Yes, it’s that time of the year again. Soon the big blue bird will take the kids on their new journey. You know how you always hear the characters complain in movies about leaving home, and how it will never be the same, and that everything will change? Well, they got nothing on our Caribbean kids when they leave for Europe. Travel is much longer, and they won’t be home for Thanksgiving, perhaps not Christmas. I say Thanksgiving to give US citizens some context. Oddly, that holiday started being a thing here in Aruba. We adopt everything, don’t we?

It’s an emotional venture for both the parents and the students. For most students, it means they’re leaving their homes and will be alone for the first time. It’s exciting but, at the same time, scary. It depends on the student, though. Some kids use this one-way ticket to escape home or the island. A few people don’t want to be small-town folks for all their lives (or live in a lonely world). See what I did there? No? Okay.

Cold-warm Dutch summers

The sad truth is, depending on where they are going, you will start to feel cold as soon as your feet hit bottom, even though it may be summer, and you realize that Dutch summers aren’t as lovely as they seem in photos (because it’s so freaking hot). In Aruba, we have summer the whole year round. You would figure that you would adapt quickly. Then you’ll realize how privileged you were to have a/c at home.

This story, however, isn’t about the “cold” welcome that most of us get once we arrive in the Netherlands. I know students go all over the world to study, but in this article, I’ll focus specifically on the Netherlands and the housing problem many students face. Oh, and I’m not critiquing the Netherlands eighter. This article is about something else. For some context, I will tell a bit about what I went through compared with the experience many students faced in 2022.

Leaving the nest

The year was 2013, and I finally had the guts to leave home. I left the year before for a regional country to study Spanish Literature, which was a bust. But in 2013, I was actually “leaving,” meaning I would be sitting for more than a work shift in a capsule filled with gasses that I would not be able to smell (but would be there; I’m talking about fart by the way), and chicken that I won’t be able to taste because my taste buds will be affected by the lack of humidity and low air pressure. For most students leaving with the “beursalen” means that it will be the first time their feet will touch the land of the frogs. And in my case, it wasn’t any different. I wasn’t well-traveled (and still am) and didn’t know what to expect.

I had it easy. In my time, there was this thing called “short stay,” which is a much bigger thing now. My boyfriend, who would later become my husband, signed us up. We first tried to get housing on our own, and for a moment, we thought we got the apartment of our dreams. We learned it’s probably a scam when it’s too good to be true. It’s important to follow your gut when it comes to these things. I’ll explain a bit more later. If you haven’t figured it out yet, someone almost scammed us. It’s a good thing we didn’t pay. Pay only after seeing a room/ studio with your own bare eyes. After doing some research, we found out that there was a possibility to apply for a short stay at the city mentor. We were going to Rotterdam, by the way.

In high school, they told me that the city mentors would visit regularly and unannounced. I felt conflicted at first. I wouldn’t want anybody interrupting my privacy, especially after being controlled most of my life. On the other hand, at least someone would find my cold body if I died.

Green everywhere, and bees with big butts (only my husband will get this)

On the first day, a bus took us to a hotel like they still do. We got lunch and got the keys to our room. I couldn’t stay with my boyfriend, but I got a roommate. My boyfriend and I got the keys to our place the next day, and we were lucky enough to get rooms in the same apartment. The following days we got workshops, tours, scavenger hunts, etc. It was fun, but at the same time, I was looking forward to not seeing any of their faces (a very wrong thought of me, I know). In life, you need people, especially in the Netherlands, but I will only realize that when I return home.

I won’t talk about my experience anymore because that concerns housing and orientation in our first year. We stayed at “Kees” for a year, my lazy ass left the responsibility of looking for a new place in my boyfriend’s hand (again), and then we moved to Rotterdam Zuid. I always tell people, I never lived in the Netherlands, I lived in Rotterdam, and if I ever go back, Zuid will be our only choice. Oh, and never once in the six years I lived in Rotterdam I got a visit from a mentor.

The good days aren’t coming back

Back to 2022, please. As the first child, with a gap of ten years between my siblings and me, I always felt like a mother figure. I saw it as an unwritten duty to help them in the process. My sister knew long ago that she wanted to go to the Netherlands. I was happy when she chose the same city as me; I could help her more easily.

As soon as she turned 17, the required age to sign up for Stadswonen, we paid the fee and signed her up so she could look for rooms. We took our time to navigate the website to see what were the average waiting time for rooms and studios. We knew getting a studio would be almost impossible because the waiting time was so long. In my head, we were on time and taking the proper steps, but when the time came, we realized how wrong we were and that the burden was about to commence.

Nobody is safe

Maybe we were too confident or unlucky (but that will eventually change). By March, I reminded my sister that she needed to look for rooms; she was already registered for almost two years. She was already looking, but the moving dates were still between June and July. That was our first mistake. For some reason, there was a delay with the dates, and we were supposed to be already responding for the rooms, even though they were 1-2 months before she was leaving for the Netherlands. At the beginning of June, she heard of a fellow Aruban who lived in one of the rooms she responded to. They video-called, but then we never heard back from them. If we knew of the hell we were about to face in the Netherlands, I would have called them myself (every day). Again, we were confident and relaxed that everything would be okay.

Oh, shoot, no short stays?!

By the end of June, we still got nothing, but we weren’t desperate (yet). Despite the warnings in the news, we were still clueless about the severity of the situation. Then my husband hit me with the bomb. Short stays weren’t a thing anymore that they helped Aruban students with. Now keep in mind that this was for Rotterdam specifically. My husband was immensely annoyed that we hadn’t done proper research at that stage and that he had to do it for us. At that point, I realized that there would be no plan b, but I was still sure that the mentors would let the students on the street (and I don’t think any student did, but not everyone would get rooms).

We respond to 20 rooms, we get 2 replies

By the second week of July, we started to get nervous. Reality had finally hit us. We looked for an alternative since we weren’t getting any luck with Stadswonen, and we made an account on Kamernet. Then we responded to every room possible. Big, small, cheap, even the one that would cost my sister a toe each month. We got ignored by a few, but we also got a few responses back, which would lead to a dead end most of the time. The most annoying part was that we weren’t in the Netherlands, so we couldn’t do a “bezichtiging,” meaning we could see the room/ studio. And now it wasn’t only about the tenant liking the room; the landlord must like you too. They must smell that you are responsible and mature, nothing of parties.

My sister had all the contraindications: under 20, haven’t started college yet (ze zit dus niet in dezelfde fase als de bijna afgestudeerden, masterstudenten of al werkende). At one point, my paranoid brain started to suspect that it may be a gender thing as well (but I was just angry and being irrational).

Something did strike me, though. Not on Kamernet, though, but on the ten groups, I formed part of on Facebook of other people desperately looking for housing. You can read from far away; you wouldn’t need glasses because it was usually written in capital letters: NO INTERNATIONALS, SORRY! Sometimes they would also mention that it’s for Dutch people only. And it makes you wonder if that is how undocumented people feel when Arubans tell them: “Bay bek bo pais!” It would hurt every time I read those words. Most of the time, they did us a favor by putting them above as a title. At the same time, it was killing our hopes by the minute.