I arrived in the Netherlands at about the same time as the first Ghanaian migrants—in 1974. Like many of them I grew up in a Christian environment that was both evangelical and transnational—both in the Evangelical Free Church of America and in the Mission Aviation Fellowship. My father was not only one of the founding officers of this U.S.-based international mission organization, but four of my growing up years were spent outside my home country, mostly in Papua and Dutch New Guinea. Besides this transnational experience as a child, I spent almost three years in Irian Jaya (now West Papua), Indonesia as a bookkeeper for the Mission Aviation Fellowship to complete my alternate service duty to the U.S. government after having been granted the status of ‘conscientious objector’ for my refusal, as a Christian, to serve in the military in Vietnam. During this service I purposely identified with Indonesian youth my age and through these contacts attained a reasonable fluency for the first time in a second language, Indonesian. Like many Ghanaian migrants, one migration experience was followed shortly by another. After a year back in my home country, I felt a calling to join a transnational mission group reaching out to youthful Western travelers passing through Amsterdam on their way to India and Nepal.

Unlike most Ghanaian migrants, though, I did not need to come to the Netherlands for economic reasons and I came with a university degree (BA). I also had ‘white’ skin and some Dutch roots. My great grandparents had immigrated to the USA from the Netherlands. Though my mother did not speak more than a couple of words of Dutch, both her parents and their siblings—all born in the US—still spoke Dutch and maintained some contact with relatives in the ‘old country’.

Because my ‘home’ church denomination when I arrived in Amsterdam was a mainline Presbyterian Church, like many Ghanaian Christian migrants I tried attending an equivalent denomination—the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam. But even though this was also international in orientation, I found my spiritual home more in the transnational Pentecostal and evangelical mission organization I had come to work with—Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Also, like many Ghanaian migrants, I lived in a community characterized by intense interaction in my mother tongue, English. And since this community was located in cosmopolitan Amsterdam, and since I did not envision staying in the Netherlands longer than five years, I made neither plan nor effort to learn Dutch. Like many Ghanaian migrants I got married in the Netherlands—to another international North American traveler working with YWAM. Choosing to get married in the Netherlands, we too had to wade through the bureaucratic process of birth and ‘bachelor’ certificates—more of a problem with my fiancé’s Canadian government than my U.S. one—though without our countries being stigmatized like Ghana was as a ‘problem country’.

Thirty one years later we are still here, in Amsterdam, and still working with Youth With A Mission (Jeugd met een Opdracht).

Nominally, I identify myself now in the setting of the Netherlands as both ‘American’ and ‘Dutch’. When I experience categorization by Dutch people, it is mostly as someone who is a ‘foreigner’ but who is also, to some degree, ‘one of us’. Both categorizations seem primarily related to my use of the Dutch language. Though many say my accent is not recognizable as a typical American accent, most nevertheless respond to my accent by asking me where I come from. The response is usually surprise that, being an American citizen, I should have chosen to live in the Netherlands. Do I really like it here? Himmans-Arday reports getting a similar first question in the context of a ‘European church’—Where do you come from?—but reports that this is usually followed by ‘What are you doing here?’ and ‘When will you go back?’ (Himmans-Arday 1996:93). My impression is that the USA is perceived to have a higher status than the Netherlands in the eyes of most Dutch people—even though many things cultural and political in that country are seen as negative—while Ghana is perceived to have a lower status. But in spite of my accent and obvious mistakes in choice of words or sentence structure, there is also something about my use of Dutch which seems to elicit admiration and appreciation. I am frequently told that my language ability in Dutch and my persistence in using it—not simply switching to English—stand out in stark contrast to other American migrants living here.

One incident related to language that I will never forget involved the response we received from Dutch parents whose children attended the same elementary school in Amsterdam as our children. Because most of the children—over 90 percent—were migrant children like ours, those from Morocco and Turkey received an hour of lessons once a week in their native languages. Like most Ghanaian migrants, we speak our ‘mother tongue’ at home, so our children are bi-lingual. But they were learning to read and write in Dutch at school. Since there were three other English-speaking children in the school, we asked and received permission from the school directors for twice monthly lessons in written English during school time (by an unpaid volunteer). Our request elicited an angry reaction from some Dutch parents: ‘and we thought you were one of us’. It seems we enjoyed a level of acceptance that Moroccan and Turkish parents did not. Was this about language? Or was it, as Ter Haar suggests, that ‘white’ migrants are categorized by Dutch people as ‘foreigners’ [buitenlanders] while ‘black’ ones are categorized as allochtoon (Ter Haar 2000:26, see earlier section 3.2, page 29).

