CHAPTER THREE
A BIRTH AND ALMOST DEATH

When I was a young boy, my family moved a lot. My father was raised in Indonesia, a tropical haven, part of the Netherlands East Indian empire. My grandfather, being Dutch and therefore a traveler, ran the post office in Surabiu, one of the big cities, and they enjoyed the comforts of colonial life When he retired, in the 1930s my father was fourteen and so they all moved back home to Holland. I think my father always longed to return to his boyhood home but the Second World War interfered and then Indonesia demanded its independence.
It was during the war when Germany was occupying Holland that my parents met and despite the risks, married and started a family. My sister Liesbet was born in 1944, while Europe lay in ruins, and two years later my brother Johannes arrived. My father was eager to get away from the devastation of the war and back to his boyhood roots. He joined a company that was opening a lumber camp in the jungles of Borneo. This was in 1948, when Indonesia was recovering from the Japanese occupation and had just declared independence from Holland. To get to the village, you had to take a boat trip. I have no memories of this time, but think it took about five days once leaving Jakarta, Indonesia. Now the jungle where I was born is a city of half a million people, but at that time it was a native settlement with two or three other Dutch couples to start the lumbering. My father’s job was to put the infrastructure like the roads and electricity in place. Out of the swamps and jungle, my father laid out and started a new city. I have never revisited the city but once I saw it on the news, as they were having riots there.
After arriving, my mother became pregnant with me. I don’t think I was part of the plan as my mother was trying to find her place in a small jungle settlement next to her husband and two children. It was much too risky to have a baby in the jungle with inadequate medical facilities, so my mother had to take the boat back to Jakarta where she and I could be properly cared for. Unfortunately, she felt lonely in a strange city and nothing in her upbringing had prepared her for this. Being strong-willed, she promptly sailed back to be with her husband despite the risks. I was born with the help of the two Dutch ladies who were also living there. Apparently there was a local doctor but he was sent away as more nuisance then help. However he was able to save my life a few hours later because I caught a tropical disease. I developed a high fever and there was nothing to do about it because I was going to die. I was in luck though, as the doctor finally confided to my father that he had a new wonder drug called penicillin. He only knew the dose for adults and he hoped that he and my father could think up a good quantity to give a twelve-hour-old baby. So I survived being somewhat unwanted and born into a hot humid world with inadequate sanitation and a shot of penicillin. For a long time I have had a feeling that my birth was not a happy time for me and recently I visited Jay, a hypnotherapist who helped me to reexperience my birth. As I entered the birth canal, I again felt the pain and anger of not being wanted. It was my right to have a loving mother to help me on my journey from spirit into the physical world and I did not want to be born without that. It was my sister Liesbet who made me feel welcome in her love and enthusiasm for her new baby brother. Later my mother was able to accept me and to shower me with her love and warmth and I became part of the family constellation. My birth taught me to be independent and sensitive about not being wanted. It was hard then to be trustful of people. Looking back at my life, it has been interesting to see how I have often set myself up to confirm this belief that I am not wanted.