The maid was in fact her mother

On a hot and rainy afternoon in February 2012, Jenny Dotulong and her husband receive us (Yanuar Siddhartha from Indonesia and Annegriet Wietsma from the Netherlands, who visits Jakarta for two weeks) in their hospitable house in Jakarta Pusat. Jenny, beautician, tells us her life story. The couple Dotulong married in 1969. From this marriage four children were born. Meanwhile, the family is also rejoiced with the birth of two grandchildren. But Jenny knows almost nothing about her own parents.

Mother Rukiyah and father Jan Hansen

Jenny was born in Serpong, a district near Jakarta, on February 20th, 1949. She is the daughter of Rukiyah, an Indonesian woman who fell in love with a military. Her father Jan was a Dutchman: J.F. Hansen from the 7th December Division. Military Hansen was an army doctor in the barracks during the colonial war in Indonesia. Mother Rukiyah worked in the same barracks in the administration. One day Rukiyah got sick and Hansen examined her. That is how their love story began. Since that very moment they spent time together as much as they could. After some periode they decided to marry, but unfortunately the parents of  Rukiyah disagreed. They did not want their daughter to get married to an occupier. Their love however was so strong that the couple finally decided to marry without the blessing of Rukiyah's parents.

The wedding ceremony was celebrated in a small circle of friends. Only few people were invited. One of the attendees was a good friend of Rukiyah, Sana, who also acted as wedding witness. Sana’s finger print on the marriage document can still be seen.
Aftr a while Rukiyah became pregnant, but bad news came along. Military Hansen had to return to the Netherlands. He asked Rukiyah to come with him, but Rukiyah was scared. She had no idea what life in a foreign country would look like. It was such a distant country, and she did not speak the language at all. This together with other factors forced the couple to finally get seperated from each other.

The adoption of Jenny

Daughter Jenny was born after father Hansen had left for the Netherlands. What was Rukiyah to do? Going back to her parental home was the only option. However, a new problem awaited her: Rukiyah was only welcome to come back in the house of her parents without her daughter, who was a few days old. Her Muslim parents were not willing to take their daughter back as an unmarried mother with a child of the occupier. So the young mother Rukiya was forced to give her daughter away. Happily enough, the younger sister of her friend Sana was willing to take the baby. Ani had a son aged 8 years and dearly longed for a daughter. But after the birth of her son, Ani had undergone surgery and her uterus was removed. So a baby girl was very welcome in this family. At the age of 9 days, the little Jenny was given to Ani.

Rukiyah went back to her parents and baby Jenny was adopted by her new mother and father. But Rukiyah could not just forget her daughter. She regularly visited the family where her child was growing up. She brought along snacks for her child, and when Jenny was sick, she tenderly took care of the little one. Jenny never realized Rukiyah was her real mother. She called her 'bibik', the usual name for Indonesian domestic servants.
When Jenny was ten years old, the family in which she grew up left for Menado, a city in Sulawesi, where her adoptive father came from. The contact with 'bibik' Rukiyah got broken.
Six months later the family returned to Jakarta. They lived for a short while in their former house before they moved to Ancol, where they finally settled.

The sad Rukiyah tried to find oud where here daughter was living, by asking her good friend Sana (the older sister of Jenny’s adoptive mother Ani and therefor Jenny's 'aunt'), but Sana did not answer. She urged Rukiyah to forget about her daughter and that she should stop to try and find her. Otherwise, Jenny would probably discover that Rukiyah was her biological mother, instead of Ani. And the family thought this would not be good for parents and child.
All these years Jenny never knew her father and mother Ani were not her biological parents.
It was only many, many years later when Jenny heard for the first time that her mother Rukiyah mother had tried several times to trace her missing daughter, but the two have never met.

The truth

Jenny grew up. She got enough love from her adoptive parents. When she met her husband and was getting married with him, it seemed that the secret would be revealed. Her parents told the prospective groom about the situation, but even he dared not tell Jenny the truth. For what use?
Jenny’s adoptive mother died in 1986 at the age of 62. A year later her adoptive father died. The death of her parents marked a new phase in her life. Because in that period the inheritance had to be divided. It was only then that Jenny heard from her brother that the man and the woman she always called mommy and daddy, were not really her biological parents. And so began Jenny's quest.

Jenny went looking for people who could tell about her real background. The one who knew exactly how the story was put together, was of course Sana, sister of her adoptive mother and good friend of her real mother. She had even been the witness at the marriage of her biological parents. Of course Jenny did not know this all, but she heard about the truth when she visited her aunt with a request for information.
With tears in her eyes she heard the truth about her life for the first time. A photograph of a young lady that was shown to her by Sana, reminded her of the woman in her childhood: the faithful bibik who came to visit her every week and took care of her when she was sick. That woman, whom she always had called bibik, was her biological mother! It was very painful for Jenny to hear.

Sana told Jenny about her father also, who was revealed to be a Dutchman. Suddenly all sorts of questions that she had always felt when she was a little girl, fell together like puzzle pieces. Why am I lighter in color and why do I have blonde hair while my brother is dark, with black hair? Why did my friends at school always call me ‘buleh’ (white) or Belanda (Dutch)? She suddenly remembered an episode when her mother gave her a severe punishment and a neighbor said “how can you give your daughter such a harsh penalty? You would not do so if she would be of your own flesh and blood.” At that moment Jenny had not understood the meaning of it and thus had paid no attention to it. Why had nobody ever told her all those years that Rukiyah (which she always had thought was a member of the house staff) was her real mother? Even asking that question to some people, led to unsatisfactory answers. No one had dared to tell the truth, sooner or later. "We were afraid for the pain of your foster mother," they said, and that was it. Even when mother Rukiyah had asked the people where the foster parents of her daughter had moved to, no one dared to tell her. Jenny has finally heard from Sana, after much insistence, that her mother Rukiyah had already deceased years before.

The hope

The secret is revealed. The story is told. What could Jenny do? One of the children of Jenny who is studying in the Netherlands and has settled there, got the idea to find his grandfather Hansen, the biological father of Jenny. With the help of friends, he began a quest. Jenny did not really want that at first, but finally she thought: If my father has deceased, I would like to visit his grave. And maybe I have half-brothers or half-sisters. These include the things that Jenny hopes to find. In 2007, they appeared in the Dutch broadcasting program ‘Spoorloos’. But there was no response.

Unfortunately, the quest still has no result. And now Jenny tells us, with occasional tears in her eyes, her life story. The search is far from over. Maybe she can find her Dutch family in this way, by placing her story at www.warlovechild.org

Interview: Annegriet Wietsma

Text and translation from Indonesian: Yanuar Sidhartha, Jakarta

The contact addres of Jenny is known to the people of this website Warlovechild.org