I grew up in the '70s and '80s in Berchem, near Antwerp. Our neighbourhood was marked by half-completed apartment buildings of the bankrupt contractor Amelinckx.
What seemed desolate and messy at first glance, was an endless space full of adventure to me. The supply of building materials to build camps with was inexhaustible.
The divorce
On Tuesday I could not imagine any other world than the carefree world I grew up in. On Wednesday I was told that that world did not exist. My parents were getting a divorce.There is a stain now where a painting once hung, there is a
hole now where a cupboard once stood. I was 16 and someone had decided that I could choose my parent: my father or mother, the choice was up to me. I did not even know that our family had an "exit". My parents were looking and I was "lost" – a "total loss".
I went to different schools and sometimes at Christmas I was kindly requested to go somewhere else.
Still, I would like to "salute" the teachers who continued believing in me. After thirty years, I still remember their names. Teachers Durth, Waegemans, Claes and Nico Meynendonckx. They gave me their unconditional trust and continued appealing to my sense of responsibility, without judging me.
De MuzeDear Jan,
I recently visited your " Muze". I told you that my 1.5 years of working at De Muze meant a lot to me. You concurred and reminded me that I was on my way to becoming a soldier in the "French Foreign Legion" in 1990.
Maybe it were the beautiful people or the hopeless people? Or maybe it was the jazz? Maybe it was Leonard Cohen? Or maybe it were our talks?
I don’t know what it was, but at the time there was a slight hesitation about what I believed to be "the truth". That slight hesitation you gave me at the time now puts me in a family with three wonderful daughters.
I salute you, Jan!
Thank you.
Marche Les Dames 1991
I closed the door to the small apartment where I had lived alone the past two years and took the train to Marche-les-Dames. Seated across me were a mother and her son. They had just (1991) been evacuated from Rwanda. She told me how the Belgian paratroopers had helped her. I thought: "I want to be a part of that."
And in a peculiar and totally unpredictable way this thought would become a reality.
Today my thoughts are with Thierry and Frederic whom I got to know as always cheerful colleagues during my training. The training was hard, though, and it was incredibly cold, but we also had a lot of fun together.
I also think about the people in Somalia and Rwanda whose names I do not know, but whose lives and my life tragically intersected.
And thenAfter my return from Somalia and Rwanda in 1994 I started my career without a diploma as a painter of high-voltage pylons, seller of sleeping bags, helper in a fast food restaurant, ...
In 1995 I became the area manager for a company operating in the building sector and industry. I participated in many consultations and saw how much time was lost by a complete lack of cooperation between colleagues and customers.
The question: "Why is it so hard to cooperate?" would continue driving my curiosity for the coming years.
In 1998 I started my independent consulting firm
(A-Switch.be), focusing at that time on the question :"How can we cooperate better with more energy, more creativity, more understanding, more customer focus, more fun, more pride, more dialogue."