We need more sweet grannies!

I was waiting at a busstop last week when an old woman came walking towards me. She approached me and told me the bus wasn’t driving that day. There was some kind of strike and it had been on the news. I normally don’t use public transportation and since my head is already full of garbage I tend to forget things which I don’t have to remember. She smiled at me and tapped me on the shoulder.  She told me, using her hands and feets, that I probably didn’t understand the news but that she was going to explain to me where the subway was. I knew she thought I didn’t understand Dutch. Normally I have a quick adroit reply, but as I was watching her trying to explain to me where I had to go, I was overwhelmed by her sweetness.  I gave her my smile and she gave me hers back. I stood up and walked in the way she pointed me and mumbled something like a thank you.

That day I was thinking a lot about her. Althought I’m an originally Dutch girl, I am not Dutch for most people anymore. It’s the way I look, the veil I wear. I haven’t changed a bit, but my appearance make people think I’m a foreigner. It makes people think I can’t speak their languages. It makes people give me flyers on the market to go to school and learn Dutch. It makes people think I am stupid.  It makes people feel they have the right to discriminate me. A politician said a few days before that the fear of foreign influences is understandable and justified.  That the Netherlands is not what it was anymore. Although the politician  used it in a different context,  I realised that indeed the Netherlands was not the Netherlands anymore.  These sweet old grannies are dying and the next generation is not so sweet anymore. The time where you could leave your door open and where everybody knows their neighbour is over.  I live in this house for six years now and I don’t even know the name of a single neighbour.  I greet them every morning, but 9 out of 10 times I get no reply back. We’re suppost to live together, but instead we all live on a seperat island.

Later that day I accidently saw the sweet granny again. She wanted to cross the street, but the cars weren’t stopping. I walked to her, gave her my arm and brought her across. She smiled at me and reached into her bag. She gave me an orange and continued on her way. I don’t think somebody ever gave me a fruit as a thank you.  It was kinda ironic, cause the national colour of my country is orange. She made me smile with her sweetness and I realised that this country now need to build bridges more then ever before.