EPISODE 2
April 20, 2021
My guest in this episode is Anouk Cleven, who is originally from the Netherlands. Since 2019, she’s lived in Lisbon. Prior to moving to Portugal she and her husband, Mark, lived in Brazil, where for seven years they ran a foundation, a social and educational center that Anouk founded, and which delivered English classes, computer courses, work training preparation, sport, and music classes, and healthy nutrition support to children aged 6-to-15 from vulnerable situations. Prior to Brazil, Anouk and Mark worked for three years for Voluntary Services Abroad in Indonesia where their work placements were on two different islands. Anouk now works remotely from home in Lisbon as the Director of Sales and Marketing for the Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary.
TRANSCRIPT:
Louise: Hello, welcome to Women Who Walk. I’m Louise Ross writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I’ll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who’ve made multiple international moves, for work for adventure, for love, for freedom. You can find show notes to each episode and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.
[00:00:40] Hello listeners, welcome to Episode 2 of Women Who Walk. My guest today is Anouk Cleven. Anouk was born in Hameln, Germany to Dutch parents. And when she was five, her family returned to the Netherlands. But because of her father’s work, this was followed by a move to El Paso, which is on the border of Texas and Mexico. The family then moved back to Germany, followed by another move to the U.S. And then back again to Germany. At the age of 11, the family once again returned to the Netherlands, where Anouk went to high school.
[00:01:26] Since February, 2019, she’s lived in Lisbon where we met at a social function. And I learned at that time that Anouk and her husband, Mark, moved to Portugal from Brazil, where for seven years they ran a foundation, a social and educational center that delivered English classes, computer courses, work training preparation, sport, and music classes, and healthy nutrition support to children aged 6-to-15 from vulnerable situations. The center was financed by the Dutch NGO SOLidariedade or Solidarity that Anouk founded.
[00:02:06] Prior to Brazil, Anouk and Mark worked for three years for Voluntary Services Abroad in Indonesia where their work placements were on two different islands.
[00:02:17] Because of the pandemic and because of the nature of her work, Anouk now works remotely from home in Lisbon as the Director of Sales and Marketing for the Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary. Listeners may be aware that the kingdom of Bhutan is a landlocked country in the Eastern Himalayas, bordered by China to the North and India to the South. Bhutan only opened its borders to tourists in 1974, so it’s still a somewhat unknown country to many, including me. So I’m really curious to hear from Anouk about Bhutan and the Spirit Sanctuary.
[00:02:56] Welcome Anouk, thank you for being available to chat with me today.
[00:03:10] Anouk: Good morning, Louise. Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to our conversation.
[00:03:15] Louise: You’re right in the city of Lisbon, can you paint a picture for listeners? Maybe tell us a bit about your neighborhood, perhaps the colors and the sounds and the street scenes.
[00:03:25] Anouk: I’m in the city center, one street behind Martin Moniz, which is a kind of a famous square here in Lisbon. It’s also a very multicultural neighborhood. And especially, I would say focus on Asian world with very good Indian, Indonesian restaurants and shops, which I really appreciate because it reminds me a lot about past experience. And it’s a very colorful neighborhood. We live in an apartment on the fifth floor and I look out into the next Hill of the city, because Lisbon is built on seven Hills. And so every morning when I wake up and I look outside, I only see colorful housing. And I have a direct view on the Castello, which also most people know when you have ever visited Lisbon.
[00:04:10] Louise: Now in my introduction to this episode, I mentioned that you’re from the Netherlands but your winding path to Portugal is an interesting one. I wonder, can you tell us a bit about that starting with what caused you to leave the Netherlands?
[00:04:25] Anouk: I left the Netherlands in January, 2009. I left together with my husband. As a young child, until I was 12, I already moved ten times. We would never stay anywhere longer than two years because of my father’s work. So I was very used to travel, to live in different countries, to make new friends. But also I always experienced that as a very positive thing. I liked to start new places, make new friends, a new school. It was never a problem for me. So I always had very good memories of that.
[00:05:01] Louise: Can you tell us some of the countries that you did live in?
