Jacquelene da Silva grew up in South Africa and moved to the Netherlands in 2000.  She is fascinated by Dutch privacy yet the way you can see through their houses, understands the benefits of high taxes and would spend part of her last day in Amsterdam bobbing around on a boat.

How did you end up in the Netherlands?
My mum is Dutch and my dad is Portuguese and I was born and raised in South Africa. My dad passed away and my mum wanted to move back to the Netherlands to be with her family. I’m one of four children and I was 15 when we came back. The educational opportunities and just the way of life here are amazing. Expats might take that for granted. It’s amazing to be in this country.

How do you describe yourself – an expat, lovepat, immigrant, international?
I work at an international school, the Amstelland International School in Amstelveen. Even though I’ve got Dutch heritage and I’m both Portuguese and South African, I feel the most comfortable in an international community. Among internationals, we recognise each other’s stories. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Dutch culture and it’s my nationality, but how do I identify?

Well, the Netherlands is definitely home. Whenever I travel and we’re flying back, I think, ‘Oh we’re home.’ That’s very interesting, but what am I on the inside? I would say I’m a global citizen because I can’t really say I’m South African anymore. I’ve lost, by choice, some of the South African culture, so I identify more as a global citizen.

How long do you plan to stay?
If it’s up to my husband and I, we intend to stay in Amsterdam for as long as it takes to get the kids into university. The Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam, is probably the best place in the world to raise a family. It’s very family and child friendly. There’s the safety factor. It’s incredibly safe here and everything is so close by. You basically live on foot, which de-stresses people’s lifestyles tremendously. You can live without a car here.

You’re also exposed to the mentality of the Netherlands. There’s the integration of human rights and also how well children are cared for and listened to. The city itself may seem like a party city, but if you live here with your family, the amount of resources for children’s education, the amount of schools and sports clubs, the cultural exposure to something as beautiful as Pride, it’s all just incredible. It’s incredible that our children get to grow up in a world where it’s not just said that people are equal, they live it. They live out that equality.

Do you speak Dutch and how did you learn?
After we moved here, I went to a language school to learn Dutch because I only spoke English at home. My parents spoke two different languages, so that’s what they chose as a common one. I finished with the language school within a year and integrated into normal Dutch education.

So I’m fluent in Dutch. My motivation to learn was because I wanted to become an educator in the Netherlands. To do that, I needed access to Dutch universities and to do that I needed a high level of Dutch.

What’s your favourite Dutch thing?
The Dutch come across to me as very private and keeping to themselves. This might not be my favourite thing, but it’s the most fascinating thing, and I think I do understand where it comes from.

I don’t know if it’s a pride thing or if it really is something from the war years when everyone had to act like they had nothing to hide. I find it very interesting that they’re very controlled, calm, and private humans, but you can see right into their houses and what they’re having for dinner.

How Dutch have you become?
I think I definitely pass as Dutch and people think I’m Dutch when I speak because I’m fluent. I can definitely pass as Dutch, but how Dutch have I become? I know the language and the culture because I’ve lived it, so I would say that would make me about 70% Dutch.

Which three Dutch people (dead or alive) would you most like to meet?

 Johan van Veen. He was one of the first people to go to the Dutch government and say, “Hey, we really need to pay attention to the dykes. If we don’t, they’ll overflow and we’ll have a big catastrophe on our hands.”

And then it happened and the government contacted him and asked, ‘Uh, could you help us fix this flood that has taken over Zeeland?’ I would love to meet him and try to understand his amazing insight. How did he deal with the tremendous responsibility he was feeling? How did he deal with wanting to help his country, being told ‘no,’ and then watching part of it get washed away, but then helping to create this amazing infrastructure that we have today?

Robbert Dijkgraaf, the former minister of education, culture, and science. I would love to meet him because I want to understand his own experiences with international education. How are things different here than they were where he spent time overseas? How could his experiences have enhanced education in the Netherlands? As advanced as things are here when it comes to world issues, I believe there is work that can be done when it comes to the educational system. 

Resistance heroine Corrie Ten Boom. I admire her for her courage, bravery, resilience, and ability to forgive. Her heart is an example to us all and her life was not lived in vain.

What’s your top tourist tip?
Being Amsterdammers, we have a little boat and we like to go around the canals. What we’ve noticed is there are these restaurants with tiny terraces with one or two tables that you can only really know about if you see them from the water. I wish there was a ‘True Amsterdam Experience Map’ that would give people advice like ‘avoid all the touristy things.’

It’s better to search out authentic places like these that are still run by Dutch or international families to have more of a true experience of what it is to live in Amsterdam. Go off the beaten track stuff and find the things the locals actually enjoy. There is a big difference between a brown bar that’s been posted all over Instagram and one that all the locals go to in the Jordaan.

Tell us something surprising you’ve found out about the Netherlands.
Here in the Netherlands we typically pay a lot of tax. Maybe it’s because I work in education, but I can see on a daily basis where our taxes go. Education is one point, but there’s also the infrastructure, public transport, and health.

I think it’s amazing how open and transparent the Dutch are with what these taxes are used for. You cannot go a full day without experiencing the benefits of the financial structure in the Netherlands. I think a lot of expats, but maybe also Dutch people, complain about the high taxes here but, if you take a minute, you’ll see how profoundly well organised this country is. I think many of us don’t realise why we pay so much taxes and how much we benefit from it.

What is available to families and people in the Netherlands, free of charge, would cost an arm and a leg in another country or be completely inaccessible. For me, that’s been a huge eye opener.

If you had just 24 hours left in the Netherlands, what would you do?
I think we’d pack a lovely breakfast, jump on the boat, and do a final tour of some of our favourite canals. I think we would stop off at Vondelpark and sit in the rose garden. Then we’d probably take a stroll through the Jordaan to a little bridge on the Leliegracht that gives you a view of five canals at once. I think we’d just stand there and appreciate how privileged we’ve been as a family to live in this amazing city.

Then I think we would end the day back on the Museumplein, where we drive past nearly every day while going to work and school, and just stand there and realise that we’ve been so privileged to have all this as our back garden. This place with so much history and absolute beauty has been pretty much our playground for so many years.

Jacquelene was talking to Brandon Hartley.

Visit Jacquelene’s website at silvastone.org to learn more about her writing projects, the latest of which is a book about classroom design.