Sometime between 1980 and 1988 I began to identify on an emotional level with Dutch people as well as with Americans. I certainly didn’t feel any special identification with Dutch people when I arrived in 1974. At that time YWAM had no legal status during my first year in the Netherlands while our ‘case’ was under consideration. Like many Ghanaian migrants in evangelical and Pentecostal churches, I remember needing to rely on divine assistance to re-enter the Netherlands the two times I had to travel outside the country. Even after YWAM received legal status, I remember feelings of being held at a certain distance by most Dutch people, including two distant relatives who maintained periodic correspondence with my grandfather. Like one of the Ghanaian respondents cited earlier (page 28), I remember trying to practice using my limited Dutch only to have the other person switch to English. Some of my colleague who have struggled more with learning Dutch have reported being told after two years: ‘you’ve been here two years and you still don’t speak Dutch?’ Unlike most Ghanaian migrants, we resided in a rural part of the Netherlands during our second, third and fourth years, but like most of them our primary social contacts were within our own transnational English-speaking, evangelical and Pentecostal mission community.

I remember four incidents that greatly enhanced my emotional identification with Dutch people and the Netherlands. At the beginning of our fifth year (1979-80) in the Netherlands—after having been in North America for a sixteen month leave of absence—I asked every Dutch member of our staff to please speak Dutch with me. They all complied, but I think it was at least in part because I had used a well-memorized text in Dutch to make the request. Earlier requests in English had not been taken seriously. Secondly, I remember a Dutch Pentecostal leader—at the end of a week of teaching in our YWAM training programs—asking all our Dutch staff to stand and join him in a public apology to the ‘foreign’ staff workers for having held us—YWAM, as a foreign mission—at a distance for seven years. Finally, some months later while I was attending an international Christian conference in Thailand, I remember being invited to join the three other (indigenous) ‘Dutch’ delegates during one of the meal times. They did not speak in English for my benefit, but included me in their conversation in spite of my limited ability in Dutch. On returning to the Netherlands I was invited to give a short report along with the other three at a large gathering of the newly formed Evangelical Alliance. After I nervously delivered my first short speech in Dutch, I remember everyone standing and applauding.

            I have no doubt that these three events helped me identify with the Netherlands. I didn’t apply for Dutch citizenship until thirteen years later (1993), but I have a very vivid memory of being deeply moved in early 1988 while watching the Calgary Winter Olympics on television. It happened as Yvonne van Gennip was collecting her third gold medal—in a sport I hardly knew existed four years earlier—during the playing of the Dutch national anthem whose words I didn’t even know yet.

Having grown up in the post-World War II evangelical mission movement, I brought with me to the Netherlands a certain normative expectation that if I stayed long term in a country, I should learn the language and seek to identify as much as possible with the host society and its people. Though I had begun applying this missionary ‘norm’ sometime into my second year, it required me taking personal responsibility—as I had done in Indonesia—to find the time and the places to connect socially with people outside the YWAM community so I could practice using the Dutch language. When invited to teach in a Dutch setting, I had to make the choice to do it in Dutch when I would readily been given an interpreter. This meant lengthy preparation of my texts in English, getting these translated and spoken on tape—so I could learn the correct ‘music’ of spoken Dutch. And when I was given the opportunity in YWAM to design a training program for fellow expatriates preparing for intercultural mission work, I made Dutch language learning their first priority for the first six months. They stayed with Dutch families from the start and were taught how to take personal responsibility in learning a new language. Though we had the option to put our children in an English-speaking school, we chose for Dutch schooling, forcing us to further levels of identification with Dutch society--through our children’s schools, sport clubs and with their friends.

