You want to know if those people can be trusted. So Jan Voortman had put a tenner behind the bar when more and more asylum seekers came to visit him. “It was still there three days later. Then I just removed it myself.”
In 2014 you seemed to only have to look at the numbers for the nature of the problem in Orange. Opening a residence that is suitable for 1,400 asylum seekers in a Drenthe village of 150 souls – and that with hardly any participation. Something like that has to go wrong and indeed Sander Francken put in his aired on thursday documentary Orange. How a small village can be big (NTR) many worries: „De Drent is not like that rebel”, says an Orange resident. “Something has to be done to get that pitchfork out of the shed.”
Also read: ‘The atmosphere in Orange changed due to contact with asylum seekers’
Hundreds of Eritrean men were said to be walking around and stories about drug dealers were told. The internet was overloaded. In the Midden-Drenthe city council – where men liked to wear an orange tie – the pitchfork feeling was converted into the conclusion that Orange had to clear the rubble of someone else. It was decided sulkingly that an asylum seekers’ center could be set up for the time being, a decision supported by conditions about numbers, years and families.
In the meantime, a completely different Orange feeling developed with Jan Voortman, the flower grower who understood that entrepreneurship thrives best with openness. His business was on the other side of the canal, directly opposite the former cooperative potato flour factory that had once been converted into an amusement park with holiday homes behind it. The asylum seekers were now housed in those ‘pipo houses’ decorated with clownish paintings. Voortman started a shop with Arabic products in his garden center. “Those people have very small refrigerators, so they come every day to do their shopping. Sometimes three times; they don’t have much to do of course.” He built a bar and ordered a hookah.
It got quiet again in Orange
Voortman, a man in whom cordiality and professionalism merged seamlessly, organized more and more things with and for the refugees and visibly enjoyed the encounters. Meanwhile, Miss Bianca ran a successful refugee school and a second-hand clothing store was opened in the asylum seekers’ center. Refugee Walid, professional violinist, played Silent Night at the village Christmas party. When the asylum seekers’ center was closed after a few years, Francken only heard people say that it was unsociable that it was quiet again in Orange. And even quieter when Jan Voortman, to whom the film is dedicated, passed away in 2017.
Orange. How a small village can be big makes it clear that journalism pays to hang around after citizens have pulled out their pitchforks in terror. The film is also not limited to the misadventures of the white Drenthe. Violinist Walid and his wife Sawsan (who is a doctor) are followed in their long path to a new home. They are stranded with their two children in Nijmegen, where the Immigration and Nationalization Service wants to send them to Italy, because they entered the EU through that country. We see Walid’s frustration and belly size increasing at the same time. They pack their bags again and try their luck in Germany, where they now have work at an orchestra and a hospital.
There is also the Drenthe homesickness of the refugee journalist Zakwan, who keeps returning to Orange after his departure, where his father is looking for a wife from the asylum seekers’ center. Eventually Zakwan finds a job as a parcel deliverer.
Ultimately, the documentary is not primarily about villagers or refugees, but about how lives go on after they touch each other in Orange.
#pitchforks #life #Orange