those raisins in the porridge proved capable of attracting thousands of people and raising money, they didn't want to let it go, of course. But with a lot of pain and effort, I managed to do just that. You don't want to know what I went through there... false accusations, corruption... Anyway. I'm glad that time is behind me. I wanted to work there because I was tired of advising municipalities and governments on diversity as a policy advisor. My goal was to be at the helm and I thought: Hey, I'm here in Southeast, very diverse, these are my people. What can I do?
 

She looks at me proudly. “My work was an extension of my previous work as an activist. I connected my mission and my life. That has been my motivation... And also that I saw and see Art and Culture as the heart of society.” Now she sighs for a moment.

When I suggest that it can not have always been easy, she looks at me quizzically. “I had a lot of trouble with the sector. That's why it was important for me to be able to create my own bubble here in Southeast Amsterdam, because otherwise I would never have lasted in the theater sector. Here, in Southeast, I fully developed my leadership qualities. I have never worked so hard in any of my jobs, but what saved me was that I kept working on my own development and self-reflection.

I don't think I ever got burned out because - no matter how hard I worked - I always continued to take courses in self-development. At the end of the nineties, the Nestheaters foundation came to Southeast with their large banners, as if Southeast belonged to them. One of the Nestheaters employees spoke in the newspaper about the children of Southeast and said that they were “unpolished and had a very thin layer of civilization”. My colleague Isabel and I looked at each other in disbelief and said: What are they writing? Are they talking about our children? I then wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper asking if they had come to do development work to bring civilization - which, by the way, we had not asked for... But some of the problems also had to do with the district itself, which looked down on its own local initiatives and then went out to find others. But as soon as things got a little difficult, they left. Yes, everyone came and went, but we are still here.”

Vintage Ernestine: if the truth must be told, she does not beat around the bush. But the way she says it is always considered and diplomatic. She never just blurts something out. A quality that makes her a pleasant partner to work with. And when it comes to difficult matters, she is always discreet, correct and - as I have often noticed - extremely loyal. When I ask her about her childhood, she says: “I myself am really one of Nicole's (Terborg, ed.) typical children”, says Ernestine. “I lived in Surinam in an extended family in a big house. My grandfather had ten children and every once in a while one would leave. My mother was the fifth child who was expected to have a great future, but then she became pregnant. And no one knew who the father was. When I was two she left for the Netherlands to study and build her life there. I stayed with my grandparents and my aunts. My mother's oldest sister, Mama Ine, was married to Johan Adolf Pengel, who later became prime minister, and they lived on the top floor. Mama Ine later divorced him and went to the Netherlands to study. I myself went to live with my mother in the Netherlands when I was nine, after my grandfather passed away. It wasn't a success, but what could I do?”
 

She takes a sip of water. “So I lived with my mother in Rotterdam, who had since married a white man. I lived there until I was fourteen and that was sometimes difficult. But I regularly visited my mom Ine who lived in The Hague. When mom Ine decided to visit her oldest sister in New York, she took me and my niece with her so we could go to high school there. Senior High. There I had a life of parties with long evening dresses, long gowns. And I lived with Mama Ine, who had always been a kind of mother to me anyway.” She giggles when she thinks back to that time.

“We moved in with my aunt Nadia, who was now a gynecologist and had her own practice. We lived in the suburbs, in Westchester County. It was like a Raising in the Sun setting: we lived in a neighborhood with a private beach with only millionaires around. My aunt was the only Black doctor who lived there. Her patients would come to her parties, such as the wife of Louis Farrakhan - the leader of the Black Muslim Party - or Rockefeller's ex-wife.

“When I was seventeen I returned to the Netherlands to study in Utrecht and I raised myself. It was a bit lonely, but fortunately there were also older students at the Surinamese student association who took you in if you had no family in the Netherlands. That child-rearing thing was always glorified a bit. Like: “that's our culture and ooh how great we are, we take care of each other's children!” But in the meantime, nobody talks to that child... So that child thinks: “all the nieces and nephews have a father and a mother but I don't know who my father is and I don't know what my mother looks like.” And then you go to live with your mother and if that mother is a disappointment, well... then you start to drift. And the other aunts, they have given you their love and everything they could give you and they think it's nonsense that you want to know who your father is. So they say: “We're here, aren't we! That's it.”
 

“Now you see that those activists talk about healing, but we didn't know that word back then. If you were part of a movement, you were tough, feisty, combative. And your sadness and your insecurity were at home, with yourself... Fortunately, I wrote my poetry and in it I found solace and my tender moments. In my poetry, I could talk - with myself - about the pain...”
 

In passing, she confides in me that she is going to publish her first collection of poetry this year. “I feel that the time is right and that I am ready.” After our conversation, she emails me two more intimate poems and the collection of militant poems she wrote when she was an activist. “Yes, I am especially proud of my activist past. And also that it took shape not only in the academic world, but also in my work and in my interactions with the people around me in various neighborhoods in the city. It is not my legacy, although it is part of it, of course. Just yesterday I was on a panel and I talked about the monument for the victims of the SLM plane crash, opposite the OLVG hospital. I told how I made sure this happened and reminisced about how that time gave my life an important turn.”

She suddenly stops talking, comes closer and continues in a slightly softer tone. “Many people don't know this, but I have dreams.” Now she looks at me meaningfully. “And just before the SLM disaster, I also had a dream in which Ida, Henri (Does, ed.) and I caught people flying and put them in a kind of oven. Two days later, the disaster happened... It was June 7, 1989. The accident itself did indeed happen in Suriname, but all of the deceased had Dutch nationality and lived here. And almost everyone knew someone or was otherwise closely involved. We were in our early thirties and quickly set up a committee. The community was in turmoil: no one was prepared for this. There was no help or assistance for the people. I was at Schiphol when the bodies were brought back.”
 

