Raised on the world’s roads

There is family who have made a peculiar decision to leave their lives behind in Europe to travel the world and teach their children a profound lesson about what it means to be a human being who shares compassion and love for the world they live in and the people they meet. Nelke van Aspert and her spouse Frans Giezen have lived on the road for most of their adult lives, with their two sons Pepeijn and Romeq, who have been home schooled by their mother and have a refreshing outlook on life that speaks about living in an equal society where we accept each other’s differences and embrace the similarities. The family has been in Namibia since the 21 April this year, but have been to Windhoek two times in the past, while on their journey through most of Africa. Decision to leaveThe journey started when Nelke and Frans experienced serious health problems while they were in Europe and decided to make a change for the better. Nelke, who spoke with a steady and confident demeanour, shared that one of her sons, Pepeijn, has classic autism, which she says presented him with difficulties getting his certificate in a special school. Soon after, Nelke suggested that it might be a good idea to teach the boys from home so that she could facilitate their education process and make sure that her autistic son received the best education he could, in order to go on and pursue and fulfil his own dreams. Their younger son, Romeq, is highly intelligent and often had difficulty in school when it came to engagement with teachers and learning materials. Romeq would complain about having headaches when he came home from school, saying that he was often under-stimulated and unsatisfied with the level of education that he was receiving. Both boys were not enjoying the conventional schooling system in Holland, a reality that Nelke and Frans decided should change.“We had enough of Holland to be honest. We lived in the Middle East for a while before we went back to Holland. We had grown tired of Holland, and taken the boys’ education, our health difficulties and the fact that we didn’t relate to Holland anymore, we decided to pack our bags and make the world our home.”A journey of a thousand milesNelke and Pepeijn shared how the family then sold the family company soon after deciding to take on the world. Nelke recalls thinking about one of Mahatma Gandhi’s quotes that reminded us to “live as though we are going to die tomorrow and learn as though you are going to live forever.”“When we travel, we call our bus the ‘slakkenhuis’ which translated to ‘snail house’ in Dutch. We travel at a snail’s pace, and really spend time meeting people from the various countries and spaces that we visit. We get to a place and we are happy to be there or here, but we like to move around, because the world is our garden,” Nelke explained with the help of Romeq.The family told Namibian Sun that they don’t believe in demarcating people into their various races and skin colour. Pepeijn, who is always fast to add to his mother’s wisdom, chipped in saying “that we believe in one world, not in colours.”Throughout their travels, the family always get asked where they come from, to which they often reply together in a sing-song fashion that they are ‘Global Citizens.” “Some people always say to us that living like this isn’t good for the children, that children need to be in the classroom to learn, but the boys are learning so much more living and learning like this,” Nelke shared while the silently confident Frans watched as his spouse explained their lifestyle and core values.Life on the road Before continuing their love for travelling that started many years earlier, the family moved back to Holland before setting off on this leg of their journey. This leg of the journey started in April 2013 from Holland, with Pepeijn aged 11 and Romeq nine, although the family has been on the road since Romeq was a baby and Pepeijn was toddler. The family shared that the plan was to drop the boys off wherever they want to study once they reach the age of 18, but Nelke and Frans say that they will never live in a brick house again; they are going to spend the rest of their days on the road travelling. For the future Pepeijn says that he would like to go back to Holland when he comes of age, to join the army for about ten years and then move to South Africa where he plans to build an off-road vehicle so that he can continue the family voyage on his own throughout the continent. The younger Romeq says that his dream is to go to Harvard and study law.As a result of living on the road, the family doesn’t make friends or acquaintances the conventional way, a thing Nelke says they always keep in mind. “Every day is a new adventure, but you have to be flexible. Kids have to be dealt with in a flexible manner when you have been on the road this long, even when socialising. The boys make friends very quickly, they don’t have time to go quietly and slowly in making contacts, and they just go ahead and make friends.”Romeq said that they have a ‘pointer book’ that they use in case they don’t speak the same language as the people that they are engaging. “When you don’t want chicken, you just point on the picture of the chicken and then you just shake your head, signifying that you don’t want any chicken,” he explained. Frans, who spoke seldom, remembered a time in Morocco when the boys joined a group of children that were playing soccer in the streets. “Although they could not speak the same language, children have a way of communicating and this shows when we watch Romeq and Pepeijn interacting with local children,” the man of the bus added. With the rise of social media having taken ground all over Africa, Romeq and Pepeijn are able to Skype with their friends and stay in contact, but say they sometimes miss their friends from school, although they would rather choose a life on the road making friends than being in a classroom.Home schooling Both Romeq and Pepeijn are home schooled by their mother, with material used in most Dutch schools. The boys share a room on their bus, but have dividing curtains between them that add some privacy for adolescent Pepeijn who obviously requires more privacy as he grows older. Nelke says that they like to make things visual, so when the boys were learning about Europe, they decided to travel around Europe to make the theoretical work more practical by adding visual elements to it. “We took them to Poland and Germany for instance, to enhance their learning process. It is important for us that the boys see and taste the things that they are learning about because you learn better that way, and we have seen it working with them,” Nelke and Frans remarked. In Namibia Romeq and Pepeijn have met the Himba people, the San and the Damara people, who they say they particularly love. In Swakopmund they indulged in kapana and since both the boys play djembe, they ended up learning more with some of the local djembe players in Swakopmund. A djembe is a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa.“We really don’t like to just go to tourist hotspots, or stay in resort and then say that we have experienced Namibia or any other country. We want to go into the communities where the real people live, and experience those cultures and ways of living. The boys love going in and learning about the people we visit and it is important for us to treat the people with respect since we are visitors and are honoured to meet many of the people we do,” Frans shared. In dividing the curriculum for the boys, Frans usually teaches mathematics and the sciences, where Nelke focuses more on the humanities and the more practical elements of teaching the boys about the world. Pepeijn says that he enjoys home schooling more because it’s fewer hours of school, which he says makes learning easier for him because he gets to learn by asking people questions and the visuals of learning as you live make him remember the information better. Romeq says that he learns fast, and school held him back. Described by his mother as a philosopher, Romeq enjoys learning and then putting that information into a usable practical experience. This was one of his biggest challenges in the conventional schooling system, something that home schooling has helped him overcome.Both boys said that they would love to live in a world where there is no political instability or racism, and that the vision for the world that they would like to live in would ultimately have everyone treated as equal, the earth protected as sacred, and life respected in general for all. African exampleNelke, who welcomes the idea of Africa not having borders, says that the entire world should follow the example of Africa if it true that a borderless Africa is in the works. She says she travelled with her older son before she met Frans, and there already learned that all people and elements on earth mean something and have their purpose and therefore need to be respected and appreciated. The family, who has no plans of handing in their travel van for a family van, is heading all the way through SADC for the remainder of the year, exploring Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana and then South Africa. They will end their SADC journey in Namibia early next year February. If you bump into the family, say ‘Hi’ to them for us, and check out their Facebook page at ‘1world4travel.’ KEITH VRIES

Raised on the world’s roads

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Namibian Sun 2025-06-18

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Raised on the world’s roads

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Namibian Sun 2025-06-18

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