I often think of him. Even yesterday I did

The story of Ibu Sulatra

I am willing to tell you my story, but I have forgotten a lot. I'm so old. I do not even know my own age. Maybe I'm already 90 years old. But I always kept thinking about him. Even last night, before I knew you were coming, I thought of him. It is as if he visited me in my dreams. Actually I still love him. Honestly.

A village girl

I was born here in Gianyar, Bali. I met Mr Geisler in Denpasar, where he was stationed as a soldier. He was a sergeant major. I met him in a military house where I worked in the household. I think he was the same age as me. He was single, and I was not married either.
I found him very handsome. Handsome and tough, a pretty boy. I'm very wrinkled nowadays, but when I was young, I was pretty, though! He was in love with me, and I was in love with him. I was really terrible crush on him. He spoke some words Javanese. And he taught me a few words of Dutch. He said he loved me a lot. "As if you're my wife," he said.
He took good care of me. But sometimes I did things wrong, and then he said to me, "that's stupid of you." I was a real village girl, I could not even read and write, and he was an officer. There I was embarrassed. And I was shy when he took me somewhere. “Silly girl”, he would call me. If he said that to me, I was always sad.

A soldiers coffin

We went living together in a house, he rented a house for me in Kayumas. He came home Saturday to Sunday and went away again. He was sometimes a long time away, as the fighting intensified. The war was very violent. Then he had to go there. He always came back home after a while, then out of the blue he stood in front of me. I never knew exactly when he would come. And suddenly he departed from Bali to Java, to Semarang. It all happened very quickly. I stayed behind. I was pregnant. He left some stuff behind, in a wooden box, and left. For a long period I got no message at all.

He let me know he had to leave to the Netherlands. The war was coming to an end. He asked if I wanted to come with him. I had quite a big belly, was seven months pregnant with our child. But I was afraid to join him. In a foreign country, with a small child. I can not read and write, so I thought that will be a disappointment. I cried when he left for the Netherlands. But I could not go with him. Someone came to collect his coffin with with his clothes and stuff that he had left behind in our house. I could not stop crying. He had been so nice to me, with so much love!

A Dutch child

The doctor at the hospital where I was going into labor, was a Dutch woman. She said: "Is this a Dutch child?" But I was afraid if she would discover that it was a Dutch child, and said “no, it's the carpenter’s.” She did not believe it. And then I told her the father had left me.

Once in the Netherlands, Jack let me know that he wanted me to call our son after him. So I called him Jecky. After Jecky was born, his father sometimes sent me letters from the Netherlands. This lasted for a year or so. And sometimes he sent money. With that money I could pay for the delivery costs in the hospital, and we could buy food. But after a year the letters stopped. He was married, he wrote me. And the contact got broken. Nothing was sent anymore and I lived in uncertainty whether he would come back to me. I was really hoping that Jack would come back to Bali, but he never did.

I was very poor then. I did everything just to make money. I worked with people in the household, as a worker, I started a small business ... I accepted everything, if only I had money to buy rice for me and Jecky. I took him to my work, always carried the child with me. Where could I have stationed him otherwise? Family helped me out sometimes, but could not help every day. Later I happily found work around my house, as a cook.

Jecky really looked like a foreign child, he really looks like a Dutchman. His hair, his eyes. If I were with him on the alun alun, people said: 'Look, a Dutch child. ' He was also bullied by other children. They called him names, that he was the child of a Dutchman, and that he had no parents and stuff. He was insulted a lot.

In 1952, I married to someone else, here in Bali, and together we had six more children. As old as I am, I still have to work. Because we do not have enough income to feed all the mouth of the family. There are many children and grandchildren. I plait baskets and I sell it. That is to buy rice. Jecky does not live with us in the yard. For since his Dutch father never contributed financially to the family yard, Jecky could not continue living here.

Finally back home

A while ago a relative of father Jack from the Netherlands visited us. They came with a message from him. He talked about his wife, and that he himself was ill. He did not have much money to help us. But he kept on sending messages, and a picture of himself.
He is now deceased. But when my great-grandchild was born, we went to the dukun, as is the custom here in Bali. The child had reddish hair, and did not look like a Balinese. More like you, reddish. All the children and grandchildren of Jecky look Dutch. The dukun asked the spirits: Who wants to become reborn in this child? What spirit wants to come in this child? And the dukun said that the child was occupied by a foreigner. The dukun and the family did not understand. A deceased foreigner? But I did understand immediately. His great-grandfather! It was him who wanted to be born again in his great-grandchild. It struck me emotionally. Finally Jack has returned.

The story of Ibu Sulatra’s son Jecky can also be read on this website, in the category ‘Warlovechildren in Indonesia’ and is called ‘A reunion after death’.