It has been a long journey and has taken a lot of perseverance. My early experiences with the reserved atmosphere in Dutch churches bear some similarity to the experiences of Ghanaian migrants recorded in chapter 3 (pages 37-38). Mostly I have had to take the initiative in identifying with Dutch people, but without putting myself forward too much (not always easy). Among other lessons, I have had to learn: to stand up for myself [voor jezelf opkomen], and to not take critical comments (e.g. about the USA) personally. But besides our own choices and initiatives, I’m not sure I would have come to feel as ‘Dutch’ as I do without the reciprocal identification I experienced from people in the many Dutch evangelical and Pentecostal inter-church organizations and networks which have embraced YWAM. In retrospect, I find it interesting that many, if not all of these people and organizations, were in some way involved in regular interaction in transnational settings.

Yet in spite of these identifications, I still differentiate myself in other ways from most Dutch people. I still speak English at home and with friends and colleagues who are not native Dutch speakers. I still speak English with my son and many of his friends, even though he has chosen to live, study and work in the Netherlands. I still choose to do most of my reading in English. And I attend and serve as a lay preacher in an international Anglican Church. So even though I have made my home in a Dutch setting, I do not aspire to an exclusive form of identification with the Netherlands. The main reason, however, is my primary identification—like most Ghanaian evangelical and Pentecostal Christians—with Jesus Christ and his world-wide Kingdom. Yet it is precisely my identification with this kingdom, and my reliance on the Bible as my standard, that has provided me with the normative foundation for all my efforts to identify with Dutch people and Dutch society—efforts I plan to continue for as long as God leads me to reside in the Netherlands.

Like Ghanaian migrants my wife and I visit our families in our home countries—on average every two years. When I visit the United States, I am still seen by family, friends and fellow Christians there as an American. When I received Dutch citizenship (in 1994), I had to fill in a form at the U.S. consulate to show my intention to retain U.S. citizenship and legally affirm that I had not committed any ‘treasonable acts’. So in a North American setting I am still an American. That I also have a Dutch passport is a bit strange to most of them—even suspicious to some. In Canada I am also still an American—to some a ‘yank’. But my wife’s family embraces me as one of them. One of my brothers has lived in Canada with his family for over thirty years (all have dual nationality), and I now have a daughter (with three nationalities) who, after choosing to study in Canada over either the Netherlands or the U.S, now lives there. Though she, like my son, grew up in the Netherlands, she has made a different choice than he did. It would seem presumptuous to assume that all second generation Ghanaian migrant children will consider remaining in the Netherlands their only option.

As with many Ghanaian migrants, my family ties are still strong. Besides visits I call my elderly mother once a week. And like Ghanaian migrants, we have reciprocal obligations. At the moment I am writing this, my wife has had to return suddenly to Canada for three weeks because of family problems. Also, our reciprocal obligations with family members in the US and Canada involve money and gifts, though the flow is mostly opposite to that experienced by Ghanaian migrants. As volunteers with YWAM our support comes not from a salary but from the gifts given to us by churches, friends and family. Members of our families in the US and Canada participate in the financial support of our work in the Netherlands. But since we bring gifts to family on our return trips, and since our daughter began attending university in Canada eight years ago, there has also been a flow of money and goods in the other direction as well.       

I still feel emotionally connected to both the U.S. and to Canada, especially the latter since our daughter has settled there and married a Canadian. I also appreciate my American upbringing and different aspects of my American heritage. Yet when on holiday or on a work visit in the United States, I experience certain differences in outlook during conversations with family and friends there. These differences, however, don’t make me feel so much ‘Dutch’ as they make me feel European. Often I have to call on the inter-cultural skills I have learned to maintain my identification with my home country and its people during my visits there. But I make this choice because I still think of myself as an American. Taking the Bible as my norm, I have the same commitment to maintain this identification as I have to continue to strengthen my identification with the host society in which I live—the Netherlands.

Though Youth With A Mission originated in the United States and the university it has founded has its main campus there (University of the Nations in Hawaii), these operate more in a transnational setting. In my capacity as a teacher and advisor in YWAM, I travel frequently—mostly within Europe, but to countries on other continents as well. Like many Ghanaians I am part of a very large transnational Christian network.