I can see now that my son looks like my father

Edwina was half a year old, when her mother left Bandung (Java) in 1950 to go to the Netherlands in search of the missing father, the Dutch military Eddie de Haan. Edwina will not see her mother back until 53 years later: mother Wanda stayed in the Netherlands and the young Edwina remained in Indonesia, where she grew up in foster care. It is Edwina's daughter Dinah who managed to complete the quest for the unknown father Eddie.

"My mother Wanda had to work during the day, so she brought me, a tiny little baby, to her older sister. But I became very ill and was brought to the hospital. My aunt had a family and that was probably busy enough for her. So I was taken care of by my foster mother, Bertha, a nurse who had cared for me in the hospital and wanted me dearly because she was childless. My foster mother and her husband already had adopted a few children. I consider her as my savior, even though it was not always easy with her. She was very strict with me, and could also strike if necessary. Her husband, my foster father Sukmaja, spoiled me very greatly.

The only white person

I have never been told that I was adopted, so I did not know better than that I was Edwina Rani Lokayanti, instead of Edwina Mary Cornelia, my official baptismal names, as I learned much later. As I got older, around the age of 12, 13, I felt that something was wrong. My other siblings were all much darker than me. They were jealous of me, I was the white child with the blue eyes. At the end of the 50s it became more difficult for light-skinned children in Indonesia. Even my friends at school did not play with me anymore. On the street I was often scolded. Sometimes I came home from school, crying because I was bullied: "Hey, white, white!" Or they called me a bastard child. My father was a policeman. And he made sure that there was often someone walking with me to school, one of his assistents. When I was a teenager, we had a shepherd dog that accompanied me to school. And that dog could even defend me when it would have been necessary. Later, when I started working, I was often brought to work with my father’s Jeep. Which was not the case with my other brothers and sisters.

Often I asked my mother: "Why am I the only white person?" But she never answered clearly. "It's nothing, don’t pay attention," she said. My father did not want to hurt me and kept saying ‘you are my daughter’. But deep in my heart I knew I was not their child. I asked everyone, my mother, my uncle, but nobody told me the truth.

Finally the truth?

Until I got married. Then I got to hear the truth from my uncle, and he gave me the name of my real mother and how I could reach her in the Netherlands. But I have never contacted her, I was so hurt that she had left me when I was a little baby... This truth was so terribly painful! I did not want to hear, did not want to know, did not try to find her. My husband was a diplomat and we spent three years in the Netherlands. But all those years I have not contacted my mother.

Until one day my mother took the effort to contact me, in 2004. I was already grandmother at that time. She got my adress from her sister here in Indonesia because my mother did not know how she could reach or find me. My aunt undertook a search and finally heard the rumour that in Bandung a 'white Indonesian woman' was living who could speak the Indonesian language of Sundanese. That must be Edwina, she thought. And so was my first contact with aunt Frida. And it was very strange, but despite that I had never seen her before, I felt a kind of solidarity, as if a well-known person is standing in front of you. I was so emotional! Why did this take such a long time? I now have occasional contact with my aunt, but she still does not want to talk about my mother or my father. So I only found out once more that many things about my past are veiled, hidden or lied.

And then I saw my mother for the first time. She is an IndoEuropean woman, as is signaled by her name: Wanda van Sprang. She was nearly 80 when I first met her, and I was 53. We embraced, but still ... something was missing, a feeling. It were her grandchildren from the Netherlands that had urged her to visit me before she would die. After all these years she still told me very little about my father. How they met, that sort of thing ... and I did not dare to ask not much, did not want to hurt her feelings. So our contact remained aloof.

I still do not know much of my father. Actually, only that he was a musician, that he played music in a band, and that’s how he and my mother met. She said she hade loved my father an awful lot, and that I looked like him. But when she had loved him as much as she said, and when I looked like him, then she should have loved me too, doesn’t she? Why has she abandoned me?

A new family!

For me this encounter was enough. What should it bring me at my age? I do not want any claim, it seems this was the path I had to walk. But my daughter Dinah had gradually gotten some more information from my mother and my aunt in Indonesia. And she began searching the internet for her grandfather. She posted a call on the website of the 7th December Division. I was already a bit desperate, because we were searching for so long. But maybe I would rather not find him. I worried that I would derouse the live of others ... that it would not be convenient. That my father was happy with a new family and did not want to be disturbed. And suddenly, I had already given up the courage, one year after the call, we got a response from a woman, Gerda. She had accidentelly run into our call on the internet. The names of her father Edward Mary Cornelis are exactly like my baptismal names, Edwina Mary Cornelia. Everything was right. It appeared to be my sister! My father had died a couple of years before, but he has five children in the Netherlands. And now that we found each other, it seems like they really accept me as a sister.

We send pictures back and forth, and now I can see that my son really looks like my dad. And one of them, Gerda de Haan, will come visit me next spring.

The story of Gerda de Haan, the Dutch half-sister of Edwina, can be read on this website in the category 'Stories - Family & kin' entitled ‘Out of the blue another sister!’