“In André Reeders house there was a telephone available 24 hours a day to give people information and assistance. I didn't do it alone, but I was the coordinator of that project. And because I was constantly in Amsterdam for the committee, I also moved to Amsterdam, because I was constantly here. I worked for the committee for three years as a coordinator and made sure the monument was built. I also fell so in love with Hanoch, my husband. At the first commemoration of the disaster, which took place in Havelte where he worked as an educational worker and where he was our host, I saw him in action with the relatives and I thought: “Oh what an interesting man, we should evaluate him soon...” She laughs again, and I laugh along.
 

Then the conversation turns to the great absentees in her life: her biological father, whom she never knew, and the sons she gave birth to, but who died shortly afterwards. “You know I lost two sons, right?” I nod. “My mother doesn't know that I have dreams, but in one of my dreams I once dreamt about an older woman, a friend of my grandmother's in the past.” She remains silent for a moment. Takes a breath. Exhales, then continues: “I had my eldest daughter when I was twenty-one, and two years later I had my first son, but he only lived for six months because he had no bile ducts. And my second son, who I had when I was 27, died soon after birth. After that, I didn't dare to have children for a long time, until I was lucky enough to have my youngest daughter. But after I lost my second son, I pressured my mother to tell me who my father was.
 

“She said that I already knew his sister and finally, about ten years ago, I did a DNA test that showed that the man my mother said was my father is indeed my father. That is the Chinese branch of my roots.” There is a short silence. ”I had the results of that test delivered to him through a third party, but he never contacted me. But inside I am happy and not worried, but yes... Sometimes I still find it difficult that my father does not want to have any contact with me. On the other hand, I understand: my mother was nineteen when she became pregnant. But he was five years younger. That's where the drama lies.”
 

Ernestine smiles at me. Her gaze gives me access to her great inner world. “But that older woman I dreamed about is the mother of my biological father. What I like is knowing that she held me in her arms after I was born. And that without knowing that I was her grandchild.” I am silent and moved. Ernestine feels my emotion, and I don't know if it is awkwardness or habit when she cheerfully laughs it off and says: “Yes, I have led an eventful life, haven't I?” “How beautiful that you dream,” I say. She replies: “Yes, sometimes my dreams are prophetic, other times I get answers...”

“When I turn off my recording device,” she says. ‘My husband is also full of stories. I should record him sometime and work on that because voices, eh...’ and then she casually tells about a man she recently ran into after fifty years and how his voice took her back in time. ”Like a fairy tale.” She smiles and switches to another memory. “There was once a meeting here at the Bijlmerparktheater with Sylvana Simons and others about racism, and it was said that the previous generation had not gotten around to resisting. I thought: Wait a minute! I am that previous generation. And then I did get up and step forward to talk about our actions in the seventies. Because we were a large group: Henri Does, Ida Does, Roy Wijks, André Reeder, Celestine Raalte - the poet - we ran into her at the market and at first she walked around us in a big circle. Until she gradually joined us and we published our first collection of poems with her, poems with a Marxist slant.”

“We showed solidarity with the outcasts of the earth: our poetry was above all combative and activist. I wrote about an arrow that went through the heart of imperialism, but I also wrote about a cleaning lady. We didn't have internet, of course, but we made our own newspaper, the Wrokoman, and we were self-sufficient with membership fees and the proceeds from the books we sold. It wasn't academic activism, we were more engaged in extra-parliamentary activities, by which I mean we worked with the people, in the neighborhoods…”
 

“We had a core team, but when we had demonstrations, people from the neighborhoods joined us and sometimes there were hundreds of us. We studied at the university, but that was not our place of struggle like it was for Gloria Wekker and Elin Robles, Philomena Essed. I followed them, but they perhaps followed us less: they were more concerned with the question of how to call themselves, while we were concerned with the economic position, racism, refugee policy... or we were concerned with Surinam and migrants. We gave shape to our resistance by carrying out very idiosyncratic actions. For example, we went to a live TV broadcast and unfurled our banner and flags to protest against the refugee policy. Great consternation: the then Secretary of State Haars was hastily removed and we also had to flee because we could be arrested. And we kept ourselves busy with what was happening in Suriname, such as the December murders.”
 

“We were the first to reject the 1980 coup: there were going to be elections and it was also a military coup. Well, that was not appreciated. We had a well-attended meeting in Ganzenhoef, in the Bijlmer, and there was a very tense atmosphere. Supporters of the coup came armed. I remember that Roy Wijks had to remove a man with a knife, and I was in the security service and saw that someone wanted to throw a kind of Molotov cocktail at the speakers. I jumped on that man and took the bomb away from him. I just want to say that it wasn't a game, the activism of that time.”
 

“After that we founded the SLM committee and then came the nineties. A period of less activism: we had children, others returned to Surinam, Curaçao or Aruba. It was also a decade of increased individualization and advancing capitalism. Yes, I am glad that the younger generation has picked up the cause again in this century. It is always a relatively small group that is active, but it can have a very big impact. So at that meeting with Sylvana Simons here, I also said that it is not the case that it only started with the reaction of young people against Zwarte Piet. When we were doing research on Anton De Kom, we also discovered that there was already a movement that preceded us in the 1930s. There is always resistance. And there is always a movement that precedes you.”

Neske Beks