Sunday, May 16th was the kick off of the Crossmedia Warlovechild project. Paul van der Gaag and Jos Palm interviewed Annegriet Wietsma and Stef Scagliola, both founders of Warlovechild. Also, military historian Wim Klinkert and jounalist Hilde Jansen contributed to the discussion. In the audience Jan Dennie told briefly about his personal experiences as a warlovechild. Music by Anne Montan and Patrick Lauwerends brought the broadcast into Indonesian spheres.
Afterwards producer Jean Hellwig showed a video impression of his search in Indonesia for warlovechildren together with Annegriet Wietsma.
Watch the video to get an impression of this special radio broadcast.

Here in Part 1 we followed a tip about a warlovechild who would live on the tea plantation in Pekalongan, three hours driving from Bandung in West Java. Unfortunately he had passed away, but to our surprise we found other important persons for our research and documentary: the mother, who unfortunately was not able to remember the name of her former Dutch lover, and her grandson who was sad not to know the name of his Dutch grandfather.

Annegriet Wietsma and Jean Hellwig were traveling in Indonesia in October 2009 for the filming of the documentary Tuan Papa, that was broadcast on Dutch television on July 1, 2010. While they were looking for warlovechildren and soldiers' sweethearts in Java and Bali, they filmed each other to keep the audience posted about their production developments.

A year ago, we invented the word "warlovechild” and it has become a concept to stay. The word is new, but the people it's all about have been there since long: children born out of love during wartime.

We received many positive reactions about the word. The warlovechildren themselves who have lived for years in the shadow of an unnamed taboo, appreciate the word underlining that they were born out of love, and not from violence or abuse. Love in times of war, this is what it's all about.

The term was easily translated from the Dutch word 'oorlogsliefdekind'. Hence we can now be found at www.oorlogsliefdekind.nl as well as at www.warlovechild.org. But what would the term be in Indonesian? A first translation could be "anak di masa percintaan perang '. But there is very little poetry in there. And a website address www.anakpercintaaandimasaperang.id seems not the easiest to type.

So who has a good idea? Reply! Who knows, we may make another great contest out of it!

Jean Hellwig