“I don’t have it easy at the moment, because my last friend here in Zaandam just passed away. Now I don’t have anyone, except family abroad. I call them every Saturday. But I don’t complain. Never! I enjoy every day; I enjoy the sunlight and the view on the trees from my window on the top floor of my apartment building. Did you know I still drive?

I’ve learnt to be grateful and to not mope, even if that didn’t happen by itself. As a child I survived the Japanese camps in Indonesia. The intense traumas that this time inflicted on me followed me for a long time. Thankfully, I escaped through the help of the famous professor Bastiaans. Yes, I could write several books about my life…”

Irene is the daughter of a Dutch father and an Indonesian mother. Until she was fifty, she worked as a teacher in Zaandam; then she was rejected.