How One Couple Practices Hospitality: An Interview with Jenneke & Cees
“But sometimes you see that a certain help is needed and if you can offer it, you offer it.” – Jenneke and Cees are good friends of the Noelhuis Catholic Worker in Amsterdam. Here’s how they practice hospitality in their marriage
This interview originally appeared in ‘N Korrel Zout, November 29, 2024, Volume 36 No. 2
Jenneke and Cees have long been good friends of the Noelhuis Catholic Worker in Amsterdam. Not only is their door always open to us, but also to many others. Currently, a young family is living with them. Their hospitality even extends to animals. Recently, they took in a dog of a former housemate of ours!
Jenneke and Cees have been living in the countryside of Barneveld for a few years now. They have a few small-breed cows that do not give milk, an incontinent old dog, cats, sheep, goats and chickens. Together, we look back on their experience with their special form of hospitality.
How did your hospitality begin?
Cees: Just after we got married. At her work, Jenneke came across a young woman who had been evicted from her room. We lived on a houseboat and had an empty room. We said, ‘Come and stay with us until you find something new.’
Jenneke: Thus, already in the first years of our marriage, we had many people in our house: students, people who needed a break, the neighbor’s daughter with mental health problems who couldn’t be at home for a while. It seemed quite normal to us. Once we lived in Amsterdam-Zuidoost and our eldest son went to university and his room became vacant, it was logical for us to offer it to the Werkgroep Opvang Uitgeprocedeerden[1] (WOU) of the Amsterdam Council of Churches. Later, when our middle son’s room became available, we had two guests. Every time we indicated that we had some space again, someone came through the WOU.
How did you live with each other?
Jenneke: People just lived with us in our family, they ate with us at our meals, we sat in the same living room. They followed the same rules as our own children: helping with the dishes, cooking now and then, doing chores around the house.
Why did these people need a place to stay?
Cees: We started with people who were otherwise homeless. We were not afraid to take in someone who was mentally struggling. Later, when we lived in Amsterdam, it was mostly refugees, people who didn’t get shelter or had already exhausted all legal remedies.
How did this affect your family and personal life?
Jenneke: The children took it almost for granted. They never complained about it. It did them no harm and they didn’t hold it against us.
Cees: A boy who lived with us once said, ‘Cooking is so easy here. You don’t have to spend four hours looking for firewood.’ That you spend half a day every day looking for firewood to cook food doesn’t occur to you. Such encounters broaden your view immensely.
Jenneke: Exactly, you become much more aware of the situation in other parts of the world and what terrible things people go through, including young people. We also ran into the incredibly bad laws for refugees and for undocumented people. You see that people who are severely traumatized have almost no chance of getting a residence permit, because they cannot coherently tell their story. If you give them rest, they are able to get there. Actually, they have a double right to a residence permit.
Cees: Once a woman told the IND[2] that her husband had been arrested. And that a day later, the police arrived, threw her husband’s body on the pavement and drove off again. The IND’s next question was: ‘Did you report that to the police?’ That way, you unsettle people so much that they cannot continue the conversation.
Jenneke: Actually, that’s how I became really politically aware and critical. We saw better and better how the system works —and that we completely disagreed with it. At a simple level, we are all human with each other after all, regardless of colour, culture or creed. Many of the boys who lived with us were Muslim. That actually always went well.
I did have bad feelings about a young Russian woman who I really didn’t know asking if she could live with us. But Cees just said, “We’ll see.” So we agreed on a four-week probationary period—and she has simply become like a foster daughter to us.
How did their stay with you affect your guests?
Jenneke: That’s hard to determine. But I do believe that a period of rest where you don’t have a strict end date, but can quietly be a family member, and know that every day you will get food and a clean and dry bed—that gives people a lot of opportunities.
Cees: Certainly, when you are under great stress, it is difficult to make good decisions. I realize that we really can’t save everyone. But sometimes you see that a certain help is needed and if you can offer it, you offer it. If you don’t have the experience of caring for other people, you’re missing something important about being a human.
Jenneke: In time, we became so adept at dealing with lawyers and filling in the right forms that we were actually able to help some people towards a residence permit. A few people really became permanent members of our family. Others disappeared from our lives after staying with us.
What can you as a family offer that larger places, like the Noëlhuis, cannot?
Jenneke: A lot of personal attention and time especially. Then you notice: ‘Oh, we have to look for a doctor now anyway, a psychiatrist.’ Or: ‘He needs to find an activity.’ You also bring people into contact with other Dutch people, because they are with you for Sinterklaas and family parties. Our Dutch family, friends and acquaintances just meet our housemates and then realize that he or she has no papers. In the media they always hear about ‘illegals’, and, then, in front of them, they see a normal person and not a creepy figure. In that way, I think it has been good for our community as well.
What role does your faith play in all this?
Jenneke: ‘What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me. – Matthew 25:40. It’s as simple as that. In a way, undocumented people are the people who are kept down the most. For me, faith is often something very practical. I don’t worry about whether the Trinity is true or not. But I do worry about ‘doing justice’, making sure that people who cannot ask for their own rights, get them.
What does it take to offer hospitality?
Jenneke: I really enjoyed coming to the Noelhuis often and being able to speak to a group of like-minded people. That made us feel being involved in something bigger than just our family. Such a ‘support system’, in whatever form, is important.
Cees: You also have to stand firm in your shoes and know that there are times when things can go wrong. One of the first women we had in our house threatened us at one point. That was kind of frightening. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t work out the next time.
What has it meant for you as a couple?
Cees: I find that a difficult question, because, for me, it’s hard to imagine anything else. But our lives don’t just revolve around the people living with us: we also went to work, we have hobbies, and that part of our lives doesn’t suffer from offering hospitality.
Jenneke: I think it made us stronger as a couple. We can’t work together so easily in all areas. If we have to do a chore together, we quickly quarrel. But accompanying and hosting we can do very well together.
[1] A workgroup for lodging of undocumented people.
[2] Immigration and Naturalisation Service of the Netherlands
