THE REUNION

I have no idea what I was doing ten years ago. I was probably crying over my maths homework. One thing is for sure: I didn’t know about De Hoge Rielen or the European Solidarity Corps (ESC) – back then, it wasn’t even called that. The program was called European Voluntary Service (EVS), and in 2013 De Hoge Rielen started taking part in it. In the beginning, they hosted only two volunteers per year. Now, after ten years, they have collected 39 volunteers from many different countries, some of them outside of Europe.

The ten years mark called for a reunion. We have been looking forward to it since it was announced. Finally, we could put faces to names we had heard mentioned over and over again and see how people had changed from the pictures in the office. It was as if we had older siblings we had never met, but we had heard all the cool stories about them. We could finally meet the heroes of those stories.

Not everyone came. In the end, we were less than half, but it didn’t matter because we had a really good time, and the time flew by way too fast.

The first people I met on Friday afternoon were Yigit, Amel and David from 2018; they moved around as if they owned the place. They were at home as much as we are. Together we biked to the restaurant and on the way there we met Andrea. Once at the restaurant, others started arriving, including some workers of de Hoge Rielen, like Jennifer and some job students, like Stien and Fien. For the first night, the program was a simple one: dinner and then a bonfire.

Possibly thanks to the survival workshop, some people knew how to start a fire, not me; I just watched. As the fire started and the sky darkened, we sat around the pit and played ‘Who is Who’ to get to know each other a little. Everyone wrote something about themselves on a piece of paper. Each one of us got to read a fact about someone else, and we all had to guess who it was about. Some of them were very funny, but I can’t tell you what they were. What was said at the bonfire stays at the bonfire.

For the rest of the time, we chatted and danced to music from all around the world, trying to sing along to languages that were not our own. Before we knew it was time to go to bed, we needed all the rest because, in the morning, we were going to klimbos.

Still, the morning after, some of us looked like zombies (me), while others were very active and eager to start the day (Patrick.) Everyone took their sweet time at breakfast. Me and Natalia went to building 27 in advance to prepare everything because Natalia and Temo were the rescuers for the day, and we waited and waited for them to come, until, at some point, they arrived. They didn’t watch the instruction video. It would have been a bit redundant when all of them had worked at klimbos, and some of them had been the ones that had made the video and were in it. We all had fun, everyone in their way: I took pictures of everyone, they climbed, and Patrick did his best to be a thorn in Natalia’s side. Nobody needed to be rescued, but quite a few people needed to be pulled through exercises.

For lunch, we were joined by a few more people, but the only one who stayed for the bakfiets race scheduled for the afternoon was Jan.

For the race, we divided into four groups of three people. The teams had some interesting names: My Ass, No Idea, The Blues Family, Deadly Pinkies. The challenges were various: trying to score points by throwing rings on cones, transporting a container with water without spilling any, fishing little plastic ducks and throwing balls into buckets. We had to do all of this on cargo bikes. it’s more complicated than it seems. In the end, we had our workout for the day. I don’t remember the whole ranking. I only know that for some kind of miracle, my team, No Idea, which had been at the bottom of the ranking for the whole race, ended up in second place in the last round—no idea how it happened. The winner, however, was My Ass.

The games weren’t finished. After the barbecue, we had one last big challenge: a quiz. A lot more workers of the Hoge Rielen took part in it this time. We were divided into teams once more. We had to choose our name based on our favourite word in Dutch. The quiz was made up of six rounds, and in between, there were little challenges like dividing the m&ms based on the colour, throwing a ping-pong ball into a cup and others. Each round had a different theme to allow everyone to make some points, and so were the challenges. Although the judge and master of the quiz, Evelien, had told us in the beginning that her verdict couldn’t be questioned, we did it anyway because that’s part of the fun. In the end, team Alsjeblieft won, but I think we all did a good job.

After the quiz, we said goodbye to most people while the volunteers spent some more time together, treading stories and just passing the time together. I was dead on my feet, so I left early – earlier than others. The day after, I was up and ready to go to breakfast, unlike someone else who had stayed much longer the night before and was missing in the morning.

The end of our time together was nearing its end. We only had the morning; then, everyone would leave. After a whole day of challenges and physical activities, as Saturday had been, we were lucky enough to have a chill activity. We took a walk around the domain, showing the ex-volunteers all the things that had changed and chatting about all kinds of things.

The lunch was short, and then we had to say goodbye to everyone. We took some more pictures, we hugged and promised to see each other soon and visit. It seemed as if we were saying goodbye to people we had lived with for a year rather than a couple of days. It felt like we had known each other forever. We are random people who met thanks to this project and thanks to Evelien. De Hoge Rielen is what we have in common, and it holds us together like a magic, invisible, indestructible thread, even if we are scattered all around the world now. We will find each other again.