…and then, on your way home from training, you get stopped by a middle-aged African man who tells you, only with the slightest accent, that he’s a fifty year old, Sudanese school teacher with two daughters, aged 4 and 5, who has been in the Netherlands for the past four years, working hard to learn the Dutch language and customs (with success, I can honestly say), who just learned today that he is to be flown back to Sudan tomorrow.
He says he will be brought to the airport under police escort and flown back to the country he left four years ago in search for a better life for his daughters. He says he’s happy they are allowed to stay, but that he’s heartbroken that he will not be able to watch his children grow up. He says needs money to take a train to France and submit himself to a humanitarian organisation that he’s heard might be able to help him. He asks if I can spare some money. He says he’s 163 euro and 35 cents short for his ticket.
I tell him that I can’t help him. I tell him that my finances are spread thin. He starts crying and tells me that this is not the land of hope that all the Dutch believe it is. I say nothing, because what’s there to say, really. He’s right. It’s not the land of hope for all.
Having talked to a few people about this incident, I often got asked whether I believed him. I came to the conclusion that I simply don’t want to live a life where I can’t do anything nice for someone I don’t know being afraid that I’m being conned. You go with your instinct.