[00:05:05] Anouk: My parents, they are both Dutch, but I was born in Germany. I lived in big cities like Hanover and Munchen. I lived in several places in the Netherlands and also in the USA, in Texas, near the Mexican border on El Paso. One of the border cities between Mexico and the United States. That was 40 years ago. In my memory, a very nice city. I know it’s nowadays a very complicated area to live cause of all the problems.
[00:05:37] I have really good memories of being abroad, traveling a lot, so that was definitely something I wanted to do again, when I was an adult. But I’m also not a very courageous person, in the sense that I would be somebody who would travel alone or move abroad alone. So what happened … I found my husband!
[00:06:01] We were already in our mid thirties and we both had very good jobs, made a lot of money and we spent it well or not, but anyway, we enjoyed it very much, let’s say it like that. And one of the factors, which was important for our decision to leave the Netherlands was the fact that we chose not to have children. That was a choice. But we did understand that because we would not have children, we thought it was important to, I don’t even know how you say that, but I want to say leave a legacy in a different way, to give your life a purpose. Because when you get children, it’s something you give to invest for the future, and we thought it would be important to do that, but in a different way.
[00:06:48] We had both good education, we had a good work experience. Maybe we can put that at work in a different place in the world where it’s not so common for people to do that. That was the reason why we left the Netherlands. And we also were looking for adventure, that was also definitely a factor.
[00:07:07] But we wanted to do something professionally organized. So we got in contact with the organization, Voluntary Services Overseas, a UK based international development organization and you actually have to apply for a job with them. So it’s a very strict selection process, which is I think very good. And then you get in the database. And the people in other countries, and in our case that was Indonesia, organizations or institutions who are looking for professionals, can ask for people, for matches. We didn’t want to go to countries which were in active war. The rest was open for us.
[00:07:48] Mark, my husband, he’s a logistics manager, he was matched with a very remote hospital in the Island of Flores in Indonesia. It’s one of the hundreds of islands in Indonesia. I’d never heard of it before. It’s more known as the Komodo Island. This animal, it’s a prehistoric animal, looks like a dragon, actually, it’s the only place in the world where this animal still lives.
[00:08:16] The hospital was in the city of Ruteng, which is in the middle of the Island. It was very remote. You fly from Denpasar Bali to Labuan Bago, the most East point of the Island of Flores in these little planes, not very comfortable, and also not so safe because a lot of accidents happen in Indonesia, especially with flight. And they have these mini Volkswagen buses, where you can sit with three, six people, and then you take a five-hour drive to the city. And it was not because it was a five-hour distance, maybe not even a hundred kilometer, but the roads were so bad. It’s a volcanic island, so it’s beautiful. But we also understood that it was really isolated.
[00:09:11] One of the things which VSO promotes, you don’t earn a salary, you get an allowance and the allowance is the same level as the people you work with. They also provide you with housing of the same level as the people you work with. In the ideal world, there is no difference between you as a volunteer and the people you were working with. Obviously that’s not true because we always had a backup system, but the idea is good, I think, but that meant that we, very spoiled people from the Netherlands with our shiny apartments, we got a house, but there was no electricity, no running water. That was a very different life.
Anouk in Indonesia. Photo by Mark Fijen
[00:09:54] Louise: Can you tell me how you adapted and then what you learned from that experience?
[00:10:00] Anouk: The most important thing I learned was that I can be very happy without all the material stuff I had before. That’s the lesson I learned and which I will benefit from for the rest of my life. You also learn to become really creative. We made stuff from nothing! Also by looking back now, you slow down. I think sometimes, what did I do every evening? What did I do? We were also the only two white persons in this city, which was exceptional. Most of the people living there had never met somebody white. It’s not a city for tourists. Tourists would pass, but never stay there. We lived there for two years, but until the last day when I opened my front door, there would always be children excited to see me. Not because I was Anouk, but because I was a white person.
[00:11:00] Louise: I bet you took that to your next posting, perhaps that really helped you adapt to the next Island. Can you tell us a little about the next island?
