Tes Rogers
Jan Heijstek journey to South Africa
Let’s go back to 1860 in the Netherlands. In the Gelderland province, our Oupa Wijtse Lampen’s father, Geert Lampen, was thirty-two years old and still unmarried. He had just accepted the calling of minister to the Herwijne Gereformeerde Kerk, and would marry Hendrika de Vries within a year. Two of their children, Herman and our oupa Wijtse, would be born in the next seven years and would eventually make their way to South Africa at the end of this nineteenth century. On the other side of the Waal and Maas Rivers, a mere ten kilometers away, Jan Heystek (oupa Wijtse’s future father-in-law) was a twelve-year old boy living on the outskirts of Giessen in the Dutch province of North Brabant, and had just completed his seven-year long formal education. The small town of Giessen had only one elderly school master for 150 kids, and there really was not much more to be learnt. Some sixty-five years later Jan would write down his earliest memories of the time that his dad, Jan Heijstek (snr.) took him to school at the age of five years old and he put up a screaming hissy-fit with all the power in his lungs: “…zette ik een keel op met al de kracht die in mijn longen aanwezig was…” Jan (snr.) left his second-oldest son in the care of the very capable “Meester” who knew how to distract little Jan with an “A-B-C” horse-and-rider picture book. (This story is part of Jan Heystek’s own life story written in Dutch—link attached at the end.)
