My name is Lies van Meurs and I was born on 2 Mai 1948 in Jakarta (Meester Cornelis) .
We left Jakarta in 1958 with a great boat named Willem Ruys from the harbour of Tjandjung Priok. My mother has 4 daughters and one son(one sister died in the Netherlands on the age of 32). We left with my mother and two halfsister and myself to the Netherlands. My halfbrother already left to the Netherlands.
The trip lasted almost a month. In my memory is was a great adventure and we arrived in the spring of March in Rotterdam.
My mother was born in Padang and it was a bad time there because she was kept in Japanese camp. Her first husband died there too.
My mother was in that Japanese camp during a few years together with her three children, I was not born yet.
And for that reason she was already a widow when she was 28 years old.
I was born later in the year of 1948, and probably my father was a Dutchman. It is a pity but I never knew him because my mother kept it as a secret about his identity. I asked her several times but she never answered my question.
Sadly she died in 1990 without telling me his name. So she has taken her secret to her grave. Unfortunately the contact I have with my half-brothers and sisters is not so well because they blamed me for the mistakes my mother has made in her live. My halfsisters and brother were staying a while in a boarding school . She had a special reason to do so. In Indonesie it was a bad time then and also dangerous for the people who had a background with Dutch people.But me the lil tikoes was living in Meester Cornelis Jakarta with my mother and niece and her mother. We had a bad time because there was hardly money. But I admired her for raising her children all by her own although she did it her way. And I knew that she was a lonely person too. She never married again because she lost trust in men.
My nickname is tikoes because my mother always was called that way. And tikoes means ...mouse...because she was not very tall ~C:>= ...... this is my sign.
But I respect her the way she raised us. I will tell you little by little the way my life goes on.
