Last week Friday, museum Willet-Holthuysen, Amsterdam.
In a few moments the Amsterdam councillor for the arts, culture, events, inclusion and anti-discrimination policies Touria Meliani will accept a copy of my bilingual book Nederlands is zooo makkelijk | Dutch is sooo easy in attendance of a group of curated guests.
There she comes!
After a few welcoming words by the museum manager, I start the introduction to my book.
I talk about my hometown Amsterdam, a city where people of over 180 different nationalities live together. Where I teach Dutch to many of these individuals who came here for as many different reasons, but who are as one in my class.
Touria Meliani listens with interest as I speak about the diversity in my classroom, the willingness of my students to listen to each other, learn from one another and accept each other fully.
No reservations.
When I finish, the councillor comes up beside me and responds directly to my speech. No standard talk. No prepared words, read from a piece of paper. It’s as if we’re in a lively conversation, rather than in a formal book presentation.
She shares about the time she migrated to the Netherlands from Morocco as a six-year-old child, and how it was the reciprocal interaction with their neighbors that made her feel at home here. No one-way stream, but curiosity and willingness from both sides to learn from each other.
In her beautiful talk, straight from her heart, she indicates that my book has the same feel and message as what she experienced then.
She advocates that learning is never a one-way stream. It’s the merging, the interaction of different cultures and languages that will take us people, and our city of Amsterdam, to a new common future and a new common language.
Amen to that.
