The story of warlovechild Lenny

While Lenny tells her story, every now and then her eyes fill with tears. Her house in Jakarta is full of memorabilia from the Netherlands: the famous Delft Blue kissing Volendam couple, the colored wooden tulips in a Delft Blue vase, a coffee cup with Amsterdam canal houses painted on it, Delft Blue plates on the wall with windmills or an Islamic text in Arabic script. Even the studio photo, shot in an old-fashioned Volendam kitchen in Volendam traditional clothes, is not lacking. But the looks of her own father are unknown to Lenny.

On a hot and rainy afternoon in February 2012, Jenny Dotulong and her husband receive us (Yanuar Siddhartha from Indonesia and Annegriet Wietsma from the Netherlands, who visits Jakarta for two weeks) in their hospitable house in Jakarta Pusat. Jenny, beautician, tells us her life story. The couple Dotulong married in 1969. From this marriage four children were born. Meanwhile, the family is also rejoiced with the birth of two grandchildren. But Jenny knows almost nothing about her own parents.

Saturday 7 April 2012 the documentary Tuan Papa will be screened in the CineMasia Filmfestival in Amsterdam.

Location: De Balie, Kleine Gartmanplantsoen, Amsterdam

The screening will start at 1:00 pm.

The film will be screened with English subtitles! Director Annegriet Wietsma is present to answer questions from the audience. Join us!

Dear all,

I would like to share with you that we visited our half-sister Edwina and her children and grandchildren in Indonesia. Last year we heard of each other’s existence for the first time. We combined this very exciting meeting with a holiday in Indonesia. The last four days of our holiday we stayed at home with Edwina, which was fun. All in all, we know each other pretty well now.

During the filming of the documentary Sir Daddy we were looking for Pak Mulyadi. He was supposed to be a child of a Dutch soldier. We knew that years ago he worked as a guard at the tea plantation of Pekalongan in West Java. My sister Tineke Hellwig, an Indonesian linguist, had interviewed him once for a different study. During that interview he had mentioned by chance that his father was a Dutch soldier. They never heard from him. According to the notes of my sister, Pak Mulyadi remembered the name of his father as ‘Permil’. A very strange name.

On our arrival at the plantation we quickly learned that Pak Mulyadi was deceased a few years earlier. But his son and his old mother, who once had been the lover of a Dutch soldier, were happy to receive us. It was an interesting interview with the grandson acting as the interpreter for his grandmother, who only spoke Sundanese and barely Indonesian. At one point we asked for the name of the Dutch grandfather. The name was unfortunately forgotten. But when we mentioned ‘Permil’ the conversation took an unexpected and emotional turn...

(Also read Andrea's personal story:  I like the term Warlovechild)

Dear people of the Warlovechild,

I will try to tell you how I came to know about the history of my father. As descibed in ‘stories’, I only knew his name. Luckily I knew the name of my half brother, whom I contacted. Through him I got my father's name and birth date.

On Tuesday, October 11, the Radio Gelderland broadcaster has focused on Warlovechild. Jan van Ewijk, who has been searching for his two half sisters for long, was invited for an interview.
Read more on the website of Radio Gelderland. Once we receive a link to the transmission, we will post it here as soon as possible.

Dear Warlovechild team,

With utmost interest the FIOM Ambulatory Foundation has followed the news on the website of Warlovechild from the start. FIOM can perhaps help people, both warlovechildren as well as Dutch veterans or their Dutch children, in their quests with general assistance and support.

Anna Montan and Patrick Lauwerends wrote the title song for our documentary Sir Daddy (Tuan Papa). The lyrics are sung in Dutch and Indonesian with a catchy melody in an atmospheric arrangement. The two have released a cd called CINTA that contains our song. Read more about this on www.annamontan.com .

Listen to our title song here.

Nana, one of the interviewees in the film Tuan Papa (Sir Daddy), at the Tong Tong Fair in The Hague, holding a DVD of the film in her hands. The two young lovers on the DVD cover are her parents: mother Els and soldier Jack. Nana, living in Indonesia, visited her cousin Dien in the Netherlands this summer 2011. It must be emotional for her to see a bunch of DVDs with that beautiful picture on the sleeve: both her father and her mother have deceased. Fortunately we captured their stories in time and were able to reveal their love story in Tuan Papa and on this website!