[00:11:10] Anouk: The next Island was South Sulawesi, it’s a much bigger Island. It’s also a bit more known. We lived in the Capitol Makassar. The big difference was that the Island of Flores is the only Christian Island in Indonesia. Bali is of course more Buddhism, Hinduism, and Makassar, the Island we went to in Indonesia, it’s very strict Islamic.
[00:11:38] I must honestly say that I was not completely aware how that would function in real life before I went. I did not really understand, or maybe I thought, Oh, I’m Dutch, I will handle this and this will be okay. It was not. It was very hard for me. It’s almost laughable if you think about it, but it was not so funny at that moment. My job there in Makassar was with the association for blind people. My task was to help them set up a fundraising strategy. The reality was that the people I was working with were all men. And they were all blind. And in order for me to make contact with them I had the feeling I needed to be close with them physically, hold the hand or touch somebody, and I was not allowed to do that. I did my job, but it was definitely not the way I like to work with people.
[00:12:40] And Louise, you know how I look, I’m a little bit taller than general and very white and I have very light hair, so I was unmistakably different than everybody else. Everything was difficult, even doing grocery shopping or just sitting on my street or whatever. I found it really difficult. It was definitely the reason we left.
[00:13:03] Louise: The cultural challenges encouraged you both to consider another move. And so then from Indonesia, where did you go?
[00:13:11] Anouk: We went to Brazil. For us that was not such a big step because we had been in Brazil before. One of the jobs I had in the Netherlands was with the Franciscan Sisters. It was not a full-time job. It was something I did besides my normal job.
[00:13:27] These Franciscan Sisters, they’re getting very old and there’s no new people becoming sisters or nuns. But a lot of them have projects worldwide where they invest and the Sisters of Franciscan are specifically known for their investments in education, healthcare, and women rights, all over the world. And these are three topics, which I have a huge interest in. So I felt very connected with them. And then when I became connected, I found out that it was a fantastic group of women which I could relate to in the sense that they also made a different choice, not choosing a traditional family life, but, choosing a different life to put your skills and your knowledge to the benefit of other people, other projects, a higher cause.
[00:14:21] They knew I was in Indonesia; they were very interested. So we always were in contact. And then they heard that we were thinking about leaving Indonesia and they asked us to come to Brazil. So the relationship was there and that made it a bit easier for us because for Dutch people, you cannot just go to Brazil and start working. It’s not allowed. You need either a job or a lot of money.
[00:14:45] We arrived in the city of Porto Alegre, which is in the most South province of Brazil, Rio Grande Azul, it’s on the border with Argentina and one of the bigger cities of Brazil, I think there was 8 million people in this city. And Rio Grande Azul is one of the better States, better in a sense, richer, States of Brazil. It’s very much agriculture.
[00:15:06] But they have some cities with huge problems in the sense that there’s a lot of production of drugs. And like in Columbia, its not sent from Columbia directly, let’s say to Europe, it goes through other channels and one of the channels is Brazil. Porto Alegre has a big harbor, so that makes it an interesting place to pass trucks through. It’s also very complicated state because there’s a lot of violence associated with drug trafficking. And that causes also a lot of poverty.
[00:15:39] We lived in Port Algere, but we worked in a city of Alvarada. Alvarada is the fifth, most dangerous city of Brazil. Looking only at the number of people getting murdered those numbers are abnormal. It has more victims of violence every day than in, in some wars zones.
[00:16:01] One of the things I didn’t know, before I went to Brazil is that they have a public education system, but it’s not it’s not enough. So literally every chair in school has three children a day to use that. Children can only go to school three and a half, four hours, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. That starts from six-years old, so you have six year olds going to school in the evening.
[00:16:24] What we did, we started a social education center, together with the sisters in one of these really poor neighborhoods. The children who went to school in the morning, they came in the afternoon and vice versa. And we had about a hundred children a day from 6-to-16 years old. Besides giving homework support I, for example, did a lot of English education. Mark, my husband, did a lot of computer education.
Anouk with the kids at the social education center, which she founded. Photo, Mark Fijen.
