2/2 “My father is Dutch and my mother is from Suriname so I am a mix. In the past few years there have been a lot of debates about racism and many people are starting to speak out. For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to act in these discussions. Still I somehow felt that I needed to define my role within this new movement so I started to research the concept what it means to be an activist. I interviewed many activists and feminists. I became more aware of racism and I got more guts to speak out. For a while I would stand up whenever I would hear someone say something racist or sexist. I noticed that some people around me would take distance because of that. I sometimes would even go against my own father and I would point out the fact that he is a white man. Soon I also realized that it doesn’t work to drop little bombs everywhere I go. I realized I was losing nuance. I don’t want to look at my father as a ‘white man’, but as a person I don’t always agree with. I’m not only my skin colour either. Now I know that I can still be an activist and stand up for myself. I won’t be silent anymore, but but I don’t need to end up in a debate everywhere I go. Through my research I never really found an answer to what defines an activist but along the road I did find an activist within myself. ”

½ “I used to be an intern at a television network. Things were going really well and after two months we had our annual editors meeting. The editor in chief had prepared a presentation in which he summed up all the things the network had achieved that year. In the final slide of his presentation there was a caption that said: ’‘Diversity” and right underneath my name was written. When I saw my name up there I froze. I felt so ashamed and at the same time I wondered if they had just hired me because I was contributing to the diversity within the network and not because of my talent.“

“I got my first smartphone 2 years ago when I became a manager at the restaurant. It was a hard job and I worked way too many hours. It caused me to have a burn-out a few months later and so I had to quit my job but I got to keep the phone. In the following months I just rested, traveled and dedicated more time to things I love and being with people I care about.

I am a person who overthinks situations a lot. I wanted to be more spontaneous so I tried a lot of new things like downloading Tinder. I have this love-hate relationship with Tinder but like I said, I wanted to stop over thinking every situation so I decided to just go with the flow and have some fun.

One day I had a match with this girl on Tinder and after talking to her for a while we decided to meet up. We ended up talking the entire evening. A few days later we went to the Vondelpark and we sat there for hours. Even though I just met her we had a really good connection and now 7 months later I get to call her my girlfriend. We are currently on a one-week-living-together ’‘trial” but It has been 11 days and I haven’t been back to my own apartment ever since.“

“Great.. now they think they are getting a cookie!”

“The birds teach me to reconnect with nature. Most of us neglect our relationship with Mother Nature. We are too distracted trying to own her. Meanwhile we feel guilty and think that we are destroying her but we couldn’t be more wrong. She is a strong force who feeds us and gives us oxygen. She can live without us but we can’t live without her so the only thing we are destroying is ourselves.”
“If you could talk to her, what would you say?”
“Mama, I love you!”