Anton Lovink - my adolescence and university years...

My father was very influential in my development

Now 13, my memories begin to coalesce as a grasshopper in various geographic and people centric contexts, from a few months to a few years. The trip from Sydney, Australia through Perth on a Dutch ship then through the Indonesian islands to Singapore and then to Penang, Sri Lanka and the Suez Canal. Add in a week long stay in Egypt and you had a glorious meeting of all these cultures. For me, a young adolescent, and my 11 year old brother, it was 30 days of wonder and displacement.

Arriving back in Holland in April 1960, my parents put us in a boarding house and enrolled us at the International School in The Hague where there were other groupings of displaced and often parentless young adolescents. I have no real memories of that time except that I got to know my grandmother, Oma Nagel quite well, partly as my parents travelled through Europe for several months.

In 1960, perhaps because of my father's diplomatic seniority, he was once again appointed the Netherlands ambassador to Canada where he remained until his retirement in July 1968 after both the Canadian Centennial and Expo 67. He never returned to the Netherlands. As for me, I continued to have intense longing for the country of my birth.

I was happily freed to register at Lisgar Collegiate Institute but I never really felt at home as I only started there in grade 10. I did very well academically, competing with other geek-like individuals, even becoming president of the chess club where we invited hypnosis specialists to help us play well. I also sang in the school choir, even as a boy soprano until grade 12, before my voice broke.

Then my parents, in their wisdom, sent both of us off to schools far from home, my brother to Lakefield college in Lindsay Ontario and me to the Neuchatel Junior College in Switzerland. This was in part because father was now Dean of the Diplomatic Corp in Ottawa and partly because my brother and I were fighting relatively continuously. Neither of us was consulted in any way.

Switzerland was fun as I enjoyed speaking French and I had a good girlfriend though she was much shorter than I was. She accompanied me on the wonderful school trips to Spain and Morocco and to Italy to explore these amazing cultures. The trips helped distract me from the immense challenge of having to write grade 12 and 13 Ontario final exams which I barely passed, except in languages. I also had a lot of fun skiing in the Alps and the Jura mountains, further taking me away from my studies. Luckily my marks seemed to have been enough to get me into Queens University in September 1964.

There I also had a wonderful time doing everything else but studying including becoming president of the university Glee club, putting on productions like the Bartered Bride by Smetana, boycotting South African products sold in Kingston stores, swimming and weight lifting. My brother Hans arrived at Queen's in September 1965 as a professor of political science. He and my parents were embarrassed by my barely passing marks and so pushed me out to what they felt was a better university for me.

As it turns out, my family was right. Trent university was perfect for a meta learner like me, learning while I was talking and talking while I was learning was wonderful. The university openly welcomed debate in small groups with faculty members. In my senior year, I was able to grow immensely as a thinker and writer and deepen my understanding of world histories, as well as improve my French. I moved in with two different groupings of guys with whom I was able to maintain my “geekiness” and flower academically, graduating with a first class degree in history.

My third year at Trent, largely because of my trilingual fluency, Dutch, French and English, and my good looks and eloquence, this is where you can roll your eyes, I was recruited as a guide and host for the Canadian pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. For six months, from April to October, I had the most glorious and well paid international experience. Although at times it was very boring having to explain the basics of Canada to an international population, some of my best friends from those six months remain.

My only extracurricular activity at Trent was as chairperson of the World University services committee (WUSC) running an annual treasure van, selling products from the global south. Keeping the grasshopper model of my life through WUSC, in my penultimate year at Trent I got my first exposure to Africa when I joined the WUSC international seminar to Morocco, Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire. For two months I stayed on university campuses in capital cities, listening to lectures about the relevant economies and cultures as well as taking various day trips to other cities and talking to lots of other students.

 While in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, I decided to travel by land to Ghana. It was a trip of great difficulty as in the 1960s French and English speaking countries in Africa had very little cross-border communication. Coming back from Ghana I decided it would be faster if I walked along the coast from the last small town in Ghana to the first small town in Cote d’Ivoire. I walked through tropical forests and marshes, sleeping outside for two days.

By then, Africa was in my blood. It was just so different from anything else, from any other environment that I had ever known. I just had to go back. The excitement of being able travel back to Ghana motivated me to outperform academically. In August 1969, I travelled to Bawku, a small town in northeastern Africa 500 kilometers from the coast, to teach French at Bawku secondary school.

Quite regularly, a team from the local hospital arrived at the school to provide vaccinations as well as tests for many diseases. The head of the laboratory for the hospital was David Azare who invited me to worship services at his Assemblies of God (AG) church in town. I accepted with enthusiasm, enabling me to get to know the local culture. I also accepted invitations from my students to visit their homes during school breaks.

The school was nominally secular but the vast majority of students were Muslim or following traditional religions. The student Christian movement group on the campus of 2,000 students was active but was dormant when I arrived. However, all religious holidays were feasted by students in very overt ways; religion was omni-present.

I took up David's invitation to attend worship at the AG church and found myself going there every Sunday. Worship was always partly in English. The preaching was ecstatic. The music, facilitated by several drums, was bodily enrapturing. I became a convert, “speaking in tongues”, feeling very much part of the church, even as the only white man. I therefore could not refuse Davids and the AG pastor’s invitation to be baptized in the lake near the church.

The baptism was transformative and has deeply influenced the rest of my life. I came to understand that we have so little control over what happens to us and I recognized the power of other forces beyond our ken. As pastor Yamdogo led me into the lake and pushed me under the water, I came up to the glorious sound of African drumming and my crying, knowing that I had been saved by the power of the Holy Spirit under the dominion of Jesus.

I extended my teaching contract for a year, but really my intention was to just give of myself to the hospital ministry, to be God's child. I was running out to villages to help people and I also ran the Student Christian movement at the school. I was also learning to sing a large number of pop sounding Christian revival music.

From Ghana, I applied to Union theological seminary and Columbia University for their masters in religious education. I could not apply for formal training for ministry since I was not a member of any recognized denomination. I arrived at Union, a very ecumenical seminary, as a person who had been immersed in Pentecostal and black cultures, definitely a very unusual background. Except Union was host to Professors James Cone, Walter Wink, John Mbiti and Hans Hoekendijk, then the foremost authorities in black theology New Testament studies, African religions and their respective ecumenical movements. All of them influenced me tremendously and encouraged me to focus my faith on those topics. The anti Vietnam movement and the beginning of the black power movement in the church also framed me.

 But then the next grasshopper stage of my life suddenly set in. During a weekend of evangelical worship and prayer, I met this wonderfully smart woman, a gifted artist with roots in Colombia. On Christmas Day 1974, now nearly 29 years old, I called my parents to share with them the good news that Pat Smith had agreed to marry me. My mother's first question was when I anticipated my first child. Even though I did not marry until nine months later, I assured her that there would be grandchildren.