[00:16:50] We also spent time on more of development, I would say emotionally, physically, so a lot of sports a lot of movement because there was nothing in the neighborhood interesting or safe enough for children to be outside, it was just really too dangerous. We also did music, theater, a lot of arts, artwork, dancing, to try to give as much stimulation cause neither at home there was money or room or energy to be given. I would say 80% of the children came from single-mother families.
[00:17:26] They got also one hot meal and one snack, and children could also take a shower and could get another pair of clothing or something like that. We taught them to make their own clothing or to repair clothing. So it was very practical, and then when the children became a little bit older, so I would say 13, 14 year … we also invest a lot.
[00:17:49] I became very realistic about expectations. These children would not even go to high school, let alone college, so what we tried was to get the best option for them and the best option would be that they would start working somewhere where they could also get an education. Like banks have these programs. You start already working but besides that you get some kind of education, and for most of the people, the highest they would achieve, not because they did not have the capacity, but there was just not an opportunity. And they had to make money for the family. So we invest a lot to get these teenagers in these programs.
[00:18:33] Louise: One of the things that comes up for me as you’re talking about this is the possible toll that it took on both you and Mark, because this work is about giving and you need to give an enormous amount in order for these kids to get something out of the program. So you’re doing a lot of caretaking and support and help. How did you fill yourselves back up again?
[00:19:00] Anouk: Well, I got a lot back from the children and their mothers. I felt the love, literally every day. So that, that was enough for me. But what happened, I got really scared. We arrived in Brazil in 2012 and you might remember that at that time, Brazil was in a very different situation than now in the sense that it was a very promising country, huge potential economically, but also socially the country was improving. Middle class was growing, extreme poverty was decreasing. The number of children in school was really high. They did some really good stuff. However, this collapsed within three, four years, the years we were there. We were there almost seven years, and the violence became so absurd. If you would see how we lived, you would think, wow, that’s a strange way to live, but we were so used to it. You don’t see it anymore.
[00:20:09] It was when I came to the Netherlands and I was with friends or my mother, people would say to me, what are you doing? Why are you constantly looking behind your back? If I would get in a car, the first thing I would do was close everything, that was just instinct. And if I would see a police car, I would immediately get out of the way because police in Brazil, you don’t want to get engaged with police. I noticed when I was in the Netherlands that people told me that I was acting strange and then I thought, there is something strange happening, but it takes a long time before you, you see that?
[00:20:42] Louise: So was it the violence that drove you and Mark to leave Brazil?
[00:20:49] Anouk: Yes. I had a few very frightening situations. The thing was to get to my work, I had to use the bus every day. It was an hour ride. It never happened to me, but every day I was waiting for a robbery. Your anxiety level goes beyond healthy levels. And it hit me sooner than my husband. He didn’t feel as frightened as I did. And you get into strange discussions because I was very frightened and I got frightened for him. And then I thought he was not cautious enough. And he thought I was too cautious, so it doesn’t work.
[00:21:28] Louise: You’ve been here in the city of Lisbon for a few years, but you’re actually working remotely. Tell us a little about that.
[00:21:36] Anouk: We came here without work. We understood that, okay, we go to Portugal, we have no work, so what do we do in the first six months we build our network. And we did that professionally just, every opportunity, we did it. People here understand Brazilian Portuguese and it’s absolutely an advantage, especially in social life, it makes life much easier. In a few months, we knew a lot of people already. And through that network, I got acquainted with a Dutch person, but he doesn’t live in the Netherlands already for 50 years and he has a resort, a sanctuary in Bhutan.
[00:22:12] Louise: Where I lived in Colorado in the U S., Boulder has a sister city in Nepal. So we had a number of Bhutanese immigrants, and a very big Nepalese community as well. I remember reading years ago that Bhutan only opened up to the outside world in the mid seventies.
