I was going round the buildings I manage early one morning when a man accosted me. ‘Eugene, I’m cross, very very cross! Would you come inside a moment to talk about it?’ I thought: ‘Oh no, not again.’ This wasn’t the first time this gentleman let me know all about what was bothering him. But I sat down on the sofa and he gave me a cup of tea and some cake.
‘Hmm, cake, not a bad start to the day in itself,’ I thought. But no sooner had I taken my first bite than my host started spewing a deluge of angry words. His face became very red. ‘I’ve been living here for years and more and more people of different nationalities are coming to live in the building.
I’d had quite enough of this unreasonable grumbling
They are noisy, they listen to weird music, they cook spicy food that you can smell all along the walkway, and they invite friends round a lot. Lots of noise in a language I don’t understand, and don’t want to understand! Idealis should do something about this!’
This is not the kind of conversation that goes with tea and cake. I get up and head for the door. In previous conversations with this man, I had always tried to really listen and take his complaints seriously, but this time I’d had quite enough of his unreasonable grumbling. I turn around and say: ‘You should be proud of where you live, proud of Wageningen. This city represents the whole world, we are living with all sorts of people from different cultures here. Apart from you, I have never had a single complaint about excessive noise or about strange smells in the walkway.’
I was angry. I kept calm but my annoyance still showed in my response. ‘I can’t change this residential situation, and I don’t want to change it,’ I said. ‘But you might enjoy living here more if you adapted. Or, if you can’t manage that, if you looked for a place to live that matches your wishes better.’ And I closed the door behind me.
Eugene van Meteren works as a caretaker for student housing provider Idealis. He writes about his experiences for Resource. Read all his columns on resource-online.nl