[00:22:35] Anouk: It’s a very small kingdom which borders with China, India, and Nepal. It’s only 800,000 inhabitants. So I met this guy, now my boss, he moved for family reasons to Portugal from Bhutan. I knew that he was looking for an assistant, that’s why I was connected with him. He invited me for a meeting at 10 o’clock in the morning. At two o’clock in the afternoon, we were still talking and not at one moment did he ask me, what education do you have, or can you do Excel? Or what are you good in this? We just talked about about my life, about his life. We had a lot of the same ideas and values. And then he said, work with me for three days, and after those three days, you tell me if you like to do it, and I tell you if I like to.
[00:23:25] We did that first week, and then he said to me, before you continue with this work, you need to go to Bhutan because you need to know what I am talking about. It’s called the Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary. It’s a five-star luxury hotel. He was in Bhutan the first time, 10 years ago, and he was very touched by the atmosphere, the people, the untamed nature, the very authentic country. It’s already open for 40 years, but they have this tourism policy. They don’t let everybody in. Traveling to Bhutan is for the happy few. And I would say the happy few with a lot of money because you are not going to get in Bhutan if you don’t have money. Resulting in the fact that it’s still very much unexplored.
Anouk outside the Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary, Bhutan
[00:24:13] My boss, he’s very much involved in yoga, meditation, conscious living, nature, he’s always been in the tourism hotel industry, but in Vietnam, other countries. He sold everything and then he went to Bhutan and he thought, okay, my last project will be here, but it has to be about Bhutan. People staying in the sanctuary actually become part of the Bhutanese way on balancing your life.
[00:24:42] I think I was on the job for two weeks and then I was in the plane to Thailand because you need to go to Thailand and then you fly to Paro, the international airport in Bhutan. I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve been in several Asian countries and I was in Bhutan for four weeks. And it was an amazing experience! I was there for my work obviously, but the first two weeks I needed to do the program as guests do. So I was not allowed to work. I needed to do what normal guests would be offered and it was just a really amazing experience. It was, it was beyond my expectations and it was very, how would I say, you get very balanced. There’s no distraction. There’s no TVs. Internet is only in a few places. There’s no music. It’s silent. They have the spa concept, but it’s based on traditional Bhutanese herbal medicine. I didn’t know that world. It was very interesting.
[00:25:46] Louise: An experience for the privileged, because you mentioned it’s very expensive. Did you also feel that it was an immersion experience where you had a sense of Bhutanese culture?
[00:26:00] Anouk: Everybody speaks perfectly English. The education system is completely in English. And that’s good because I don’t understand one word of Bhutanese. It’s a very complicated language. I think it has to do with the influence of India. Cause Bhutan is such a small country, but it’s a very strategically important country for India and China. They are very much influenced by India. There’s also a lot of people from Bhutan working in India and they also depend for almost everything on India. They have agriculture, but nothing else.
[00:26:35] Louise: You’ve been working for this company now for a while. You’re still in Lisbon. Do you plan to stay here or do you see another move at some point in the future or in other words, what’s next?
[00:26:47] Anouk: So that’s also something I’ve learned the last few years. And I think probably everybody experienced a little bit of this last year. You can do a lot of planning, but sometimes stuff comes between. I’m really happy and very grateful I still have a job, my job with the Bhutan Spirit Sanctuary. But obviously we have not been able to welcome any guests and I do hope this will still happen this year, but what I want to say is, it’s very unsure how my job will develop.
[00:27:16] Louise: You mean, because COVID has impacted tourism to Bhutan; you still have your job, it still feels stable.
[00:27:23] Anouk: Yes, but I also know it can change and I can still lose my job this year. I have a few backup plans but the intention is to stay in Lisbon. That’s absolutely our intention and not to move again. It takes a lot of effort to build a new network and we succeeded here and I’m really very grateful for all the fantastic people we met here and the friends we made and, and my social life is really nice, but I don’t want to do that again.
[00:27:50] Louise: This has been a fascinating journey from country to country. I hope listeners will reach out and connect with you. Are you comfortable sharing one of your social media accounts?
[00:28:01] Anouk: I’m on LinkedIn. That would be the easiest.
[00:28:04] Louise: Thank you Anouk.
[00:28:06] Thank you for listening today. And if you would like to read a transcript of this episode, you can find it in the show notes on my website, louiseross.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review Women Who Walk on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.